Now that the World Trade Organization has on March 12, 2001 dismissed Canada's trade challenge to the ban on asbestos by France, it is time to examine some of the things that went on behind the closed doors of the WTO. The Canadian government has released its December 13, 1999 comment to the WTO to a Canadian journalist, so it is a public document now.

In this statement, filed one month before the scientific hearings were about to take place at WTO on the asbestos case, Canada explained in some detail what was meant by that critically important phrase, 'controlled use' of asbestos. This started with a limitation never before expressed: 'Canada has advocated the use of chrysotile in high-density products only; textiles are not of that category…'

This unprecedented declaration did not include any explanation of whether or how Canada has in place any system to implement this national policy in export sales restraint. Asbestos textile plants are found today only in countries where asbestos use is least restricted. Canada's policy of not selling asbestos to plants in Asia, etc., where it would be used to make asbestos textiles raises another question. What market is left to Canada for the most expensive, long grades of asbestos fibers - other than textiles? (In the scientific hearings in January, 2000, Canada's senior attorney went so far as to assert that, 'Canadian asbestos is not used, cannot be used these days in the manufacture of textiles, because nowhere do we know are these textiles being now manufactured.') I have been unable to confirm that Canada has any system in place for even checking the intended use of asbestos at the worldwide destinations where asbestos is exported, much less for restricting sales deemed inappropriate.

Canada's December 13 statement went on:

'With regard to downstream use sectors, 'controlled use' implies that all distributors/manufacturers of asbestos will be required to have an import permit. This permit will be withdrawn if the company does not meet the following commitments:

-- to distribute its products only to companies (users) licensed to purchase these products. Those companies must have workers trained and licensed to install products, and must be in compliance with regulations. Approved users shall not resell to third parties, and any unused materials must be returned to the manufacturer;

-- to provide a list of users to the responsible government agency;

-- to provide products cut to specification and to establish centres equipped to cut the products to size, and where persons cutting the products are trained and are licensed to work with asbestos;

-- to police downstream users in cooperation with the government. The product manufacturer visits, monitors and reports on the performance of the downstream users at regular intervals. There are penalties for failing to provide this product stewardship.'

To start at the end, there was no product stewardship role contained herein for Canada and other countries exporting asbestos from their mines. Nowhere does it say that asbestos-exporting countries or companies have any responsibility to assure that manufacturers using their raw material allow inspection by the fiber suppliers and meet minimum requirements or face a cut-off of supplies. This entire program of surveillance and punitive measures was instead relegated to the asbestos product manufacturing industry (and the importing country governments), even though there is no historical precedent for the industry ever having done such things anywhere in the world. Why is a country obligated to assume the societal costs associated with restraining the abuses of an asbestos industry - just so Canada can have the unrestricted freedom (from product stewardship) to export asbestos mined but not wanted in Canada?

Canada's suggestion that the asbestos companies would establish field fabrication centers for construction industry users of asbestos-cement products, to cut the products to size and thus obviate the need for such work to be done at construction sites, is ludicrous. One need only spend a short time in traffic in Sao Paulo or Bangkok, for example, to find unintended humor in the idea that the asbestos industry would provide any number of such centers or that construction companies would regularly interrupt their work to make use of them if the centers existed.

Similarly, it is impossible to imagine the asbestos product manufacturing companies conducting industrial hygiene surveillance of their customers, let alone also reporting miscreants to the government regulators. There has not been a single asbestos product manufacturing company that has done such 'police' work in the past hundred years anywhere in the world. This would be more fitting as a theme for a preposterous movie spoof, an asbestos company being run in this 'eccentric' manner by a Peter Sellers type of character. It can only be presumed that the lawyers for Canada were encouraged to express such fairy tales to the WTO as national policy because the document was kept confidential during the proceedings according to WTO rules. The four scientific experts were flabbergasted at this portrayal of product stewardship, and several demanded to know where such a system was in place, but they received no reply from Canada's lawyer in the WTO case.