Natural Resources Committee on April 28th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I actually appreciate you bringing that up.

Okay, shall we go to vote 1?

NATURAL RESOURCES

Department

Operating Expenditures

Vote 1--Operating expenditures..........$700,338,000

Shall vote 1, in the amount of $700,338,176, less the amount of $175,084,544 granted in interim supply, carry?

(Vote 1 agreed to)

Shall vote 5 carry?

Mr. Martin.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'd like to move a motion regarding vote 5:

That vote 5, in the amount of $456,953,000, less the amount of $114,238,250 granted in Interim Supply, be reduced by $250,000 to $342,464,750.

I'd like to speak to the motion if you find it in order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Okay. We had that sent to us in advance, which I appreciate, Mr. Martin.

Is there any discussion on this motion to reduce? It is in order.

Mr. Martin, you want to make some comments.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes, please. I would like to introduce and explain the motivation for this.

You'll notice that the flags are flying at half-mast over Parliament Hill today. April 28 is the day of mourning for injured and fallen workers in this country. It's one of the few days that we lower the flags to half-mast.

More people die from asbestos than from all other occupational illnesses or diseases combined. It's not just the highest; all others combined don't add up to the number of people who now die in Canada due to asbestos. Those figures are even worse in the province of Quebec. Fully 80% of all the people who die from occupational- or industrial-related disease or illness in Quebec now die from the asbestos mined in that province.

I used to work in the asbestos mines. I have a personal interest in this--I should be forthright. I abhor the asbestos industry. It's the tobacco industry's evil twin, in many ways. For over a century both have profited enormously from selling products they've known full well kill people. They do so through tainted research--and this is the point I'm getting to with the Chrysotile Institute--phoney science, and intense political lobbying. That triumvirate of influences has kept the tobacco industry and the asbestos industry killing people much longer than they should have. If I had more time I could take us back to the 1920s and 1930s for research documents indicating that all asbestos kills.

I call this money for the Asbestos Institute--it's called the Asbestos Institute in the estimates, even though in recent years it changed its name to the Chrysotile Institute to try to take the stink off asbestos--corporate welfare for corporate serial killers, because in actual fact it is a corporate handout. You might think $250,000 is not much, but it's only an iota, a fraction, of what the asbestos industry actually receives from the Government of Canada in hard and soft money to not only continue mining in this country, but to export all around the world.

Most people think asbestos is banned in Canada. Nothing could be further from the truth. But it's so harmful and such a carcinogen that no MP should be exposed to a single fibre of it. So we're spending tens of millions of dollars to remove all the asbestos from the Parliament buildings, while at the same time we're exporting 200,000 tonnes per year to third world countries. We can only sell it to developing nations and third world countries because the European Union, Australia, Japan, and almost the entire developed world has banned asbestos in all its forms.

I draw your attention to a letter that was sent to you, Mr. Chairman, today, April 28, 2009, from the Canadian Cancer Society. You may not have seen it, to be fair, because I received it about two o'clock today. It says:

We are writing to you to express our dismay in the fact that this year's Federal budget allocates $250,000 of federal money to the support of the Chrysotile Institute. We are requesting that the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources formally address this issue before the approval of budget estimates.

There are only two more paragraphs, if you'll indulge me, Mr. Chairman:

Chrysotile, like all forms of asbestos, is known to cause cancer. The carcinogenicity of all forms of asbestos has been confirmed by both the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Toxicology Program in the US. The toxicity of this substance has also recently been re-affirmed by a panel of expert scientists convened by Health Canada in 2008.

The report was just released a few days ago through an access to information request.

It goes on to say:

We are disappointed in the Federal government's continued support of the Chrysotile Institute and are asking the Standing Committee on Natural Resources to recommend that this funding be redirected towards the adoption of a comprehensive strategy to address all aspects of the asbestos issue, including:

It goes through a number of recommendations to deal with the pandemic we've created of asbestos-related disease.

I draw your attention also, Mr. Chairman, to a letter sent to Mr. Alan Tonks, Mr. Bains, and Mr. Regan from the British Columbia and Yukon Territory Building and Construction Trades Council. They will have received these letters in their offices because they were sent April 24.

I used to belong to the Building and Construction Trades Council because I was the head of the carpenters' union, Mr. Chair. There were fourteen members of the Building and Construction Trades Council for the fourteen building trade unions. Three of the fourteen died of asbestos-related disease: the insulator, the painter, and the boiler maker. This construction trades council says:

I write to urge your support for an amendment to remove $250,000 for the Asbestos Institute from Ministry Estimates. I understand [they are to appear] on April 28th or 30th next week.

