Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010

CWL works to ban mining, export of asbestos

OTTAWA - The Catholic Women's League (CWL) will lobby to end the mining and export of chrysotile asbestos to developing countries by 2015.

Ninety-five per cent of asbestos mined in Canada is exported to other countries and Canada has blocked proposals to add the mineral, which causes lung cancer, to an international agreement that regulates the trade of hazardous chemicals, CWL members said at an Aug. 11 news conference.

CWL past-president Danielle McNeil-Hessian noted Canada has asbestos on the hazardous substances list but does not grant that same protection to the countries that buy it.

The CWL also hopes Canada will ban mining asbestos by 2015, McNeil-Hessian said. The league hopes that will be long enough to create opportunities to redirect miners and others dependent on the industry into other lines of work.

The CWL will also pursue an income tax credit for families whose children participate in arts or cultural activities, similar to the tax credit for sports.

Other resolutions from previous years remain on the lobbying agenda as well.

These are the two new national resolutions that came from the grassroots membership of Canada's largest women's organization, to become agenda-setting for meetings with federal and provincial politicians and bureaucrats in the fall and spring of 2010-11.

Velma Harasen of Regina becomes national president and international relations chairperson for the next two years, as McNeil-Hessian moves into the advisory national past president role. "It will be challenging," said Harasen.

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