Bill S-2 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act

This enactment amends the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act to
(a) allow a claimant to make a declaration that information in respect of which an exemption is claimed is confidential business information and that information substantiating the claim is available and will be provided on request;
(b) allow a claimant to give an undertaking to the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission to bring a material safety data sheet or a label into compliance with the provisions of the Hazardous Products Act or of the Canada Labour Code; and
(c) allow the limited participation of the Commission before an appeal board.

Hazardous Materials Information Review Act

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question. I believe I alluded to it in my comments. Not only is absolutely imperative that the information on these hazardous materials be accurate, but it has to be clearly understood by those who are using it. If it is not understood clearly by those who are using it, then really it is obsolete and altogether misses the intent of labelling. The member's point is whether we should have it in other languages and more clearly read. Absolutely.

We are going to be dealing with this when it comes to food labelling as well. Just because we have a Canada health guide, does that mean that people who read it really understand it? If they do not understand it, how good is it, really? It is only complied with and safe to the degree that it is understood by those who are using it, by the people of Canada.

I think the member's points are well taken. I am sure the committee is going to examine both sides of this issue because they are absolutely important as we move forward in the committee to deliberations on this piece of legislation.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill S-2, An Act to amend the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

It is now my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Cape Breton—Canso, Fisheries; the hon. member for West Nova, Agriculture; the hon. member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Economic Development.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure and an honour for me to be here in this House as Deputy House Leader of the Official Opposition.

In the 38th Parliament, this bill was Bill S-40. At the time, the Liberal Party of Canada formed the government in power. The bill that is now before this House was introduced under that previous government.

This bill is crucial to occupational health and safety. As I said, it was introduced by the previous government during the 38th Parliament. Bill S-2, which is the reincarnation of that bill, amends the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act. This act governs the activities of the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission, an independent, quasi-judicial government agency. The commission plays an essential role in protecting workers' health and safety and also protects trade secrets.

The commission forms part of the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System, also known as WHMIS. This information system was developed jointly by unions, industry and the federal, provincial and territorial governments. This is extremely important, because it is not every day that all the parties to an issue decide of one accord on the amendments that must be made to a bill or an existing law.

The role of WHMIS is to ensure that information on hazardous products is conveyed to the workers who use those products. A list of all the hazardous ingredients in the products is therefore available, as is information on how to handle those products safely: information on health and safety, first aid in case of contact with the product, how to dispose of the product, and so on. This information is essential to protect the health and safety of workers who have to use this type of product and these hazardous materials and handle them safely in their work.

This information is provided on a data sheet or a label affixed to the product. When WHMIS was introduced, the industry stated that there were cases where the full disclosure of hazardous materials ran the risk of disclosing industrial secrets and making them available to business competitors. To ensure that Canadian industry and our economy continue to grow and that new jobs are created, it is very important that companies that create this type of product have an assurance that confidential business information will not be communicated to or made accessible to their competitors.

If the complete chemical composition of ingredients were listed on a data sheet, a competitor could use that information in unfair competition and gain an advantage. Therefore, the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission intervenes by examining the claim for exemption. That means that a company can file a claim for exemption so that the list of dangerous products does not appear on the label. However, the commission still provides documentation concerning the risks and dangers of the product.

In that case, it means that the competitive advantages of a company and its industrial secrets are protected. However, at the same time, sufficient information must appear on the label or in the data sheet to ensure that the health and safety of workers who are involved in the production or handling of this type of hazardous products or materials are protected.

The commission’s mandate consists in establishing a balance between the rights of the employers and the right of employees to obtain information about the dangerous products that they handle.

When a company wants to protect information concerning dangerous ingredients within a product, it must file a claim for exemption from the requirement to disclose the information, and submit the required documentation relating to health and safety.

The Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission determines whether it is an industrial secret and whether the information provided concerning health and safety is satisfactory.

If the information in the data sheet or on the label does not comply with the law, the commission orders changes to be made and calls for submission of a corrected data sheet.

If the corrections are not made within the required time limit, the company is subject to corrective action or the commission can simply prohibit the product.

