Quoted from http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Investigation+slams+asbestos+industry/3307407/Canada+should+stop+asbestos+exports+Ignatieff/3305310/story.html

Canada should stop asbestos exports: Ignatieff

 By Kevin Dougherty, Montreal Gazette July 21, 2010
    

QUEBEC — Reacting to a report by the BBC and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists suggesting asbestos could be linked to millions of deaths by 2030, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday that Canada should stop exporting the fibrous mineral.

“Now is the time for a transition to a new future,” Ignatieff said when his Liberal Express bus, which is touring Canada this summer, arrived in Quebec City.

Quebec is the major Canadian source of asbestos, used in the past for insulation, fireproofing and in brake linings, but now used mostly to reinforce concrete cheaply in Third World applications.

“I think it has become impossible to export a product like that because we can’t have guarantees that it will not be harmful in India or in other countries,” he said.

“It is clear we still have to work with the workers in this region who have worked for generations to find other ways,” Ignatieff said. “And I will never abandon the asbestos workers who worked in good faith.”

The Quebec cabinet still has not decided whether to grant a $58-million loan guarantee, to allow the Jeffery underground asbestos mine to reopen, in the town of Asbestos, southwest of Quebec City.

“I never offer advice to the Charest government,” Ignatieff said. “I want to work with the Charest government, not give lessons to the Charest government.