Government Ignored Health Canada's Asbestos Advice

Feds' support for Quebec's $90-million asbestos industry outweighed concerns over material's hazards.

A top public servant at Health Canada urged the federal government to add asbestos to an international registry of hazardous materials in 2006. CBC uncovered an email from the director general of Health Canada's safe environments program that said chrysotile asbestos should be added to the UN's Rotterdam Convention on hazardous materials so that, if exported, people in other countries could understand its potential dangers. The plea must have fallen on deaf ears, as chrysotile asbestos, some $90 million of which is exported from Quebec each year, remains notably absent from the convention. Health Canada has said it appears that chrysotile asbestos is safer than other types of the mineral, which have been linked to cancer, but all members of the European Union have banned all varieties of the substance.