Spreading ignorance

Last week, word came out about the Cons' suppression of a report on the dangers of chrysotile asbestos. This week, Kathleen Ruff points out how the Cons' culture of secrecy only reinforces itself, as their apparent purpose is to avoid having asbestos included in the Rotterdam Convention which requires exporters to notify potential buyers of a product's known dangers:

Increasingly, as the use of hazardous chemicals is banned or severely restricted in the industrialized world, these deadly products are shipped to developing countries and Eastern Europe, where controls are weak to non-existent, workers have few protections and infrastructure to handle hazardous chemicals is lacking.

To address this problem, the Rotterdam Convention gives countries the right to be informed about, and to refuse, extremely hazardous chemicals and pesticides.

After a rigorous scientific and legal process, a panel of experts (the chemical review committee) determines whether a particular chemical is so dangerous that it is a threat to public health and has already been banned or severely restricted by various countries...

The political process of the convention occurs when the recommendations of the expert committee must be approved by consensus at a "conference of the parties" held every two years.

In 2006, Canada brought the convention to its knees by blocking a consensus for chrysotile asbestos to go on the list.

And in another prime example of the Harper government's idea of Canada's role in the world, word is that the convention itself may end up being gutted based largely on the Cons' refusal to accurately label asbestos:

Fearing that Canada will continue its obstruction at this October's conference in Rome, the UN is now circulating to all 120 countries that have ratified the convention a "thought-starter paper" on how to get out of the "unfortunate precedent" (UN diplomatic language for disaster) created by asbestos.

The options in the paper would, through a complicated process that could take years, rewrite the convention with a dual system so that countries such as Canada, which refuse to allow the listing of a particular chemical, would be exempted and could disregard the convention when exporting that chemical.

It should be obvious how that kind of change would destroy any purpose to the convention. Instead of providing an equal playing field where all hazardous products manufactured in the industrialized world are subject to the same international scrutiny at the time of an order, it would enable countries to pick and choose which parts of an international scientific consensus they want to be bound by. And every country would have a strong incentive to participate in the convention solely for show, while at the same time exempting its own exports from any notice to potential buyers.

What makes the timing all the more galling is that we've just received a stark reminder of how the use of asbestos without regard for future consequences can make a disaster all the worse. But the Cons are still insisting not only on keeping the Canadian public in the dark for now, but on entrenching an international right to do the same around the world. And by this point, it's surely no secret that only a change in government will put an end to the global embarrassment being caused by Harper and company.