Letters to the editor: TNM discriminating against chrysotile asbestos

What a deception to read in your editorial, “Ooh la la: Is Plan Nord becoming Plan Non?” (T.N.M. Aug. 20–26/12) that you qualify the support to chrysotile asbestos mining in the Eastern Townships by the Quebec and federal governments as “politically incorrect.”

Mine Jeffrey has the only remaining proven ore reserve of the industrial mineral chrysotile in North America. All the mines in the U.S. and Canada (Clinton Creek in B.C., Munro and Reeves in Ontario and Advocate on the island of Newfoundland) are depleted for two to three decades.

Would you consider Canada “incorrect”  in producing lead, talc, uranium, mercury, cyanide, silica, coal and even cement (one of the biggest man-made sources of CO2 emissions)? Mine Jeffrey got a loan from Investment Quebec, plus an important investment from its shareholders, to complete the financing of the construction of a 20,000-tonne-per-day, modern block-caving underground mine that could operate from 2012 to 2032.

In return, beside the interests of the loan, the 16% mining rights and the taxes, the project will create 500 well-paid, direct jobs and something unique in Canada: a “redevance” of $1.5 million a year to the local-regional communities to contribute to the diversification of the economy.

If the governments of Quebec and Canada do not support a Canadian industrial mineral used at the Jeffrey mine and at the users’ plants under well-proven, safe and controlled practices since 1975, then the field is wide open for opponents such as London-based International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, which is funded by the petrochemical synthetic-fibre producers of Europe, Japan and Australia, and the powerful lobby of U.S. plaintiff lawyers desperately searching for another bonanza of collective claims for alleged victims of asbestos in Asia.

Mine Jeffrey has operated a large open-pit mine since 1879 and produces 10% of the chrysotile asbestos market for fibrocement construction materials that includes the U.S., Canada and Germany — not only India, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, etc.

Perhaps The Northern Miner, which I have read for 40 years, does not seem to know the big difference in noxiousness between chrysotile asbestos and the amphibole asbestos (banned since 1975) that were exported from South Africa and Australia, but never produced in Canada.

The chrysotile asbestos market is migratory and follows the development of countries and continents: North America (1930–1975), Europe (1940–1990), Japan (1975–2000) and now Asia (1975–present), where two-thirds of humanity live in hot and humid climates, and where they need roofs that resist intense sun and heavy rains, and pipes that resist aggressive soils.

G. Bernard Coulombe, P. Eng.
President, CEO
Mine Jeffrey Inc.
Asbestos, PQ