Jay Hill, please could you let us know what your response is to our appeal to you, which we made personally and in a letter on Jan. 25, asking you to please support ending Canada's export of asbestos to poor, developing countries where it will destroy the lives of so many vulnerable workers and their families.
Once asbestos has been put into homes and schools, it costs huge sums of money to remove it once it starts deteriorating, as you know well because of the hundreds of millions of dollars Canadian taxpayers are paying to remove asbestos from the Parliament buildings in order to protect your health and the health of other MPs and staff. Developing countries do not have the resources to do this and asbestos is like a land mine that goes on killing for generations to come.
I appreciate your concern about the jobs of the remaining 350 asbestos miners in Quebec. That is why many appeals have been sent to Prime Minister Harper by Canada's health leaders, including the Canadian Cancer Society, asking that the government stop supporting asbestos export and instead provide economic transition assistance to those remaining workers in Quebec.
I attach a recent appeal to Canada's Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq, who is the only health minister in the western world supporting asbestos, in which we make this appeal. We still have had no response.
I do not know if you have a particular religious belief, Mr. Hill, but every religion in the world says that it is wrong to knowingly harm others and that is is particularly wrong to harm the most defenseless. But this is what our government is doing in supporting the export of asbestos to developing countries. Canadians are a decent people and this hypocrisy and this callousness does not represent the values of Canadians.
Mr. Hill, we plead with you once more. Please show compassion and integrity. Please stop supporting the export of asbestos, a known deadly product that we refuse to use ourselves because we don't want to harm ourselves, our children or our neighbours.
We anxiously and hopefully await your response.
Kathleen Ruff
Terrace
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