Thank you, Mr. Benoit.
Minister, asbestos, as you know, is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known. More Canadians now die from asbestos than all other industrial and occupational-related diseases combined. In fact, 60% of all occupational deaths in Canada are caused by asbestos. The figure is much higher in your own province of Quebec, where it is as much as 80% of all the industrial deaths. Yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world, dumping nearly 200,000 tonnes per year exclusively into underdeveloped and third world countries, where there are no health and safety protocols whatsoever for the use of asbestos.
When you were the Minister of Public Works, you authorized the spending of millions of dollars to remove all the asbestos from the parliament buildings, because no MP should be exposed to a single fibre of asbestos. Yet now, as the Minister of Natural Resources, your government is spending millions of dollars subsidizing and promoting asbestos all over the world. A direct subsidy in these estimates that we will be studying today is to the Chrysotile Institute--a bunch of charlatans, I have no hesitation in saying. They are probably the only lobbying group in the country paid for by the federal government to lobby the federal government about asbestos. It's corporate welfare for corporate serial killers, which is what I call it, Mr. Minister.
You have seen the letter from the Université Laval, signed by six prominent Quebec scientists, urging you--begging you--to stop your boosterism of the asbestos industry and to stop funding the Asbestos Institute.
You have seen a letter to the Government of Canada, signed by 120 scientists from 28 different countries around the world--