Quebec’s asbestos consensus crumbles

The Conservative party is the only political party that can be trusted to defend the asbestos industry, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in Quebec’s asbestos mining region at the end of July.

By supporting a ban on asbestos, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is being “duped and manipulated by extremist groups,” Harper said. The other national parties are urban-focused, he continued, and don’t understand regional issues like asbestos.

His party will absolutely support the “safe controlled” export of chrysotile asbestos (the only kind of asbestos sold in the world today), Harper promised.

Harper gave a commitment that he will block a UN environmental agreement (the Rotterdam Convention) and prevent chrysotile asbestos from being put on its list of hazardous substances. This would allow Canada to sell asbestos without informing people in developing countries that it is hazardous

Harper’s Quebec lieutenant, Christian Paradis, who is also minister of public works and MP for the asbestos mining area of Thetford Mines, drove home the message. After the next election, said Paradis, the country will be governed either by a Harper government, which will protect the asbestos industry, or by Ignatieff, who will give in to the international anti-asbestos lobby.

Presumably, Paradis was referring to the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization, when he referred to an international anti-asbestos lobby. He need not however, look so far from home.

Inside Quebec itself, 15 doctors, toxicologists, occupational hygienists and epidemiologists, several being professors at the universities of Montreal, Laval and Sherbrooke, have issued an extraordinary public statement calling for Quebec’s asbestos exports to end.

It’s time to stop the asbestos lies, the health leaders said in a statement published last month in Montreal’s La Presse newspaper.

One by one, they exposed as false the arguments used by the industry and its allies.

The scientific evidence is irrefutable that chrysotile asbestos causes asbestosis and deadly cancers, they said. Only industry-bought “experts” pretend differently.

The claim of “safe controlled use” of asbestos, promoted by Harper and the Quebec government, is completely false, they emphasized. Quebec’s asbestos is being used under deplorable conditions overseas, which will destroy the lives of workers and their families.

Furthermore, 11 reports by Quebec’s National Public Health Institute prove that, inside Quebec itself, the claim of “safe controlled use” of asbestos is a fiction. Deadly cancers related to asbestos are increasing in Quebec by 4 per cent a year.

Quebec no longer uses asbestos. Millions of dollars are being spent every year to remove chrysotile asbestos from Quebec schools and hospitals.

Canada’s refusal to allow chrysotile asbestos to be put on an international list of hazardous substances is an “indefensible infamy,” health experts said. Under Canadian law, chrysotile asbestos is a hazardous substance. How can Canada pretend that what is hazardous for Canadians is not hazardous for people in the developing world?

Canada’s conduct resembles criminal negligence, says Dr. Pierre Gosselin of Laval University’s medical faculty.

Harper appears to believe he can win votes by presenting himself as the leader who supports asbestos. In the two or three ridings in Quebec’s asbestos mining region, this may be true.

But the growing number of Quebec health professionals challenging the asbestos trade is a major new development.

In the past, the industry has mostly had a free ride inside Quebec. While the rest of the world, apart from callous regimes like Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe and China, admitted the irrefutable scientific facts and the colossal human tragedy of asbestos-caused disease and death, inside Quebec there was a virtual silence – until now.

In part, this was because the asbestos miners hold a special place in the history and heart of Quebec for their heroic strikes against appalling exploitation by corporations.

Today there is one last operating asbestos mine with about 340 workers whose wages have been slashed, but in the past the industry was one of the world’s biggest and an important symbol of Quebec’s economic nationalism.

Another reason for the long silence is that the asbestos lobby has been extremely aggressive, virulently attacking anyone who dared to question asbestos as stupid, extremist, anti-Quebec and/or being paid by international vested interests.

Now the asbestos lobby is being challenged – by highly respected health professionals, many of whom work for Quebec government health institutes.

In English Canada, Harper and his ministers refuse to talk about asbestos, knowing their support for asbestos and their sabotage of the Rotterdam Convention would encounter strong public disapproval.

Quebec may be at an asbestos tipping point. The asbestos lies may finally have lost their power. If so, an enormous debt of gratitude is owed to the integrity and courage of these 15 Quebec health professionals.

Maybe inside Quebec itself, apart from the asbestos mining region, Harper’s pro-asbestos stand may not win him votes, either.

Kathleen Ruff is senior human rights adviser for the Rideau Institute on International Affairs and author of Exporting Harm: How Canada Markets Asbestos to the Developing World. –KATHLEEN RUFF,  http://www.thestar.com