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By: Asbestos Law

Canada has a justified reputation for compassion, for its willingness to make sacrifices to help people in war-torn countries, for its commitment to health care for all. Yet, it is on the brink of staining its pride of place among nations by its stubborn support of the insupportable.

It is insisting that some of the most vulnerable people on the planet should not be treated compassionately, should not be entitled to decent health. Canada wants to expose millions of ill-informed and ill-protected people to asbestos.

Asbestos is a fibrous mineral with wondrous properties. The delicate fibres can withstand fierce heat and are so flexible that they can be spun and woven in much the same way as cotton or flax. Asbestos is deployed in construction, heating and ventilating systems, boilers, brake linings and the like. It is profitable to mine and process asbestos. And Canada has mountains of it, particularly in Quebec and Newfoundland.

The bad feature of asbestos is that it kills. In epidemic proportions. Painfully. The tiny fibres get into the lungs, leading to asbestosis, a progressive disease of the lungs. They also are scientifically linked to lung cancer and an unusual cancer known as mesothelioma.

The International Labour Organization calculates that 100,000 to 140,000 people worldwide die prematurely from asbestos-related cancers every year. Respected scientists contend that, if even if exposure to asbestos were to stop right now, between 5 million and 10 million people still would die from asbestos-related diseases. If the use of asbestos is not ended any time soon, the consequences could be horrendous .

Canada is one of the world's largest exporters of asbestos. It only can be sold and exported to countries that have not banned the material. Canada, therefore, fights strenuously to ensure that asbestos not be proscribed by other nations.

When Europe sought to ban the import of Canada's toxic export, our government complained to the World Trade Organization that this violated the principles of free trade.

Met with the argument that the safeguarding of public health allowed governments to interfere with free trade, our government, aided by the Asbestos Institute (an industry lobby group that it funds very generously), argued that there was not sufficient scientific proof of the deleterious effects of asbestos.

But so well-established is the case against asbestos, that the WTO ruled that the public health argument should prevail and Canada's exports to Europe should cease. Undaunted, Canada persists in its efforts to hustle countries into purchasing the white fibrous poison.

The international community understands that, if it is left to each country to ban asbestos importation and use, callous sellers will continue to look for new, unfettered, markets. To these vending nations, it is useful to keep people ignorant.

It is troubling, therefore, that Le Monde Diplomatique reported in July, 2000, that Canada had persuaded the South Korean government to remove labels meant to warn workers about the dangers of handling the boxes of asbestos.

To counter these problems, an international convention, the Rotterdam Convention, came into force on Feb. 24, 2004.

It requires signatories who want to sell dangerous substances, such as asbestos, to inform prospective purchasers about the dangers.

This appears to be too much for Ottawa to adhere to.

While Canada appears to acknowledge that some forms of asbestos are poisonous, it argues that it has not been fully proven that chrysotile asbestos is harmful. Canada says that it will not sign on unless sale of the chrysotile form of asbestos — of which we are the largest exporters — remains excluded from the Rotterdam Convention's list of substances requiring the issue of cautions.

Yet there is so much solid evidence of chrysotile's harmful propensities that more than 100 countries want to include chrysotile on the list of dangerous substances. As most of the richer countries have banned all forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, it is the world's poor who must bear the risk of Ottawa's stance.

This month there is a meeting in Rotterdam with regard to a United Nations treaty that will begin to regulate the trade of hazardous substances. Canada will likely try to exempt chrysotile asbestos from the list.

To continue to do what we have been doing means that we are putting local political considerations and our desire for dollars over the health of Canadian workers, and the welfare of the vulnerable people in those economically needy and unregulated nations that are most easily persuaded to buy our toxic mineral.

Canada must sign the Rotterdam Convention; then it must stop the mining, processing and selling of asbestos, after setting up a mechanism to preserve the security and dignity of its asbestos workers.