Canada's Shame: Asbestos Production (For Export Only, Of Course)

Link to The Ongoing Crime Of Asbestos Exports, by Murray Dobbin at CounterPunch. Canada is one of the world’s largest producers of chrysotile asbestos, exporting 200,000 tons per year. Over 90 percent of these exports are sent to developing countries such as India and the Philippines. Canada is the only member of the G8 producing and exporting asbestos. The industry provides 350 jobs and grosses $100 million a year.

From an article by scientific editor Gilles Paradis in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, 2010, Ban All Production and Export of Chrysotile Asbestos, on the Canadian Environmental Law Association website:

The disturbing image on the cover of this issue of the Canadian Journal of Public Health shows a child in Indonesia sifting barehanded through a dump littered with asbestos. Two adults with bags – one with the logo of Lab Chrysotile, an asbestos mine in Quebec – are also looking for pieces of chrysotile-containing cement widely used in construction in that country. The pieces of cement can be manipulated and cut by workers wearing no more protection than the villagers in the image, resulting in the release of asbestos fibres and exposure of workers and families alike.

It is hypocritical to export chrysotile to other countries. The cynicism that our politicians show in the face of the incontrovertible evidence that our export policies will lead directly to the death of innocent victims is disgraceful.

The Dobbin article on CounterPunch says:

Every federal and Quebec government since the time we knew with certainty that asbestos killed has been complicit in exporting disease and death to third world countries. Asbestos, including chrysotile, the kind that Canada exports (and the only kind traded today), kills over 100,000 people a year world-wide.

Aasif Mandvi on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show ridiculed corporate boosters of chrysotile production in Asbestos, Quebec. Mine manager Bernard Coulombe suggested that people in India wouldn’t be bothered by asbestos fibres because they are “used to pollution. …It’s like they have a natural antibiotic.” 

As for Stephen Harper, far and away the most aggressive promoter of asbestos, during the election he stated “Chrysotile, specifically, is permitted internationally under conditions of safe and controlled use. This government will not put Canadian industry in a position where it is discriminated against in a market where sale is permitted.” He trumpeted the fact that his government was a champion of asbestos and actually attacked the Bloc Quebecois’s Gilles Duceppe for not being a strong enough supporter. Duceppe caved overnight and tried to match Harper’s pimping for the industry.