That is very important. It is up to the commission to determine whether the hazardous materials information is sufficient to ensure the protection of the health and safety of workers who have to handle products containing that kind of hazardous materials.

If a company files a claim for exemption but fails to provide sufficient information to ensure that the health and safety of workers are protected, the commission has the authority to order corrective action or to simply ban the product in question from the market.

The claim for exemption forms have to be corrected 95% of the time because of missing information. On average, eight or nine pieces of information have to be added on each form.

In 1998, the commission undertook a renewal process designed to streamline its administrative operations and better meet the needs of stakeholders.

Many changes have been made to better meet the needs of stakeholders. Three, however, require legislative amendments, hence the need for Bill S-2, which, under the previous government, during the last parliament, was known as Bill S-40.

These three changes requiring legislative amendments correspond to the amendments to the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act contained in Bill S-2.

This act has to be amended to allow claimants to make, with a minimum of substantiating information, a declaration to the effect that the information in respect of which an exemption is claimed is indeed a trade secret.

At present, claimants are required to submit detailed documentation concerning the financial implications of the possible disclosure of the chemical components. This places an administrative burden on claimants and on the commission as well.

The majority of claims for exemption are valid. To date, only four out of 2,400 have been rejected.

Second, the amendments proposed by Bill S-2 will enable companies to voluntarily correct any safety labels the commission deems are not compliant.

Under current legislation, the commission must issue a formal order for compliance even if the claimant is completely prepared to make the necessary correction after being notified that some information is missing. Companies must then undertake a long administrative process, even if they voluntarily agree to change the health and safety label.

The second element is the amendment enabling companies to voluntarily correct safety labels, which is a good thing. I think that all of us in the House agree that this is a good thing.

If it is possible for corrections to be made voluntarily, the process can be speeded up. Workers can thus have faster access to any health and safety sheets that have been changed.

It should also be pointed out, however, that in cases of non-compliance with the rules and lack of undertaking by the claimant respecting the corrections requested, the commission can always issue an order to ensure compliance with the requirements, as exists now.

Workers’ health and safety is therefore not at all compromised by this amendment. It only speeds up the administrative process, making information accessible to workers much more quickly than the current system allows.

Third, the amendments will improve the appeal process by allowing the commission to provide the appeal boards with factual clarifications.

The appeals are heard by independent boards composed of three members who represent workers, industry and government. Up to now, 16 appeals have been heard and they would have benefited greatly from additional information from the commission. But to date the law does not allow this. The three parties concerned, that is, government, industry and workers or unions, all agree that this amendment should be made so that the commission can provide factual clarifications or information to the independent board with the authority to hear the appeals.

Representatives of industry, as well as unions in the provinces and territories, have unanimously supported the three amendments proposed in Bill S-2. The amendments to this act are very positive for the health and safety of workers and will simplify administrative procedures. There are of course significant economic impacts for companies, which will no longer have to deal with lengthy administrative procedures.

To recap, the three amendments will enable companies that have claimed an exemption to put their product on the market more quickly, while complying with health and safety requirements. In addition, workers will have access to corrections to health sheets faster since the administrative burden will be considerably reduced.

As I have already mentioned, this enables industry to access the market more quickly, while complying with the requirement to inform workers of any safety precautions to be taken.

In conclusion, I would simply say, as I have already mentioned, first that Bill S-2 is what was called Bill S-40 during the 38th Parliament. Second, these three amendments to the act have the shared support of industry, unions, the provinces and territories, and government.

I think that this is something good and that the members of this House should support it.

On that note, I conclude my remarks.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to ask a question about an important subject related to workers' rights and safety.

A hazardous material is one that can be about prevention. By having knowledge and the proper information appropriately on display, as well as documented and provided for the workforce, it allows the opportunity for people to be educated about their handling of chemicals. Some chemicals, whether they are mixed or not with others, can be corrosive for hands. As well, other types of mixtures could create odourless gases and significant problems for not only the individual dealing with the chemicals but also other individuals in the area affected.