Last week Health Canada finally released the findings of the expert panel to study the risks of cancer from asbestos. The suppressed report concluded that “there is a strong relationship of exposure [to asbestos] with lung cancer.”

We look to your leadership to stand up for what is right. I urge you to add your voice and...stop funding the industry lobby promoting the export of this dangerous carcinogen.

On behalf of workers and their families that continue to suffer disease and death caused by asbestos I urge your support for the amendment to remove the amount allocated to the Asbestos Institute.

It's signed Wayne Peppard, executive director of the B.C. Building and Construction Trades Council.

I also very briefly, Mr. Chairman, draw your attention to an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, published on October 21, 2008. It's rare to have the Canadian Medical Association speak in such plain, direct language. They use an abundance of caution because they know the impact, the weight, given to peer-tested.... They're all peer-reviewed articles published in that journal. It says here:

Canada is more than just a major asbestos exporter. To keep the export industry alive, it has become an avid asbestos cheerleader. Ottawa has poured more than $19 million into the Chrysotile Institute, an advocacy group formerly called the Asbestos Institute before that name became unfashionable. Along with funds from the Government of Quebec, the institute is dedicated to promoting the safe-use canard and defending the beleaguered mineral from its critics.

I would be able to table any of these articles. What they're pointing out to us is that there is only one agency essentially in the developed world that believes there can be safe use of asbestos, and that is the Chrysotile Institute--and the Government of Canada. This is based on one research paper by one discredited scientist in the employ of the Chrysotile Institute, who maintains not only that there can be safe uses of chrysotile, but he actually maintains that chrysotile is good for you because it triggers the immune system. If you take it into your body, your body is so eager to get it out, that it's like exercising a muscle, flexing your immune system to expel it. That's how crazy this is, Mr. Chairman, but that is the only source. He's not peer-reviewed. There's never been a peer who agreed with David Bernstein.

We do have a list, Mr. Chairman, of 150 doctors, researchers, and scientists who belong to the Collegium Ramazzini, the academic society dedicated to the prevention of occupational diseases, in Rome, Italy. Some 150 PhDs, doctors, scientists, and researchers say chrysotile kills and there is no safe level of exposure and there is no safe use. One discredited charlatan, David Bernstein, says there is a question mark and there is a possibility chrysotile can be used safely.

If I could also draw your attention, Mr. Chair, to the lead editorial in today's Times Colonist newspaper in Victoria, British Columbia. “End asbestos support now” is the heading on page A10. It states:

The federal government's inexplicable support of the chrysotile asbestos industry is an appalling example of pandering for votes in the face of scientific proof of the substance's health hazards. Ottawa should recognize the dangers posed by the substance and immediately end its export.

It goes on to point out, Mr. Chair, that the federal government supports the industry with a quarter-million-dollar annual payout to the Chrysotile Institute, an industry-backed group led by Clément Godbout, a former president of the Quebec Federation of Labour.

I'm a former labour leader myself. I know Clément Godbout. He's a traitor to the working class. He's abandoned the best interests of working people and he's gone to work for the dark side, going to peddle something that he knows full well kills workers in this country and elsewhere.

The asbestos mines where I worked in the Yukon territory closed through normal market forces because nobody would buy this stuff any more. The asbestos mines in Timmins, Ontario, and Newfoundland and everywhere else in the country closed through normal market forces. The mines in Quebec are kept open inexplicably in the face of all reason and logic.

It goes on to say that:

The institute's website claims chrysotile asbestos can be used safely and that it only sells to manufacturers who comply, or have committed to comply, with national safety regulations. It ignores the fact that developing countries are the least likely to have, much less enforce, national safety regulations. In reality, we are exporting disease and death.

This is not rhetoric by me. This is the Times Colonist newspaper.

Mr. Chair, in the next few weeks you're going to see a CBC national news documentary by Melissa Fung. She has just come back from India, filming the use of Canadian asbestos in conditions that we know are the norm. People with no health and safety protocols whatsoever are handling Canadian asbestos with their bare hands and tossing it with fibres to create the textiles they use it for. The article continues:

But no recent government has been willing to be the one to shut down the asbestos industry and lose support in vital Quebec ridings--successive Liberal and Conservative governments have continued to fund the institute.

That support has to stop, as do our deadly exports of chrysotile. These practices have tarnished Canada's reputation on the world stage, with no gains except profits for a fading industry.

Better the industry die than one more worker abroad. Ottawa should act immediately.

