I don't think my colleague has a point of order, but I don't mind his question. As clarification, what I meant was that the trade commissioners who I spoke to shook their heads in regret that this is what they're asked to do, knowing full well in their own conscience that it's wrong. But they dutifully follow the direction of their employer, the ambassador of the country, to promote.
The Chrysotile Institute has fallen into disrepute partly because they're led by this thug named Mr. Godbout, a former head of the Quebec Federation of Labour. We call him, in the labour movement, a traitor to the working class for now showing no solidarity with the international workers of the world—in fact, putting workers of the world at risk by promoting this deadly toxin. The Chrysotile Institute calls the Quebec National Institute of Public Health “a little gang of Taliban”, “le petit gang de Taliban” de l'Institut national de la santé publique. Now that's an offensive comment by any standards, but when Clément Godbout and Bernard Coulombe are threatened by scientific evidence that puts the lie to their evidence, they accuse the Quebec National Institute of Public Health of being “le petit gang de Taliban”. I wish I could ask the minister if he agreed with berating public servants of Quebec in this fashion, but I find it offensive. But it is typical. It paints a picture. It's illustrative of the tone and the content of the material that this sham of an organization is out there promoting.
I pointed out, Mr. Speaker, that I myself worked in the asbestos mines in the Yukon Territory, and I should point out that the asbestos mines in the Yukon closed due to normal market forces, because nobody would buy this poison any more. The mines in B.C., in Ontario, and in Newfoundland all closed because the market was allowed to play itself out. The mines in Quebec are artificially supported because there's this bizarre, irrational affinity for asbestos in Quebec. It's tied to some nationalist pride or something, and it's subsidized aggressively and heavily, artificially. So we're exporting human misery, and supporting it by the taxpayer, because the legacy that we're exporting into these developing nations is horrific. We're spending tens of millions of dollars to remove every scrap of asbestos from the Parliament Buildings because asbestos is so hazardous that no MP should ever be exposed to a single fibre. That's the reasoning. Yet somehow, at the height of hypocrisy, we justify exporting hundreds of thousands of tonnes to developing nations and creating the exact same set of circumstances in those countries that we have to remediate in this country. Remediation of asbestos is one of the largest unfunded liabilities that this country faces.
The final point I would like to make before I yield the floor is that I sit on the government operations committee with my colleague Madam Hall Findlay. We're just about to enter a study into the government's latest announcement that they're going to freeze the budget of every government department right across the board. We're going to look at, in our committee, some of the difficulties that might cause. How do we justify giving a quarter of a million dollars to a lobby group on a frozen departmental budget? How do we rationalize this? It's not only morally and ethically reprehensible because of what they do; it's also not sound fiscal management to give corporate welfare out at a time when the rest of us are asked to tighten our belts. In the interest of fiscal prudence and probity, this committee should be deciding whether or not these estimates should stand the way they are or if we have enough spare cash to give Clément Godbout and his gang of thugs enough money to tour the world like a bunch of globe-trotting propagandists for a known carcinogen. The Canadian Department of Health lists chrysotile asbestos as a class A carcinogen, not just a risk.
The minister says, “Well, it won't bother you as long as you leave it alone in the attic of this building.” That's like saying land mines are safe unless you step on them. Sooner or later, somebody is going to disturb that material and it's going to be fluttering around--and there is no safe level of asbestos.
The last thing I would point out is that when I opened my remarks by saying that asbestos is the greatest industrial hazard the world has ever known and that 60% of all the occupational deaths in Canada are due to asbestos, that figure is 80% in the province of Quebec, because for some reason the province of Quebec allows a threshold limit value of exposure 100 times greater than the rest of the world. Everybody else says .01 fibres per cubic centimetre is an acceptable limit, although actually there is no acceptable limit. In Quebec, it is one fibre per cubic centimetre, 100 times greater tolerance.
There's an irrationality associated with our treatment of Quebec. I agree with Keith Spicer, the Canadian journalist who calls Canada's asbestos policy not only irrational but morally and ethically reprehensible.
We have an opportunity at this point in time to express our revulsion, or my revulsion and perhaps your dissatisfaction, at this irresponsible waste of money encouraging and propagating the damage that asbestos causes around the world by the simple gesture of—