One of the interesting things the commission found is that since 1988 95% of the data sheets that provide information on dangerous and hazardous materials were not compliant with legislation. I would like to ask my colleague whether this should be a time as well to review the penalty system with regard to the neglect of the existing data system. Workers have a right to have that information in front of them not only in terms of their health but also how hazardous materials affect their families' health. Improper exposure to chemicals can have effects well beyond the individual by bringing it home.

I come from an area that has a lot of environmental toxins. In fact, there was a motion in the House that was narrowly defeated that would have created an action team, so to speak, to go to areas that have higher rates of cancer and other types of diseases related to environmental and human health to start providing remedial action to those communities so they could actually have some solutions to offset it and produce some prevention strategies.

One of the things we can control is the conduct of the data sheets in terms of being up to date and relevant. I ask my colleague whether the penalties should be looked at in terms of being increased because it is completely irresponsible not to have up to date information sheets and to have 95% of them in disrepair is not acceptable and a message has to be sent.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the member from the NDP talks about hardening or making more severe penalties when the three elements of the legislation for which amendments are being proposed in Bill S-2 come as a result of unanimity among the unions that represent the workers, the governments and industry. Obviously these three principal actors, if I can use that word, came to an agreement that these were three elements in the legislation which required amendment and modification in order to better ensure the health and safety of workers who must precisely manipulate hazardous material.

Had the issue of strengthening penalties been discussed, obviously there was no agreement. I am not aware of any discussions on that particular issue. It may be something that one or more of the parties wish to discuss, and they are more than free to do so, but right now I have no indication that the penalties need to be made more severe. What is needed, however, are these three amendments.

The member spoke of 95% of the cases, demande de dérogation, and I apologize that I do not know the term in English.

The data sheets must be updated because the information is incomplete. I have not seen any evidence that the missing information places the health and safety of workers at greater risk. If that were the case, the unions would be in a very good position to lead the fight and they would have asked for more severe penalties.

I leave it to the union representatives to take up that fight.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate on Bill S-2. I have great personal interest in this legislation dealing with the WHMIS, the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System.

In 1988, when I was a journeyman carpenter, WHMIS came into effect and all of us had to be trained on a 40 hour WHMIS course. We were not allowed to go back on the job until we had our WHMIS certification.

Since that time I became the leader of the carpenters' union in Manitoba. It was our job to ensure all of our membership had passed WHMIS. I therefore am very aware of the value of this right to know legislation, which is how we phrase it. WHMIS is the right to know and, flowing from that, the right to refuse unsafe work is the next logical step to the right to know. It is based on the premise that workers have the right to know that the materials they are being asked to handle as an aspect of their job are in fact safe. They also have the right to know if they need to take any safety precautions in terms of a mask or gloves.

However, the workers also has the right to know some of the complex things that my colleague from Windsor West tried to raise in that sometimes there is a perfectly benign chemical or compound and another perfectly benign chemical but when those two are added together they create a third product that can be very hazardous.

The WHMIS data sheets need to be very accurate and they are very complex. Workers need to be well versed to understand the complicated chemical language that is sometimes on these material safety data sheets.

I was shocked to hear my colleague from Windsor West point out something that I had never heard before. He said that roughly 95% of all the material safety data sheets reviewed by the commission had been found to be non-compliant with the legislation. Ninety-five per cent is a pretty appalling figure. Many of these shortcomings, in fact typical violations, they found were not minor in terms of misspelling the name of a chemical or something. Many of the violations included the failure to identify the effects of acute or chronic exposure to a product and the failure to identify that a hazardous ingredient in a product is a known carcinogen. Those are serious shortcomings in the WHMIS data sheet regime as we know it.

However, I take some comfort in the fact that we are addressing this, that Parliament is seized on the issue of workplace safety and health as it pertains to material safety data sheet. I only wish that we could extend that same interest in the rights of workers to know hazardous products to our international activities because what WHMIS is to the Canadian workforce, the Rotterdam Convention is to the international workforce. The United Nations has come together under the auspices of the Rotterdam Convention to identify hazardous products and to require labelling of these products when prior informed consent of the user is deemed to be necessary.

