Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity to speak to the motion. I put forward a notice of motion that the NDP intended to oppose this budget line in the main estimates process for the simple reason that, within the context of this pile of money the minister was talking about, is the budget for the Chrysotile Institute. It used to be known as the Asbestos Institute. I for one will not vote for anything that puts money into the asbestos industry in this country.
I call the money the government keeps shovelling to the asbestos industry corporate welfare for corporate serial killers. I worked in the asbestos mines as a young man. I feel strongly that they were lying to us about the health hazard of asbestos then, just as they are lying about it to this day.
The fact is, asbestos kills. It is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known. Even though the industry tries to change the name and have everyone believe that the asbestos mined in Quebec is somehow less hazardous or more benign, so to speak, it is not. Chrysotile asbestos causes asbestosis, mesothelioma and all the terrible health hazards that we know asbestos causes.
The fact is most Canadians believe we have banned asbestos. The mine that I worked in closed due to natural market forces. Nobody in the developed world was buying this killer any more. Most of the world is banning asbestos in all of its forms. The entire European Union has banned asbestos in all its forms, as well as Japan, Australia, South Africa. Most developed nations have come to their senses and banned asbestos.
I hang my head in shame to say that Canada is still one of the world's largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world. It varies from second to third from year to year, but I believe it is currently the second largest in the world. The Canadian government is acting like globe-trotting propagandists in supporting the asbestos industry and helping to dump it into unsuspecting underdeveloped nations where there is little or no health and safety legislation.
To me it is morally and ethically reprehensible that the Government of Canada is spending money in the budget of the Minister of Natural Resources to promote the asbestos industry abroad, in both hard and soft money. Even though the budget line seems relatively small on the direct money the government is giving to the asbestos industry, the soft money is enormous because it sends teams of lawyers all over the world to stop other countries from banning asbestos. It in fact uses our foreign embassies as places to hold trade shows to promote asbestos in underdeveloped and third world countries.
My colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay, calls the asbestos industry the tobacco industry's evil twin and there is good reason for that. Both of these industries have made a fortune selling a product that they know full well kills people. Both have taken part in a wholesale fraud based on phony science, misrepresentation and have promoted their product in this way.
I am sorry the minister is not present to hear this, but part of the problem is there is a rat in the woodpile in the minister's office. His assistant deputy minister, Mr. Gary Nash, is the founder and first CEO of the Asbestos Institute. He is an asbestos apologist. He is a corporate stooge for the asbestos industry. He has weaseled his way into the minister's office and writes the papers which brief the minister on asbestos.
I am here to say that there is no safe level of asbestos exposure. I do not care if it is mined in Quebec. Quebec asbestos kills just like all other asbestos kills. It is just that Quebeckers have been subjected to misinformation to the point where they somehow believe their own propaganda. This is the real shame.
The clinic in Thetford Mines served all five of the active mines. In the 1970s it was found to not be telling victims of asbestos when it would diagnose miners with asbestosis or mesothelioma. Because there is no treatment and it is a death sentence, it would not tell miners so they would keep working. When the clinic was challenged on this, it said that it was out of kindness, that it did not want to alarm the family. It was better to let the guy keep working until he dropped than alarm his family that he was sick.
The horror of asbestosis and mesothelioma is the latency period is cruelly long and the effects are devastating.
I have an article from the Toronto Star on the amount of money that has been shovelled into the asbestos industry. It says, “A $30 million campaign aims to take the curse off asbestos”. It is cursed because the rest of the world woke up.
The rest of the world knows that asbestos is the biggest industrial killer the world has ever known and has ever seen. Yet the government and all previous Canadian governments have been so enamoured with this evil material, which never should have been taken out of the ground to begin with, and they have pushed it, promoted it and dumped it into the third world. They have spent my tax dollars to promote asbestos, to promote death.
We are exporting human misery on a massive scale, with every shipment of asbestos that leaves the country, at 220,000 tonnes per year. One microscopic asbestos fibre can cause mesothelioma. We cannot even get our minds around how much we are dumping this into third world countries.
I know the great asbestos strikes in Quebec were called the first shot in the silent revolution. I know the emotional attachment that nationalists in Quebec assign to asbestos, but it is irrational.
I urge Canadians to finally wake up and see asbestos for what it is. It is a killer. The minister and the rat in the woodpile, as I call him, his ADM, the founder and first president of the Asbestos Institute, is now working in the employ of the minister, advising him about the wonderful benefits of this miracle product—