What do you call a country that deliberately sells products abroad that will kill many people? You call it Canada. What do you call it when a state action kills a large numbers of defenseless people? You call it a crime against humanity. So how can exporting death by Canadian asbestos not be a crime against humanity and how can a state that does so not be guilty of committing such a crime?
Why does the International Criminal Court not issue warrants for those Canadian and Quebec government officials who are promoting the sale of deadly asbestos to poor countries where the death of many people is guaranteed? The reputation of the young court has been sorely undermined by its focus solely on Africans accused of terrible crimes. Canada's promotion of asbestos offers an opportunity to redress the balance.
It’s also nothing less than criminal that we need yet another column on this issue. Every lethal aspect of the asbestos trade has been comprehensively exposed. It’s received prominent coverage by the mainstream media throughout the country, including Quebec, where the only asbestos mine is now located. In this newspaper, devastating articles setting out the unanswerable case against asbestos have appeared by Jeffrey Simpson and André Picard. Kathleen Ruff, an expert on the issue, has been mobilizing indefatigably to stop all asbestos exports to countries like India, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
The case needs no further documentation. Except for some corporate interests and the paid hacks who shamelessly support them, no one doubts that asbestos, of whatever variety, is a cancer-causing killer. Here’s the bottom line: Asbestos can never again be used in Canada and 52 countries have banned it outright.
Every health organization you’ve ever heard of has condemned both the Canadian and the Quebec governments for actively promoting asbestos exports. According to the World Health Organization, more than 100,000 people worldwide die of occupational exposure to asbestos each year. As one of the top five asbestos exporters in the world, Canada is a major contributor to the carnage. Yet it continues, with the active support of Stephen Harper and Jean Charest.
And that’s really the only question still outstanding: Why in the world do both governments continue to promote the sale of asbestos in the face of all the evidence? Both know perfectly well the consequences of their actions. It makes no sense at all.
Can it really be about wining or losing a seat or possibly two in Quebec? Must countless poor Indians die for this unworthy end? Even I don’t attribute such immoral cynicism to Mr. Harper or Mr. Charest. But then, why their utter intransigence?
Nationally, Mr. Harper was not always alone in his perverse and lethal stubbornness. But in the past couple of years, thank heavens, the NDP and the federal Liberals and Canadian unions outside Quebec have all come to their senses and now demand that mining and exporting Quebec asbestos must end. This year NDP deputy leader Thomas Mulcair became the first Quebec MP ever to speak out against asbestos mining. The Bloc’s Gilles Duceppe finally acknowledges that Quebec's asbestos is hazardous and should only be used for very restricted purposes.
Yet even now the Quebec government is actively considering a subsidy of $58-million to re-open and massively expand the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos, Quebec, with the explicit purpose of significantly increasing asbestos exports to Asia, South America and Africa. When will we ever stop exploiting poor Africa for our own enrichment?
As for Ottawa, asbestos remains yet another case where science and evidence mean nothing to Stephen Harper. Despite everything, the Prime Minister remains a fan of asbestos and his Minister of Health refuses to meet with the leading health experts, deferring instead to the junk science and discredited propaganda of the asbestos lobby.