The most graphic illustration of Canada's failure to take into account the long term health effects of foreign workers is asbestos. Canadian asbestos continues to pollute and contaminate most of the free world. The legacy of the contamination from Canadian asbestos is still being realized in places like Europe but it has had the common sense to ban asbestos completely. However, Canada continues to be the third largest producer and exporter of asbestos in the world and we dump it all into developing nations and third world countries because no one else will buy it anymore.

Where the Rotterdam Convention comes in and where this contradiction comes in is that just last week in Geneva, Canada barred the inclusion of asbestos on that list of hazardous materials which would require the PIC, prior informed consent of the user. This is appalling. I personally hang my head in shame that Canada is acting like international globe trotting propagandists for the asbestos industry.

I do not know what we owe the asbestos industry but we are doing the industry a great favour by fighting its battles when we send teams of Department of Justice lawyers half way around the world to Geneva to argue against having asbestos listed as a hazardous material. They are serving some master in the asbestos community and it is beyond reason as far as I am concerned.

The Rotterdam Convention does not even seek to ban asbestos, although I personally believe the world should ban asbestos. The Rotterdam Convention only says that if asbestos is going to be sold and used that it at least should be mandatory that the users at the other end be cautioned that the material is hazardous to their health and safety and that safety precautions should be taken.

Canada opposes that as a nation. For the third time in a row Canada has gone to COPs, the committee of parties that form up the Rotterdam Convention, and we have done more than resist this. We have been an international bully. We have arm twisted. We have used every diplomatic means that we know of to convince other countries to follow our lead and not allow asbestos to be listed.

In the context of debating WHMIS and a workers' right to know, I wish somewhere in Bill S-2 we could require that what we want for ourselves we should extend to our business activities internationally. This is a concept of corporate accountability that was introduced in the last Parliament by the former member for Ottawa Centre, the hon. Ed Broadbent. Ed felt that some of our activities internationally were an embarrassment in terms of labour standards, human rights standards, health and safety standards and environmental standards. He felt that what we do in Canada, where we are guided by certain principles of fairness, of ethics and of a commitment to workplace safety and health, that by extension we should be propagating those principles in the third world and in developing nations because we want to bring them up to those same high standards that we enjoy in this country.

For all those people who think asbestos is banned in this country, I am here to say that asbestos is not banned in this country at all. I used to work in the asbestos mines as a young and foolish man. I can say that they were lying to us about the health hazards of asbestos then and they continue to lie to us about the health hazards of asbestos today.

I call the asbestos industry corporate serial killers. I do not hesitate to do that. The asbestos industry is the tobacco industry's evil twin because both of them have made a fortune in the last century by pushing a product that they know full well kills people and hiding behind fabricated research, tainted research, cover-ups, falsehoods and lies about the health hazard.

It is bad enough that the asbestos industry itself is lying to workers, its own employees, its own industry and to people around the world, but the Government of Canada feels some obligation to be the handmaiden to the asbestos industry and, as I say, to be globe trotting propagandists and spending millions of dollars artificially supporting and subsidizing an industry that is killing millions of people nationally and internationally.

Now that the government has done its dirty work for the asbestos industry in Geneva last week, it will be another two years before we have the chance to get asbestos back on that list. I am concerned that there will not be a Rotterdam Convention in two years when the next biannual meeting is convened because we have seriously jeopardized the integrity of the whole convention by allowing commercial considerations to override the health considerations around which that convention was first established.

Of the 90 countries that were in attendance in Geneva last week, only 8 countries supported Canada's position. The chair of the Rotterdam Convention introduced the subject on day one saying that chrysotile asbestos was a sensitive issue and that there have been difficulties with it before. He suggested that we follow the four point framework to assess the health hazard and to review the science.

Before the chair of the committee could even finish speaking, the Canadian delegation rushed to the microphones and said, “we don't need to waste our time. We move that asbestos not be put on the list”. Because that international institution runs by consensus, everyone has a veto. As soon as Canada set the tone by being rude and ignoring the international diplomatic protocols of courtesy at one of those conferences, that set the tone.

