New asbestos rules long overdue
Canada’s record on asbestos has been nothing short of shameful. Long after health experts proved asbestos was a dangerous carcinogen, and the vast majority of the world’s nations pushed to ban its use, Canada — alone among developed nations — opposed restrictions to its trade and argued the cancer-causing substance could be safely handled with the proper precautions. Apparent to everyone was the reason for Canada’s obstinacy: Quebec’s massive asbestos mining industry, centred in regions around Thetford Mines and Asbestos.
The former Harper Conservative government long maintained the fiction that chrysotile asbestos, the type not coincidentally mined in Quebec, was less dangerous than other forms of asbestos if handled safely.
So, it’s certainly welcome news that federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna on Thursday announced new, tougher regulations — that had been approved by cabinet back in September — to ban the import, sale and broadly defined uses of the proven carcinogen.
The regulations, to take effect at year’s end, are not perfect; asbestos opponents and experts have criticized what they say are too many continuing exemptions, including giving a Quebec company access to hundreds of millions of tonnes of asbestos mine tailings in order to extract magnesium to sell to car and airplane manufacturers.
Critics point out Quebec’s standards for workplace exposure to asbestos fibres remain much weaker than in other provinces. The toughest Canadian standards are themselves much less stringent than France’s or Holland’s.
What all this means is that while the new federal regulations represent progress, the overall battle to completely eliminate asbestos is far from over.
It’s an important fight. Asbestos-related lung disease has been the leading cause of occupational death in Canada for the last quarter century.
New cases of mesothelioma, an asbestos-linked lung cancer, have been rising for decades. At least 510 Canadians died of mesothelioma in 2016.
Sadly, the ban will have no immediate effect on such cases, as asbestos exposure takes decades to manifest itself as cancer. But it’s a start.