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High school students inspire draft bill to ban asbestos exports

Last year Skeena NDP MP Nathan Cullen issued a request to people throughout his northern B.C. constituency to name the issues that were the most important to them. Three Grade 10 girls from Smithers Secondary School, Hayley McDermid, Claire Hinchliffe and Chloe Staiger, responded with an issue not often in the headlines but keenly important to them and many other Canadians — asbestos. They pointed directly to Canadian exports of the carcinogenic mineral to several other countries, where it is used in construction materials and causes the deaths of thousands of workers every year.

“Canada is currently exporting deadly asbestos to third world countries, and this needs to stop because it is killing people,” the three wrote. “We ask Parliamentarians to consider with open minds the bill we wrote calling for a ban on the production, use and export of asbestos. We hope to be involved in protecting the health of people in Canada and around the world.”

On June 1, Cullen introduced a private member’s bill into Parliament based on the legislation the girls had proposed. As the bill was being introduced, ads signed by numerous environmental, labour and health organizations were running in Ottawa bus shelters and newspapers, urging the federal government to stop the deadly trade in asbestos. Toxic Free Canada was among the signatories to a joint statement, which also included the Canadian Cancer Society, Ontario College of Family Physicians, Canadian Auto Workers, Ecojustice and the Prevent Cancer Now coalition.

“We support these students one hundred per cent,” said Diana Daghofer, co-chair of Prevent Cancer Now, said in a June 1 news release issued by the various groups. “We hope that Canada’s political leaders are listening to them and to the massive Canadian and international backing for a ban on the production, use and export of this deadly substance.” Cancers caused by asbestos, although rarely in the news and overlooked in Canadian cancer statistics, have suddenly become a dramatically important issue for Canadians. Asbestos-related disease is now the leading cause of workplace fatalities in Canada, the result of exposures decades ago.

In B.C. alone, 58 of 139 work-related fatalities — 42 per cent— listed by WorkSafeBC in 2007 were the result of workplace exposure to asbestos. The workers died of asbestos-related cancers or lung disease, a testament to the lingering death toll caused by the mineral, which has not been used in industry or new construction since the 1980s.

But Canada has allowed the export of asbestos to countries such as India and Bangladesh where it is used in a variety of construction materials and exposes thousands of workers. The International Labour Organization has estimated that over 100,000 people worldwide suffer premature deaths from asbestos-related cancers and disease each year.