Despite Pleas, Quebec to Fund Canada's Last Asbestos Mine

The government of Quebec has decided to ignore the pleas of human rights advocates, hundreds of public health experts worldwide and one of the province's largest unions and says it will fund the expansion of Canada's last asbestos mine.

The chrysotile asbestos from that mine will be shipped almost exclusively to Third World nations where asbestos cement plants are being constructed.

Disregarding all demonstrations and requests against the expansion, Quebec says it will underwrite a $57 million loan to Indian investors to complete digging an underground mine to reach untouched deposits of chrysotile, said Clement Gignac, the province's minister of economic development, innovation and export trade.

"We are removing the uncertainty that the Quebec government will continue to support the chrysotile industry [and] will continue to support the region," Gignac told the Canadian Press.

At the center of this seemingly unending controversy is the exhausted Jeffrey Mine, the world's largest chrysotile asbestos pit, a little more than an hour's drive north of the Vermont–Canada border.

For more than 100 years, much of the world's commercial asbestos came from 11 mines in and surrounding the aptly named community of Asbestos, Quebec.

"The government has decided to thumb its nose at the overwhelming, unanimous opposition to the project from all of Quebec's medical authorities and to jump into bed with the asbestos traders," Kathleen Ruff, a leading Canadian human rights advocate, told AOL News.

"Canada is becoming known as the worldwide asbestos pusher and as an enemy of global public health," she said.

As AOL News reported in a detailed look at the issue in February, Baljit Chadha and his consortium of Indian investors lobbied hard for the loan. The Chrysotile Institute in Montreal insists that the chrysotile form of the six commercial types of asbestos is not harmful.

But bodies such as the World Health Organization have documented evidence that no type or quantity of asbestos can be safely used and say that some experts believe the lethal fibers will take 10 million lives by 2030.

"There is no safe level of asbestos exposure, and even at a very low concentrations in products it can result in big exposures [and disease]," said Dr. Aubrey Miller, senior medical adviser for the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Working with any level of asbestos makes it very difficult to prevent harmful exposures to workers and the public and contamination of the environment, said Miller, who has years of experience in dealing with the health risks from asbestos.

Chadha, who lives in Montreal, said he has shipped Canadian asbestos to India and a few other countries for the past 15 years. In asking for the $57 million loan guarantee so his consortium can buy the Jeffrey Mine, he promises to supply much of the world's asbestos market for at least 25 years.

He said that reopening the mine will bring new life to Canada's dying asbestos-mining region.

Meanwhile, demonstrations against exporting the Canadian asbestos still continue in the streets of Indian villages, where children protest against the building of local plants that will produce asbestos cement pipe and roofing and siding building material.

More surprising was the vote last month by representatives of the 300,000-member Quebec Confederation of National Trade Unions, which overwhelmingly opposed the expansion of the Jeffrey Mine.