Then all of our customers went to the microphones too because we had twisted their arms: India, Thailand and Senegal. These are countries where we are dumping 220,000 tonnes, not pounds or kilos, per year of Canadian asbestos. It is being dumped into the third world creating a legacy of illness that is of epidemic proportions.

It is not an exaggeration to state that we are exporting misery on an astronomical scale because one single asbestos fibre is a carcinogen. We in Canada rank asbestos as a class A listed carcinogen. One errant asbestos fibre finding its way into the mesothelium of the lungs, heart or internal organs can trigger mesothelioma, the cancer that is caused only by asbestos.

No doubt some people will try to argue that Quebec asbestos is somehow benign, that it is different from other asbestos. The Institut national de santé publique du Québec did a study in 2005 and found that of the people who live in the asbestos region of Quebec, the men have the fourth highest incidence of mesothelioma in the world and the women of that region have the highest incidence of mesothelioma in the world. There is nothing benign about Quebec asbestos.

Quebec asbestos kills the same way that Yukon asbestos kills. I worked in the mines there. Newfoundland asbestos kills because that mine was shut down, too. There is Timmins, Ontario. Everywhere where they mine asbestos they have merchants of death. I can say it in no other way.

The asbestos industry, the tobacco industry's evil twin, continues to pollute the world with a product that should never have taken out of the ground.

As we are debating Bill S-2, which originated in the Senate as the workplace hazardous material information system bill, we should try to contemplate at least that what we wish for ourselves we wish for all. We should contemplate the fact that there is no business case for pushing asbestos.

There is an enormous scientific case for banning asbestos altogether, but we have to ask ourselves, by what convoluted pretzel logic is it in anybody's interest to keep pushing a product that kills people and to keep subsidizing that industry to this degree?

The Asbestos Institute, paid for solely by the federal and provincial governments of Canada and Quebec, pushes asbestos around the world. Our foreign missions and embassies host these trade junkets for them, 120 trade junkets in 60 countries around the world in recent years by the Asbestos Institute trying to find new markets for Canadian asbestos and trying to quell the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that illustrates clearly that asbestos kills.

That is the dual function of the Asbestos Institute, to come up with phony science. It just paid for a research study recently by Dr. David Bernstein. It paid $1 million to add a question mark beside asbestos, so that it can safely say that the scientific community is not unanimous in its condemnation of asbestos. The one scientist who we just bought and paid for clearly has a question about whether Quebec asbestos is good for us or bad for us.

I am here to say that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known and 100,000 deaths a year are directly attributed to asbestos, and hundreds of thousands more are never diagnosed because of the long incubation period. Parts of the world where Quebec asbestos is killing people today do not have the diagnostics and treatment centres that can accurately diagnose that asbestos in fact is killing these people.

There is an additional twist that I have to add to Bill S-2 and the workplace hazardous material information system because there is a mill in Kamloops, British Columbia, that is just about to close. It is owned by Weyerhaeuser. It has developed a product using the cellulose fibre from Douglas fir that is a perfect substitute for asbestos in ferrocement. It has a perfect substitute, but yet it cannot break into the market because the cement pipe manufacturers and the cement building material tile manufacturers all use asbestos from Quebec as the binding agent in their material.

There is a better product that grows in British Columbia. We have all these standing dead forests that are killed by the beetles et cetera, but the Douglas fir byproduct cellulose is the perfect substitute for asbestos in asbestos cement.

We could save that mill in Kamloops, British Columbia, if it could only find a market for the material it is willing produce. Instead, we are inexplicably married to the idea that we have to support asbestos and that Canada has to push asbestos.

I cannot believe the fact that we send teams of Department of Justice lawyers around the world to represent the asbestos industry. I do not know what they have done to deserve that level of public support. I do not know what they have done to deserve that kind of corporate welfare. Here we have corporate welfare for corporate serial killers. Corporate welfare, in any sense, should be condemned. In actual fact, we are aiding and abetting this industry that is knowingly and willingly killing workers.

