Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan.
I suppose it is with some anticipation but regret that I enter this debate, because I find it incredible that the government must be called to account again over such a fundamental choice, the choice before it and before us as Canadians, as to whether to support and prop up an industry that is, not to be too hyperbolic, dying a natural death.
The industry is not supported by the markets. As a government that believes in the magic of the invisible hand, the government continues to dump money into the asbestos industry. It does not do it for other mining companies or other products. I know this because I come from a district that does a great deal of mining.
The asbestos industry has somehow become the sacred cow for the government. To have to defend something like asbestos must make some in those benches feel great discomfort, because it puts in front of Canadians an aspect of profound and dangerous hypocrisy. There is not a Conservative who would want chrysotile or any other kind of asbestos put into their homes. Why not? It is because we do not allow it in this country. Why not? It is because we should not allow it in this country, yet the same Conservative members somehow find comfort in sending it overseas, where there are virtually no building codes and there is no ability to promise that there will be any safe or determined handling of it. Conservatives say, for some of the most crass and coarse political calculations possible, that they will continue to dump money into it and continue to turn a blind eye.
While the Conservatives are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. The facts of the matter are that according to every health organization in this country and around the world, there is no safe use of asbestos, full stop--not chrysotile, not white, not otherwise. It is a fact. We cannot find doctors who are actual doctors, as opposed to the shills that the asbestos lobby pops up every once in a while, the same guys who were used by the tobacco industry. I do not mean similar people; I mean the exact same experts with “doctor” in front of their names. We find out they are doctors of geography or theology, yet the industry props them up and says, “Doctor so-and-so says asbestos is safe”.
However, the fact is that as taxpayers we have spent millions of dollars taking asbestos out of our Parliament buildings. We cannot go into the West Block anymore, because we are taking asbestos out of those offices. Heaven forbid that any member of Parliament or senator or member of our staff would be exposed to a minute of asbestos, but anyone happening to live in India, Indonesia or Sri Lanka who wants a trading relationship with Canada is going to get this stuff from Canada. Heaven forbid that we put even a warning label on the packages to tell them that the use of this material is seriously harmful for their health as workers. That is why union after union that is concerned with the health and safety of its members has stood up and said this is wrong. For many years this has been a struggle within the union movement.
One has to wonder, after all the years of debate around the safe use of tobacco, where the Conservatives would have stood on that question. They refuse to admit it as the evidence mounts from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Québec Medical Association. One group of cancer experts after another has come forward and said unequivocally that there is no way to use asbestos in a way that will not eventually kill the people exposed. The Conservatives say, “Never mind; we are just going to put it in concrete. That will make it safe. It will be embedded in concrete so that no one gets exposed”. Obviously, in the developing world there are never natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, or floods that would break a building apart and then cause the asbestos to crack out of the concrete and be exposed.
At the heart of the debate and the motion we are moving today is the hypocrisy of the government in saying it cares a whit about workers' health and safety or at all about Canada's international reputation. Since 1984 we as taxpayers have pumped more than $50 million into the asbestos lobby, for goodness' sake. All those Canadians out there are working hard and paying their taxes, and a bit of those taxes has been going to help promote asbestos exports from this country.
As we go out and campaign around this issue across the country, the first thing I find is that Canadians first have to be convinced that we are actually still exporting asbestos. In this modern day and age when we all know the dangers, they do not believe it.
If a newsletter was sent home from your kid's school that said, “We found asbestos in the school, but we're just going to leave it there”, all the parents in the country would be pulling their kids out of school the next day.
We have come to the realization that any exposure is bad. This is important: it is not that someone needs to be exposed to a great quantity of asbestos or to have that exposure happen over many decades; any single exposure has been proven to have the capacity to cause a debilitating form of cancer that essentially suffocates the victims to death.
It is the number one industrial killer in the world today, according to the World Health Organization, and these guys think that is okay. They think dragging Canada's reputation through the mud internationally, exposing workers the world over to this known carcinogen for the most narrow and crass of political considerations is okay. They are entitled to their opinions, but not their own facts.
“Safe use of asbestos”: can we put that sentence together? Let us try to rationalize that sentence to someone who is dying the slow and painful death that is related to asbestosis. Let us tell them it was “safe use” that is killing them right now--that there were safe exposure limits that they were exposed to, and that it is somehow their fault that they are now dying. Let us tell that to the families and the widows I have spoken to, who cannot believe that in 2011 we even need to have this debate.
The government needs to hear this. All the members across can look down into their notebooks and iPads and not engage in this discussion and continue to read the prepared notes from the Prime Minister's Office, but I encourage them, I demand from them, to talk to the opposition and to find the just transition that would be the ethical thing to offer to these workers. If we are talking about jobs, the government is living in a false and invented world where somehow asbestos will be made good again and these workers will have work and be able to provide for their families, when we know that according to 2009 Quebec medical studies, the exposure rates around Thetford Mines and Asbestos are off the charts.
The minister can scoff, but he knows the facts, and the NDP has a long and proud tradition of supporting workers in this country. They can accuse us of a lot, but the idea of members of the Conservative Party getting up and somehow becoming champions of the union, of the working man and woman, and suggesting that the NDP is otherwise, is a bridge too far. What we have suggested and offered, and have gone into Thetford Mines and talked to the leaders there about, is that we must provide options and a just transition program.
I ask the minister to stop dumping money into the lobbyists. They do not need Canadian taxpayer-funded support to make their case. I am sure the Speaker would not want to give them any money either.
We learned as a society to pay attention to the medical expertise around tobacco. We learned there was not a safe exposure to tobacco for a young person and that it could not be handled safely if we let our kids have tobacco in order to retain jobs. Conservative members at the time would have been saying, “Well, this is about the economy, and anyone wanting to get kids to stop smoking hurts the Canadian economy. The Conservatives believe in the Canadian economy; therefore, our kids should be smoking”.
What industry is next, they ask? I reverse the question. If they think asbestos is fantastic, why not bring back smoking? “Let us start introducing it back into the schools”, say the Conservatives.
There has to be a line in public policy where we understand that the politics may be difficult, but we can get through them. We can offer the workers who are still in this industry a just transition.
I will end on this: I have many mines in my riding. They open and they close. The workers are not offered just transitions when the mine closes; the markets respond, and the mine shuts down. We are offering something particular and unique in this case: the idea that we must transition to something better, something that does not make the government the hypocrite that it is and does not continue to expose workers around the world to this known deadly product.