Asbestos: I am embarrassed, ashamed and sorry - and so should all Canadians

On Thursday, 28 April of this year I posted a blog entry, Stand up for your reputation or face the judgement of history.

So no surprise, then, that on Friday, June 24, the Canadian Government once again embarrassed our country on the international stage. Canada alone prevented the United Nations from adding chrysotile asbestos to the global list of hazardous substances.

Here in Canada we won’t allow asbestos in our homes and offices. We are spending millions to remove it from our Parliament buildings. Here in Canada, we know asbestos is hazardous. Yet our government refuses to let the world officially recognize it as hazardous because they want to continue to export it to countries whose non-existent health regulations have not caught up with modern environmental health and safety realities - without even a warning label.

I am convinced that the judgement of history will weigh very heavily on this action of our Canadian Government last Friday. Some political decisions are just that - political ideology with little or no great moral component. For example, should toll roads be publically owned or privatized? Other political decisions have such a huge moral component that the political element, over time, continuously diminishes until all that is left is the moral component. Consider slavery, apartheid, the Holocaust as obvious, if extreme, examples. At this stage nobody has any idea how historians will view a government that knowingly chose short term balance of trade gains, and vote garnering in one riding in Quebec, over the health and safety of millions of unwitting people in the Third World. I am pursuaded that the judgement will be such that I want my grandchildren to know that I did not agree with it, was not a part of it, and stood up against it.

Whether or not you voted for Stephen Harper in the last election, for the sake of your conscience and your reputation with your children and your grandchildren, let your voice be heard. Here are two ways that you can do this. The Green Party of Canada is inviting all Canadians to join in saying “We’re sorry!”

Firstly, if you have a FaceBook account, you can post a message of apology on the Asbestos Facebook page by clicking "Like" and then entering your message. I have posted the following:
Dear World. I am so sorry that Canada has let you down. As someone who has cancer and who has a close family member who is a cancer survivor, I deeply regret and am ashamed of the cancer that is going to bring so much needless suffering to so many people as a result of the nationally selfish decision that was made by our government that does not have the courage of its convictions to allow asbestos in its own parliamentary halls of power. I wish these words and these apologies could undo the harm that is going to come. I am truly sorry for this immoral action.

Secondly, you can send your own email of apology to imsorry@greenparty.ca and the Green Party will forward your email to the General Secretary of the United Nations.

If you are not a Green Party supporter and so are not comfortable doing something associated with the Green Party that is understandable, but for goodness sake, do something to distance yourself from this shameful, immoral action of our government and that will let Stephen Harper know that he has crossed the line of moral acceptability.

Photos on this page can be found on a blog called Mesothelioma Information.

How and why I quit smoking

Thirty-odd years ago I used to smoke a pack of 20/day. I did not like the idea that I was not free. Basically I was a slave to a burning stick of tobacco, and I tried to stop many times - unsuccessfully. I was praying one day while driving my car and the idea came into my head that I surely had the "freedom" to smoke one cigarette less each day.

I started by putting out my cigarettes when the tobacco portion got to the same length as the filter - I was told the last part is the worst for cancer. I also made a rule: no smokes before breakfast. I had read that was really bad for you. Then I rationed my cigarettes across morning, afternoon and evening, putting the day's supply into a Mills tin. Then I cut out one per day. When I got down to about 8 I doubled them again but put a pencil mark halfway down and extinguished the cigarette when it burnt down to the pencil mark. Somebody told me to break the association between smoking and drinking, even tea or coffee, so I waited 15 minutes after drinking before having a smoke.

I must confess that it was all rather easy looking back.

Reasons to stop? Some reasons of my own and some that I have heard from others:
Better sex,
better tasting food,
no tobacco breath when kissing,
breathing better during exercise,
lower risk of cancer and heart disease,
lower insurance premiums,
no smell of stale tobacco hanging around you, your furniture, your curtains, your carpets.
Living longer to see your grandchildren...

