Thank you.
We've heard a lot from Health Canada officials that Wi-Fi has absolutely no risk and it's perfectly safe, but I'm here to report that this statement is false.
There is a public health disaster unfolding among children in Simcoe County, north of Toronto, where the school board installed a commercial grade Wi-Fi system in every school about three years ago.
Since then, the health of many children has taken a dramatic shift. Some report chronic headaches so severe that their parents are called to the school to take them home. Some report dizziness and vertigo, but only when they're in the school. Others report a cognitive disassociation where they forget where they are sometimes or they can't hold a pencil.
The more severe cases involve heart problems, specifically, an erratic and sudden speeding heart rate known as tachycardia. The children with this condition have reported that they feel like they're having a heart attack at school. At least one child with this problem passed out on several occasions, one time hitting his head on the gym floor as he went down. At least two children have been evacuated from school because the teacher could see their little hearts pounding through their shirts and had to get them out and call their parents.
Two more children have suffered cardiac arrest in Simcoe County schools in the last year. One of them was revived by a teacher with CPR; another one was revived by an attending police officer with a defibrillator. Now every school in Simcoe County has its own defibrillator, as though teenage cardiac arrest is the new normal. Outside of Simcoe County, it's actually less than one in a million. Inside Simcoe County, it's 46 times higher since they installed the Wi-Fi.
The reality is that we're allowing an experiment to be conducted at our schools every day and nobody's taking notes. This is the state of affairs in a school board that installed Wi-Fi in just about every classroom and hallway, and it's most likely the case in every school board that has installed these powerful Wi-Fi systems, but nobody knows because no one is keeping track and, so far, nobody cares.
We've reported all of this to the school board and they say that it can't be the Wi-Fi because Health Canada says it's safe. We reported it to the public health unit, and they said it can't be the Wi-Fi: Health Canada says it's safe.
We've reported this right up to the Minister of Health for Canada and we're told the same story, often with the same cut-and-pasted, word-for-word explanation that “Health Canada has got our back, don't you worry, Wi-Fi is safe”. Beth Pieterson herself was quoted on national television two weeks ago as saying, “There's no scientific evidence that those kinds of effects are caused by the energy limits the kids are exposed to by Wi-Fi”.
Well, I have news. The U.S. government's National Institutes of Health published a study this year showing that children's health is profoundly at risk from exposure to wireless devices. The European Journal of Oncology published an entire volume this month on the dangers of low-level radiation, and one of those studies showed that this exact heart problem, tachycardia, which is being reported in our schools, is agitated by the exact frequency of Wi-Fi. Just yesterday, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine reported that only four hours of exposure from a laptop with Wi-Fi on can damage DNA in sperm.
So what arrogance declares that all of these scientists and all of their work don't exist?
I've found that by scratching only a thin surface of Health Canada you discover a conflict of interest with the wireless industry, a conflict of interest that might explain why they're ignoring the scientists who have proved time and again that Wi-Fi is in fact harmful, especially to children.
Even though this experiment that is being conducted in Simcoe County has failed miserably, we're about to roll it out in schools throughout Toronto, London, Ottawa, and across Canada until every child in this country is irradiated by microwaves all day long because Health Canada says that's okay. The parents will have no say in this, and when their kids start having heart problems, their doctors will be just like the ones in Simcoe County. They'll say to the kids that it can't be the Wi-Fi because Health Canada says its safe. Instead, they'll prescribe pharmaceuticals, like they do for kids in our schools, or as in the case of one little boy in Barrie, they'll install a permanent defibrillator in his chest.
Despite the statements of Health Canada, we are without a doubt endangering the future of an entire generation of Canadian children. And for what? So that they can connect to the Internet in a new and cool way. Well, hard wires do the exact same thing. They give them the exact same Internet and they're harmless.
The children of Simcoe County have been failed by every level of government oversight installed to protect them, but they are just the beginning. They're a harbinger of Canada's future of sick children irradiated daily by microwave exposure without consent, and here, in this room, is their last level. This is the last chance for these kids. What do we tell them in a decade or two when we finally figure this out?