Thailand is the world's second largest importer of Canadian asbestos. I went to Thailand this summer to speak at a conference of the medical community and the industry about the hazards of Canadian asbestos. I believe we had them convinced. Speaker after speaker from Japan, Australia, the European Union, all those countries that have banned asbestos, stood up and spoke. I think we had the government of Thailand convinced except when one very honest diplomat went to the microphone and apologized. He simply said his country was under enormous pressure internationally to buy Canadian asbestos. It is as if buying Canadian asbestos is tied to other aid, although he did not go that far and suggest that. It seems to me that the Canadian government will stop at nothing to promote this material.

Gary Nash, the assistant deputy minister of Natural Resources Canada, was the founder and first president of the Asbestos Institute.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. The hon. member was in the habit of returning to the subject at hand every once in a while, but he has fallen out of that habit and it has been a long time since he has said anything about Bill S-2. I wonder if the member could remember the rule of relevance.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

You are right, Mr. Speaker. I was taking the long circuitous route to bring me back to my original point which was dealing with workplace health and safety issues. The connection was so plain and so obvious in my mind.

What I am advocating here is an amendment to Bill S-2. I believe there should at least be a reference in Bill S-2 to our international obligations. The type of workplace safety and health conditions put in place in Canada in 1988 are admirable. They are some of the best in the world. There are some hiccups and some problems with the material safety data sheets, but the intent is laudable and honourable.

There is a glaring contradiction though in the fact that we do not extend this beyond our own shores, and as such, we are doing a great disservice to other underdeveloped countries. Part of our overall development aid in recent years has been building the administrative capacity of countries as well as brick and mortar development in terms of digging wells or infrastructure.

With the globalization of capital, one of the things that is terribly lacking is the fact that there has not been a globalization of harmonizing workers' rights. We have globalized the free movement of capital, but we have not globalized things like a commitment to human rights, and a workplace safety and health standard. I wish Bill S-2 dealt with these things.

I think there would be broad interest in the general public's point of view. Canadians would be horrified to learn that we continue to be the third largest producer and exporter of asbestos in the world. Canadians do not realize that asbestos is not banned in this country and we need to caution them about this fact.

Just because we will not let a Canadian be exposed to a single fibre of the stuff does not mean it is banned. It certainly does not mean that we are doing anything to stop pushing this material into underdeveloped countries in the third world.

We have put the Rotterdam Convention in jeopardy. At the same instant that we are debating WHMIS in this country, the international equivalent of WHMIS, the Rotterdam Convention, is near collapse because of the corporate greed of the asbestos industry and Canadian government officials who are handmaidens to that industry. They have put the integrity of the Rotterdam Convention at serious risk. I predict they have jeopardized its very future.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my honourable colleague opposite, the member for Winnipeg Centre, got sidetracked somewhat since Bill S-2 does single out asbestos, and I think he used the bill to talk about the era when he worked in the mines. I agree with him that it was actually dangerous at the time. He is correct, back then it was called long fibre asbestos.

However, the asbestos produced at that time is not the same fibre as the cryolithe being produced today. That is a lie. It is not the same fibre, it is not the same thing, it is not as dangerous and does not even come close to posing the same risks.

My colleague stated that he was a carpenter, and so was I. I imagine that we worked at similar workplaces. At the time, we knew very well what it involved.

He stated that asbestos was extremely dangerous. It was a hazard for the workers, for those who mined it and those who carried out renovations. This fibre remains dangerous. However, it was never dangerous when properly installed in walls, around beams or when properly contained or hardened.

Asbestos cannot be readily replaced in high temperature areas. Contrary to what my colleague stated, it cannot be replaced with cellulose, which can be used as insulation but not for anything else.

I would like to ask my colleague for Winnipeg Centre why he did not once mention cryolithe?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, chrysotile asbestos kills in the same way that all types of asbestos kill.

The mine that I worked at mined chrysotile asbestos, long-fibre chrysotile asbestos. That is the same material that is currently being mined in Thetford Mines, in the Jeffrey mine and the LAB Chrysotile mine. Both mines were recently bought by Warren Buffet, I should point out.

