Mr. Speaker, asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known.
More people die every year from asbestos than all other industrial toxins combined, yet Canada remains one of the world's largest producers and exporters of asbestos, dumping nearly 220,000 tonnes of asbestos every year into third world countries and developing nations.
Canada not only allows and promotes the use of asbestos, but it subsidizes the asbestos industry and blocks international efforts to curb its use.
The Minister of Health recently commissioned a Health Canada study on the health effects of asbestos. He has refused to release the report because the report affirms that asbestos kills.
All asbestos kills. Even the type of asbestos mined in Quebec kills. There is no such thing as benign asbestos, but the Minister of Health is sitting on the report because he does not want Canada to be further embarrassed by the fact that it is polluting the world with asbestos.