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A decades-old pro-asbestos lobby group, currently funded by the Quebec government, will be shutting its doors after notifying the federal government of its plan to dissolve.
The Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute issued the notice in the Canada Gazette — the government’s official publication for announcing new laws and other public information. The institute, first formed in 1984, promotes the safe use of chrysotile asbestos on behalf of Canada’s asbestos mining industry.
NDP MP Pat Martin — a longtime critic of the asbestos industry and former miner himself — said the closing of the institute signals the “death knell” of asbestos mining in Canada.
“I see it as a real tipping point in the movement to get Canada out of the asbestos industry,” Martin said. “It’s just another demonstration of the death rattle of the asbestos industry in this country.”
He said he first learned of the institute’s intention to dissolve Saturday, International Workers’ Memorial Day — a day of commemoration for workers injured and killed around the globe.
“I’ve lost an awful lot of friends and colleagues to asbestos in my time as an asbestos miner and a carpenter in the building trades,” Martin said. “It was very poignant for me to learn that (the institute was closing) on the very day of mourning for injured and fallen workers with the flags at half mast — it was very, very fitting.”
Asbestos is a fibrous construction material used as insulation that has been linked to a number of lung diseases, including certain types of cancer.
In a number of Asian countries, including India, activists are increasingly holding demonstrations to protest asbestos exports because they say the substance is harming workers.
The Chrysotile Institute has long countered by saying that as long as asbestos is handled in a safe and controlled manner, it causes little risk to workers.
Canada’s asbestos industry is centred on two mines in Thetford Mines and Asbestos, both in Quebec — and both currently out of production for the first time in 130 years.
Quebec’s Industry Department has offered the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos a loan guarantee of $58 million if Balcorp Ltd. of Montreal is able to find $25 million in financing to reopen the mine.
Kathleen Ruff, senior human-rights adviser to the independent research group the Rideau Institute, said the closing of the lobby group sends a signal to the international community that the industry is collapsing in Canada.
For the rest of this article, please go to the Postmedia News website: http://www.canada.com/health/asbestos+advocacy+group+shuts+doors/6537818/story.html