One more thing... Calculate what you can save in a year and what you can buy with that !

Claire and her Sand/Water Play Station

Today (Friday) Ingrid picked up Judith, who finished her first year chiropractic yesterday, and the two of them went to deliver an early birthday present for Claire - a sand/water play station. The pictures tell the story better than words.

Tomorrow Ingrid, Judith and I drive to Quebec. After spending a night with my old friend, Clem, we take Judith to the University of Sherbrooke where she will attend the French language summer school for five weeks.

"Stop Harper." Has Brigette Marcelle DePape drafted the rallying cry of the next election?

C.E.S. (Ned) Franks, professor emeritus in political studies at Queens's University, says that Brigette Marcelle DePape set a bad precedent with her "Stop Harper" silent protest during the Governer General's throne speech last week. In an opinion published in The Star (Page’s protest sets poor precedent) he says that this should not be seen as a legitimate act of civil disobedience because, he says, she was not protesting a specific law or policy. "She was simply objecting to the results of a democratic nationwide election in which she, along with every other citizen 18 years or older, was entitled to vote."

Well, that last statement seems to me to be a leap of logic based on at least two, if not three, questionable premises.

Firstly, I am not alone in questioning how democratic a first-past-the-post election process can be when the winning party and leader is imposed upon the nearly 60% of the voters who voted against that party and leader. Being a professor of political studies, Ned Franks must be even more aware of that than I am, which makes his statement all the more puzzling to me. Certainly Marcelle believes, as do I, that Harper doesn't reflect the majority of Canadians.(Page with 'Stop Harper' sign fired from Senate)

Secondly, rather than protesting the outcome of an election, saying "Stop Harper" might simply be saying "Stop Harper"; simply objecting to what Harper is doing; simply saying, "Harper's agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation." She certainly concedes that Harper and the Conservatives have a majority parliament for the next four years and seems to be of the opinion that it is time for some kind of moral majority to stand up and protest in some kind of extra parliamentary way, even using civil disobedience.

Thirdly, language is something living and evolving. Maybe there is a narrow definition of "civil disobedience" accepted in the university halls of political science. But there is a wider understanding that is generally accepted in the broader population. That caring about social issues and the environment as principles of conscience can lead someone to civil disobedience does not violate any semantic understanding of the term "civil disobedience" in my mind nor, I suspect, in the minds of ordinary speakers of the English language.

From my personal point of view, this is the first time in my thirteen years in the country that I have seen any kind of passionate, political engagement on the part of university age young people in Canada. I don't think DePape is going to get her "Arab Spring" in the Canada of 2011. I do hope that she and her friends can be somewhat successful in raising the awareness of Canadians to the very serious issues facing our country and the world beyond our own pocket books and wallets.

I think that Brigette Marcelle DePape may well have drafted the rallying cry of the next election. Which will be more important for each of the opposition parties in the next election in four years time: to be the official opposition or to "Stop Harper?" There is a big difference. One is relevant to the important challenges facing our country and the world. The other is about party politics - and quite irrelevant.

Kayaking Claire - Jonty, the 'Canoe Kid'

On Monday Luisa sent this email:

Hello!  Hope you are well :)  We had a fabulous weekend.  We took Jonty canoeing for the first time.  He was not a fan of his life jacket, but he loved the trip none the less! We've been busy gardening and admiring the fence too!

Canoe Kid Jonty

Hanging out on the fence

More pics of Jonty the Canoe Kid and 'the fence' in the albums, Jonathan Tiago and Miscellaneous Family.







A little later we received this email from Miriam:


Hi All!
We have also just arrived back from a wonderful weekend, spent with Sherri and Paul and their twin boys at their family cottage. Claire enjoyed her first kayak in her new life jacket!
And she is now insisting on finger foods... she is not interested in being fed with a spoon ... hahaha ... good times :-)

Kayaking Claire

Watching chipmunks

More pics of Kayaking Claire in the album Claire Boothroyd.