Mr. Chair, I also draw your attention to a media release dated April 28, 2009, from the Canadian Auto Workers. The CAW calls on the Canadian government to stop the chrysotile funding, the asbestos Chrysotile Institute. I don't want to repeat myself, so I'll simply point that out.

There's also a news article associated with the editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that deals largely with the Chrysotile Institute's role in not only promoting the sale of asbestos with the Government of Canada, but undermining the efforts of other countries to curb its use.

This was the truly shocking thing, Mr. Chair. When the Government of Korea and the Government of Thailand wanted to put warning signs on bales of Canadian asbestos, Canada went to the WTO to stop them from putting the skull and crossbones or any warning labels about caution on that product because they said, “This product is not even listed on the Rotterdam Convention.” That's the United Nations list of harmful, hazardous materials. The reason asbestos is not listed in the list of hazardous chemicals in the Rotterdam Convention is because year after year after year Clément Godbout and the Chrysotile Institute go there and sabotage the Rotterdam Convention. I've been there. I've seen how they work the room and twist the arms of small countries. The Rotterdam Convention operates on consensus. All it takes is one country to say nay and that hazardous material does not go on the list of hazardous chemicals.

This is appalling, in my view, Mr. Chair. The Chrysotile Institute, on their own website, says that they've had trade junkets promoting Canadian asbestos, 160 different junkets in 60 different countries at Canadian embassies. So our trade commissioners and our Canadian foreign embassies are globe-trotting propagandists for the asbestos industry.

There is no other Canadian commodity that has enjoyed that level of promotion, not softwood lumber, not Canadian wheat. No commodity gets pandered to like asbestos. There's nothing even close—160 trade junkets in 60 different countries. It's inexplicable and it's embarrassing, Mr. Chairman.

I also draw your attention to 24—I will table this—editorials in 24 different newspapers in the last 12 months calling for Canada to end its shameful record of pushing asbestos and dumping it into the third world. Here are just the headlines alone: “Medical journals rip exporting of asbestos; Ottawa accused of 'suppressing' danger report”; chrysotile asbestos, “Canada's double standard”, from a Globe and Mail editorial; “Feds hiding dangers, experts say” of the government-funded panel; “Medical journal urges export ban, decries 'death-dealing charade'”, of Canada's asbestos policy, from the Montreal Gazette, front page, A1.

“Death by Canada”, by Keith Spicer from Paris, France, was published on page A12 of the Ottawa Citizen. This has to do with France, you see. When France wanted to ban asbestos, Canada went to the WTO and fought them saying they can't ban asbestos because it would interfere with our ability to trade. I know the lawyer who represented France. Fortunately, France won and Canada lost, so the people of France are asbestos-free. They're simply left with the legacy of trying to clean up the mess that a century of asbestos use caused.

The Ottawa Citizen, April 21, “Immoral Exports”, reads:

For too long the federal government, to its shame, has denied and avoided evidence about the dangers of chrysotile asbestos, a product that Canada mines and exports around the world.

Much of what this says would be repetitious if I read it, but I put it on the record because I would like to table that as evidence for this initiative.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Martin, how much more information do you have? I hear the repetition in your message, and I'm just wondering how much longer you're going to go on here. We could get to a vote on this any time, if you're ready.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'd say less than five minutes, if that's all right, Mr. Chairman. I find it very hard not to be repetitious.

Perhaps I could explain the impact on developing nations in the third world or how Canada's reputation is being sullied by our export of asbestos to developing nations. One scientist at the recent round of the Rotterdam Convention, which I attended in Rome, said that Canada is unleashing the equivalent of 1,000 Bhopals into India every year. Our largest customer is now India, into which we're dumping our asbestos. The impact in the number of people affected is like 1,000 of the Bhopal chemical disasters every year going off in slow motion. That's what he said. I think we should be aware of that.

Mr. Chairman, just let me summarize by saying that we are exporting human misery on a monumental scale. It would be an enormous symbolic gesture if this committee--even if it has no authority to ban the use of asbestos or to even comment on whether or not asbestos should be mined in this country--sent a very strong message that it will not tolerate corporate welfare for an organization that is doing so much harm and so little good for Canada.

Even if you don't care about the asbestos issue, there is the notion of handouts, which are $19 million according to one article. I can prove more. A Montreal Star article from the 1980s announced $32 million, and the heading was “To take the stink off the asbestos industry”. So even in the mid-1980s they knew that world opinion had finally turned on the use of asbestos, and Canada started shovelling money into that region of Quebec to try to salvage that industry. It's simply wrong on every level.

