Craven Assent

Canada is very well aware of the dangers of asbestos as a carcinogenic agent. Public buildings in which asbestos was used have been worked on, in Canada, at great expense, to remove the asbestos. It's been done in the Parliament Buildings, among others. When people sell their homes, they're asked by their realtor before the contract is written up whether their home has any asbestos in it; it's a precautionary move taken by the realty industry.

Asbestos is no longer used in construction in Canada. Its destruction of human tissue is well documented. Yet Canada has a thriving asbestos-extraction industry where, although the material is forbidden for use in Canada, it is sold abroad in under-developed countries as a legitimate and sound material to be used in construction. Out of sight, out of mind. And absent conscience. And why might that be, one might wonder?

Well, asbestos is mined in Quebec, and employs several hundred people who don't wish to lose their livelihood. It's something akin to North America having full knowledge of the health-destructive properties of nicotine, and enacting laws to ensure that adults are fully aware they're gambling with their lives, smoking. And while increasingly municipalities have enacted laws forbidding smoking in private places and even public spaces, concern for the carcinogenic effects of tobacco is limited to proactive awareness.

In that the cultivation of tobacco and the manufacture of nicotine products represents a huge industry and a hugely profitable one. Growers, manufacturers and distributors look elsewhere for their livelihood to be enhanced by popular demand, where governments are less concerned, having more elemental problems of drawing their economies into the 21st Century on their minds. And it is in the developing countries that tobacco consumption has sky-rocketed, among the poor and uneducated.

It's something like that with the use of asbestos. The Government of Canada is guilty of lack of conscience in upholding the Quebec asbestos industry's right to make a living. Not in Canada, or in any other developed countries of the world all of which are well aware of the devastating effects of asbestos use, but in developing countries, susceptible to trust in the motivations of other countries with whom they trade.

Canada is the world's second-largest exporter of asbestos, where the government connives with the industry to export their products to India, Indonesia and Thailand, among other unsuspecting or heedless countries where it is used to produce asbestos cement for construction use. Of the two types of asbestos, that mined in Quebec produces the chrysotile type, said to be the safest form of the product.

But the dust and fibres of that type of asbestos also infiltrates lungs and can lead to cancer and lung disease. Attention has turned once again to naming and shaming the Government of Canada for lending its support to this Quebec industry. Three influential medical journals, the 'Canadian Medical Association Journal', the 'U.S. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine', and the 'Annals of Occupational Hygiene' in Britain, have all condemned the industry and the country.

People working in buildings that have used asbestos and in which the asbestos is in the process of breaking down over lengthy periods of time have become ill from cancer, asbestosis, pleural plaques. Just as it threatens the lives of those who work in the mines. Vast sums of money in the developed world are spent in cleaning up these diseased buildings so that they can be once again put to use by the thousands of people working in them.

Yet Canada co-funds the industry lobby which insists that the chrysotile type of asbestos is safe when used properly. The material is lethal and insidious; when building or home renovations take place, walls taken down, or house sidings, workers are exposed to the break-down of the fibres, harming them and by extension anyone else who happens to be nearby. A mere 550 workers are involved in Quebec's asbestos mines. Truly, can their jobs be worth all this anguish?

Canada is so dreadfully invested in supporting anything Quebec demands it needs support with that it has assented to this kind of criminal behaviour. The Government is preparing to present an argument protesting the placing of asbestos on a United Nations watchlist of dangerous substances. It remains supportive of Quebec's ongoing intention of supporting its asbestos industry.

The World Health Organization and other health-related agencies argue that chrysotile asbestos use should be halted, unequivocally. It's past time for Canada to halt its death export to those parts of the world unaware of their victimization.