Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and pay tribute to Canadian filmmaker Kathleen Mullen for the Toronto premiere of her film Breathtaking, dedicated to her late father Richard Mullen, who died of mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos.
She points out that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known and that more Canadians now die from asbestos than all other industrial causes combined. Yet the film points out that Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world. Without question, we are exporting human misery on a monumental scale. Canada spends millions of dollar subsidizing the asbestos industry and blocking international efforts to curb its use. I call it “corporate welfare for corporate serial killers”.
Using the power of documentary filmmaking, Kathleen Mullen calls upon the Government of Canada to ban asbestos in all of its forms and to institute a just transition program for all asbestos workers and the communities they live in. She calls upon the government to end all subsidies of asbestos, both at home and abroad, and to stop blocking international conventions—