Mr. Chairman, you heard some of the arguments in favour of this motion when I was questioning the minister, so I won't be repetitious, but I would like to clarify a couple of the points the minister made in his speech that I didn't have time to address.
First of all, the minister implied that asbestos is banned in this country. Asbestos is not banned in this country. In fact, there's an active policy to use more asbestos in Canadian public works, etc.
I'd also like to point out that the minister suggested there was ample scientific evidence for a safe use policy for asbestos. I think it should go on the record, and for the information of members here, that there is one study that says asbestos can and should be used safely in this country and abroad. That was a study paid for by the Asbestos Institute at a cost of $1 million to one scientist named David Bernstein. He has no peer review. There's not a single scientist in the world who agrees with him.
In contrast, I've circulated to members of the committee a letter. It was addressed to Premier Charest, but the same letter went to Prime Minister Harper on January 28, 2010. The letter states that 120 scientists from 28 different countries, including Canada, including the Province of Quebec, say just the opposite. If I could read the opening paragraph, it says:
As scientists from twenty-eight countries, dedicated to protecting public health, we appeal to you to respect the overwhelmingly consistent body of scientific evidence and the considered judgment of the World Health Organization (WHO) that all forms of asbestos have been shown to be deadly and that safe use of any form of asbestos has proven impossible anywhere in the world.
Again, I've circulated that for people to look at.
I'd like to also draw attention to another piece of paper I've circulated, which is a letter dated today from the Canadian Cancer Society to you, Chair, Mr. Benoit.
Again, I will read it. It's dated March 17, 2010:
It is our great disappointment that we are having to write to you again this year to express our dismay in the fact that the federal budget allocates $250,000 to support the Chrysotile Institute. Chrysotile, like all forms of asbestos, is known to cause cancer.
The Canadian Cancer Society has officially joined the global ban on asbestos movement, even though the Government of Canada has not. The entire European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa—virtually all the developed world—has banned asbestos in all of its forms, yet Canada continues to be one of the leading exporters of asbestos in the world, at roughly 200,000 tonnes per year, dumped into largely India and other developing third world countries.
Another document I'd like to draw attention to, and I've circulated it in both languages, is a letter to Prime Minister Harper. The principal signatories work at Laval University: Dr. Fernand Turcotte, professor emeritus in public health at Laval University from the Faculty of Medicine, and Dr. Pierre Auger, professor of preventive medicine at Laval University. But it's also signed by Dr. Colin Soskolne from the University of Alberta, Dr. John Last from the University of Ottawa, Dr. Tim Takaro from Simon Fraser University, and Dr. Murray Finkelstein from Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. They urge the Prime Minister, and by extension the government....
We are profoundly disturbed that your government plans to continue to fund the Chrysotile Institute in the new federal budget. It is our view as Canadian experts in epidemiology and occupational medicine and as public health advocates that the Chrysotile Institute is endangering public health by disseminating misleading and untruthful information about chrysotile asbestos, especially in the world's emerging economies.
These experts are appealing to this committee to take away this direct support for the Chrysotile Institute. We should say, as a side note, that this won't stop the Chrysotile Institute from operating, because they get tonnes of soft support from the government, as well as the direct federal subsidy. They are paid to go around the world on 160 different trade junkets in 60 different countries, according to their website, using Canadian embassies to push asbestos, through our trade commissioners.
I've travelled with you internationally, Mr. Benoit, to Indonesia and Vietnam, two of our largest customers, and I've spoken to the trade commissioners in those foreign embassies, with you present, about their policy to push asbestos. They shake their heads, but they dutifully follow the direction of this government to find new markets and push more asbestos.
In many ways, committee members should be conscious of the fact that the asbestos industry is sort of like the tobacco industry's evil twin, in that in the final days, the twilight days, of the tobacco industry, they survive by junk science and aggressive lobbying. The lobbying, in this case, is done by the Chrysotile Institute, subsidized by the federal taxpayer.