As I’ve mentioned last Thursday, today is the day the UN votes whether or not to include chrysotile asbestos on a list of hazardous products on the Rotterdam Convention. Stevie Spiteful has been remaining mum on what he’ll do today, but most are of the opinion he’ll vote to keep that poison off the list as he has done before.
Well, Stevie, your ex-cabinet minister from BC, Chuck Strahl, has plenty to say to you. You do remember Chuck, doncha Stevie? Yanno, the guy who was diagnosed with lung cancer some years ago? Cancer that is asbestos related? He now wants you to do the right thing and vote to have it included in Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention.
Strahl told Industry Minister Christian Paradis and Prime Minister Stephen Harper that it’s time for Canada to support flagging the carcinogen as potentially harmful because importers and exporters have the right to know there are serious health risks if misused.
”Loggers like me operated some of industry’s largest and most dangerous equipment. I loved every minute of it. Huge and powerful, they fit the personalities of the men of the woods — aggressive, production-oriented, no-nonsense types who didn’t wait around to listen to some do-gooder tell them about the dangers of asbestos. That was a big, big mistake,” Strahl wrote in the Globe and Mail.
”Not surprisingly, exposure of this kind caused problems. But never immediately. Like smoking a cigarette, the effects take time. And, like smoking a cigarette in those days, people just didn’t know about the long term impacts of asbestos. But we do today. The doctors tell me that the cancer I was diagnosed with six years ago and collapsed my lung was certainly caused by exposure to asbestos. Miraculously and thankfully, my cancer hasn’t grown and I’m symptom-free. Most guys that get diagnosed are dead in six to 12 months.”
Yep, that does sound like a plea to do the right thing. The question is, will it fall on deaf ears? Probably. Stevie Spiteful, in the past, has proven to not listen to his ex-MPs, no matter how much sense they may make, no matter how dire their warnings may make. Outta sight, outta mind, many say, and Stevie obviously makes that a part of his mantra. He probably has told himself that Strahl’s lung cancer probably isn’t even asbestos related despite proof to the contrary.
However, Chuck Strahl’s son, Mark, is a rookie in Harpercon caucus, represents his father’s old riding of Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon. He does not have a cabinet post. Unlike many of Stevie’s rookies, he does not hold a parliamentary secretarial post. He appears to be a backbencher, where, I think, is exactly where Stevie Spiteful and Chrissy Paradis would prefer him to be; where they can’t see him. Should they vote no to putting chrysotile asbestos on the list of the Rotterdam Convention, it might be hard to look at young Mark Strahl.
More importantly, I wonder how Mark Strahl could continue to work for a party that so strenuously supports an industry; a substance, that nearly killed his own father, and a PM who who will surely refuse his father’s plea.
Needless to say, Chrissy Paradis is incognito when attempts were made to get his response to Chuck Strahl’s comments. Quelle surprise. Rest assured that his spokesperson had a typically deep circular comment though:
“There are times when it’s time to disclose it and there are times when it’s not the time, and now it’s not the time,” spokesman Pascale Boulay said Friday.
“Canada knows what its position is.”
Yes, I bet it does!
Oh, and Stevie Spiteful shares the dubious honour of not supporting adding asbestos to the Rotterdam convention along with countries like Iran, Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe. Ain’t that special? After Stevie Spiteful trashes the UN for including mad man dictators like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as trashing this dictator and his country for all sorts of things, Stevie suddenly finds himself in kindred spirits with the mad dictator of Iran hisself.
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