India's asbestos time bomb cites the hazard that we're creating with every boatload of asbestos that goes over there, tied to our international trade and tied to our foreign aid. It is an appalling prospect that the beneficiaries of Canada's foreign aid often get cash and a boatload of asbestos as part of the aid sent over to their countries. We are killing the future with asbestos use in Asia. These are bags of Canadian white asbestos from the LAB Chrysotile company, mined in the Thetford Mines region of Quebec. If you can see, that's a more typical example of the way asbestos is handled in that country.

The last thing I'll say is that chrysotile asbestos is hazardous to humans and deadly to the Rotterdam Convention. In our undermining of the consensus process of the Rotterdam Convention, we have put in jeopardy the success of that convention altogether, because we've let commercial and political interests override science in naming which chemicals should be on that list. It's an appalling thing for a country like Canada. Canada is at risk of losing its Boy Scout image in the world because of this promotion of asbestos. The asbestos cartel, truly the face of evil, dines out on Canada's good name by saying that if a nice country like Canada thinks asbestos is okay, then it must be okay. I put it to you that it's not, and I urge this committee to send a message to the government of the day by withholding and withdrawing the funding to the Asbestos Institute in this small but important symbolic gesture.

I urge your support of the motion to remove $250,000 from vote 5.

That's all. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

Is there any further discussion on Mr. Martin's motion to reduce vote 5? Seeing none, we'll go to the question.

(Motion negatived)

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

So we move back to vote 5.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I have a point of order. Is it possible to have that vote recorded?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We've taken the vote, Mr. Martin. That would have to be asked for before we take the vote.

We'll now go to the original vote 5, unamended.

NATURAL RESOURCES

Department

Vote 5--Grants and contributions..........$456,953,000

(Vote 5 agreed to on division)

Shall votes 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 carry?

NATURAL RESOURCES

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited

Vote 10--Payments to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited for operating and capital expenditures..........$108,691,000

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

Vote 15--Program expenditures..........$40,670,000

Cape Breton Development Corporation

Vote 20--Payments to the Cape Breton Development Corporation for operating and capital expenditures..........$73,484,000

National Energy Board

Vote 25--Program expenditures..........$39,355,000

Northern Pipeline Agency

Vote 30--Program expenditures..........$244,000

(Votes 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 inclusive agreed to)

Shall votes 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 inclusive under Natural Resources be reported to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

The only other issue that I know of before the committee today is on the discussion of maybe not carrying forward with Thursday's meeting because the Liberals have their convention starting Wednesday, I understand, in Vancouver. There has been some suggestion that the meeting be moved to immediately follow the passing of the report on the sustainable energy integrated energy systems.

Is there agreement to do that?

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I just want to understand your proposal. Would we just carry that meeting over and have it on another day, or is the meeting essentially lost, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We carry it forward and have it as the first meeting following the completion of our debate and passing of the report on integrated energy systems.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I would like to get a sense of things. Sometime within the next two weeks, will that meeting be made back up?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

It could be longer than that, depending on how many meetings we have to discuss the draft report.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It's for our Liberal colleagues to allow them to go and have this leadership race in Vancouver. Is that what's going on? It's a strange kind of thing to have a race with only one person in it, but I suppose they have to gather and we have to move our meetings and accommodate a one-person race. I suppose we are good enough to do it. I don't know how the other members of the committee feel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Is there agreement?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I see agreement. Thank you very much.

Yes, Mr. Tonks.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Chair, as I had indicated to you before, there was a rather large article in the SundayStar this last weekend on integrated energy systems. It talked about some of the points that I was trying to raise when we had the witnesses. It's entitled “Last Chance for Weston, Toronto's Rustbelt”, and it's about the great Canadian industries from my area that have moved out of this one particular 65-acre brownfields parcel. Its talking about the history in transportation and so on through the rail, changes in the demographics of the area, and the economy. It's talking about integrated energy systems with respect to replacing those kinds of old manufacturing jobs with the new green economy and so on.

I'd like to refer this to research. I know we're putting our report together, and the research can extract, if applicable, any parts of the article.

They tried to make the point that this should be part of a national, provincial, and local strategy right across the country and that we should be developing these systems with funding mechanisms and so on. I'm not arguing that case right now; I'm just asking if research can take it.

If members are interested in reading the article, it's rather interesting in terms of bringing together some of the themes that we listened to from the witnesses. It brings them together in one article.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

All right. I think that's been agreed to under those conditions.

Seeing no further business, I wish you all the very best at your convention over the weekend.

The meeting is adjourned.