Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present. The first one calls upon the House of Commons to recognize that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known and yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world. In fact, the petitioners points out that Canada spends millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry and even blocking international efforts to curb its use.
Therefore, these petitioners call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all of its forms and institute a just transition program for the workers who may be affected by such a ban, to end all government subsidies of asbestos 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.