We are really putting Canadian workers at risk in these mines to make foreign capitalists rich. We are exploiting Canadian workers in these dangerous workplace conditions. I pointed out that the incidence of asbestosis and mesothelioma is among the highest in the world in the Asbestos region of Quebec. No one can ever tell me that chrysotile asbestos is in some way benign or in some way healthy because chrysotile asbestos causes cancer the same way all asbestos do. There are five different kinds. Chrysotile is deadly.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a funny thing happened to me on the way to S-2. That was the member's speech. However, we should probably give him some credit for being so tenacious on this issue that he feels very strongly about. It does raise a question though.

In Bill S-2, when the chief screening officer has to make some changes, the bill prescribes that they have to be gazetted. I would suspect, if we asked the 308 members of the House whether or not they have ever scanned the Gazette and followed it to see what was in there, there is a very high proportion of members who have not even had a look at the Gazette. It is a formality of sorts. However, the question really becomes: How does this link in to the health and well-being of Canadians?

I must admit, other than asbestos, that I was thinking of the recent study and report that on farms the likelihood of women developing breast cancer is significantly higher than women who are not in agricultural sites. Perhaps, here is yet another example that hearkens home to a lot of members about the importance of this information when it comes up.

I wonder if the member has any thoughts about how this process of having this hazardous materials information review act in place which gazettes information, whether or not the rubber really hits the road in terms of making sure that all of that gets down to ordinary Canadians, would ensure that Canadians are also made aware of the health risks associated with certain chemicals and other dangerous materials.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member's helpful question gives me the opportunity to point out that the proposed amendments in Bill S-2 will permit the voluntary correction of material safety data sheets and product labels when the commission finds them to be non-compliant. We can save that burdensome step.

At present, the commission must make formal correction orders even if the manufacturer or the person distributing whatever material claims it is fully prepared to make voluntary corrections. Therefore, there is some room for optimism that we can benefit the situation in workplaces around the country if it is not such an onerous task to make orders to correct deficient workplace safety and health data sheets.

One of the figures my colleague, the member for Windsor West, pointed out, which we should all be well aware of or take note of and be concerned about, is that 95% of those data sheets examined by the commission were found to be non-compliant and not just in immaterial ways. On average eight or nine errors were in those sheets examined. Therefore, clearly the WHMIS regime in the country is sorely lacking and it needs correction.

I hope I did not overstay my welcome by arguing about asbestos, but I would like to see the material safety data sheet on Quebec asbestos, on chrysotile asbestos. That safety data sheet would say that there is no safe level of asbestos, that we should not handle the product and that our wives and children should not be exposed to it because it will kill them. This would be the only fair WHMIS data sheet on asbestos that we could put because there is no safe level of asbestos. There is no control or safe use of asbestos. Exposure to one single fibre can and in many cases has caused life threatening disease.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre on not only his work on asbestos but also on Zonolite. We are talking about the right to know, not only for workers and consumers, but also about our ability to have an opportunity to know the product and its effect upon us and the environment. That is what the member for Winnipeg Centre is talking about in his crusade on asbestos and on other issues around human health. The prevention aspect is not only good for human health, but it also saves the economy and significantly affects planning issues for the environment in the future.

The House has had the opportunity to act on these issues in the past. The subamendment to my motion on environmental contaminants and human health passed through this chamber. Then some Alliance members and Liberal members switched their position and killed it.

Similarly, we had another tragedy recently when the Bloc voted against banning pesticides. This is amazing because Quebec has some progressive laws on pesticide use and they could have been applied across the country. However, I guess children across our country are less important if they are not in Quebec. There is no reason that should not have passed in this chamber. It was a solid legislation and it would have had real results.

How can we use the data sheets to the fullest extent to ensure that prevention will be at the forefront so people can make educated decisions about the use of the product in their workplace and also have their rights respected?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, asbestos is the single greatest industrial killer the world has ever known. There is no safe level of asbestos exposure and no material safety data sheet will protect us if we are exposed to it. Asbestos kills. It should be banned globally. At the very least, the Government of Canada should stop being a globe trotting propagandist for the asbestos industry and it should stop handing out corporate welfare to corporate serial killers.