Mr. Speaker, last Monday, I asked the Prime Minister about his visit to France on January 22 and 23.
In my first question, which was very straightforward, I asked the Prime Minister to tell the House about the outcome of his representations with his counterpart, Alain Juppé, concerning the safe use of asbestos. By way of an answer, the Prime Minister merely pointed to some facts known to everyone, namely, the announcement during a press conference of France's refusal to reconsider its position on the asbestos issue.
In a supplementary question, following the answer given by the Prime Minister, that I considered totally inadequate, I asked for a simple explanation about the Liberal government's stubborn refusal to go to arbitration before the WTO.
As early as last December, I had raised this alternative with the minister of international trade and the Prime Minister. Almost three months later, the government is starting to examine the issue more seriously. I was hoping the Prime Minister, despite his inability to adequately manage this crisis, which goes way beyond the trade dimension, could have given at least one good news to the asbestos people. On the contrary, the Prime Minister seems to lose
total interest in the issue and only gives vague interpretations of our regional realities.
I would like to know the underlying reasons behind the Liberal government's refusal to take serious steps to make France respect its commitments to the WTO and the OTI. France is violating a significant trade commitment based on a single report, the scientific bias of which seems basically flawed.
In fact, this past January, the Royal Society of Canada made public its analysis of the INSERM report which clearly demonstrated that the basic premises of the French specialists no longer reflected the current reality of asbestos handling methods and the safety aspects.
The Liberal government is unwittingly losing all of the opportunities available to it to preserve more than 2,000 jobs in such a vital sector of our economy. What could the underlying motivations of the cabinet possibly be to explain this chronic hesitancy to draft a concrete action strategy to deal with the French government?
During the 80's, Canada dared confront the US on the same questions. Today, it refuses to get involved in a process which could enable the asbestos industry to gain some exemptions from the French decision.
The Bloc Quebecois has been calling, ever since this crisis began, for a structured intervention from the Liberals. We are still waiting for even the foundation of such a structure. The government, and the Prime Minister and his minister of international trade in particular, are settling for saying over and over that negotiations are under way. The people in the asbestos mining region are concerned, and the government's shilly-shallying is not enough for them.
I am therefore making a formal request to the government to initiate as quickly as possible a procedure to contest France's ban on asbestos before the World Trade Organization.
If the asbestos mines were located anywhere but Quebec, would the response have been as vigourous as the government's response, past and present, to defend Sherritt's interests in Cuba in relation to the ban under Helms-Burton?