Madam Speaker, I have a petition signed by thousands of citizens from across Canada who call upon the House of Commons to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known and that more people in fact die from asbestos-related disease than all other occupational causes combined, yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world and that Canada spends millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry.
These petitioners call that corporate welfare for corporate serial killers. These petitioners are calling upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all its forms and to end all government subsidies of the asbestos industry, both in Canada and abroad, and to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos such as the Rotterdam Convention.