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Asbestos Threats to Health Rise as Demolitions Skyrocket | The Tyee

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An asbestos-abatement worker takes down drywall to access the attic, where there is insulation containing asbestos. Photo credit: Luiz Lopes

BC doubles inspectors; industry urges mandatory licencing for removers.

By João Vitor Corrêa and Luiz Lopes, June 4, 2016, TheTyee.ca

The soaring number of house demolitions in B.C. has prompted work safety officials to almost double the number of asbestos-prevention officers in the province, a move that could cost an extra $1 million a year.

”Because asbestos continues to be a hazard of the magnitude it is, we have put budget towards hiring another seven officers this year,” said Scott McCloy, director of media relations at WorkSafeBC.

From 2006 to 2015, the wrecking ball swung into 26,632 residential units across Metro Vancouver with an annual average of 2,663 demolitions, according to a report.

Part of the asbestos exposure problem is being caused by pressed homeowners who are willing to hire the ”cheap guys,” said Jerome Klett, who runs an asbestos-removal firm and has been in the business for more than 17 years.

”They wouldn’t be in business if there weren’t people to hire them,” he said.

According to Klett, costs per house can range from $500 to $30,000, depending on the affected area of the house and the level of risk. There are fixed costs such as labour, incidental, and disposal costs.

”A bin of asbestos drywall, for example, costs $4,000 to $5,000 to dispose of because the company has to ship it to Alberta,” he said.

Cracking down on ‘wild west show’

”It was kind of a Wild West show on the residential side of asbestos removal,” said Klett. ”It’s only been now, in the last three or four years, when they’ve started trying to crack down on it but they’ve let it go for so long and it’s gotten so bad they can’t keep up with it.”

According to a WorkSafeBC database, inspections conducted by prevention officers resulted in fines totalling $648,959 imposed on companies that breached workplace regulations when handling asbestos in 2015. Penalties have ranged from $1,000 to approximately $130,000. From over 70 cases, 62 penalties were for residential sites, four were unclear, and two were for commercial sites.

”As long as the asbestos is not disturbed, workers are safe and families are safe. But if the asbestos is disturbed through renovations or through demolitions, that’s when those fibres can enter the lungs of a person,” said McCloy from WorkSafeBC.

More than 60 per cent of the fines handed out in 2015 were for repeated violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation and Workers’ Compensation Act.

WorkSafeBC officers receive and review demolition permits issued by five municipalities (Coquitlam, Vancouver, Saanich, Nanaimo, Port Coquitlam and Surrey). The agency mainly relies on consultations, education, and inspections to ensure workplace safety rules are followed. If enforcement is necessary, an officer can issue a warning letter or impose an administrative penalty.

But the B.C. Insulators Association’s business manager, Lee Loftus, said penalties are not enough to regulate the industry. He said there has to be mandatory licensing of contractors and workers since currently any person with a business licence can open an asbestos-abatement firm.

McCloy said WorkSafeBC is open to the idea of mandatory licensing, but ”that would be considered an extra measure, protection.”

”It doesn’t mean that workers will necessarily be any safer with certification than they are now,” said McCloy.

If a worker does not dispose of hazardous material properly, the problem evolves from a safety violation in the workplace to a serious community issue. Neighbours, family members, bystanders, they can all get exposed to asbestos fibers.

”When they do the demolitions and they haven’t done the testings and they run the excavator over the top of this thing, the whole surrounding area is contaminated with dust. And what do you find in that dust? You find asbestos in that dust,” said Loftus. ”(Bystanders) don’t know they are being exposed.”

WorkSafeBC is embroiled in a court case against Seattle Environmental Consulting Ltd., which is at the top of the list of several companies with violations. The firm racked up almost $280,000 in penalties since 2007 for knowingly providing false information and improperly removing hazardous material from demolition sites.

The company has paid none of the fines at the time, according to court documents.

Asbestos exposure has been the leading cause of all workers’ deaths in B.C. for the past six years, according to WorkSafeBC data. In 2015, it was responsible for 44 per cent of all workplace deaths in the province, based on compensation claims.

WorkSafeBC estimates that asbestos-related fatalities will peak between 2015 and 2020, fuelled by a large number of workers who were exposed decades ago.

That’s because a person affected by an asbestos-related disease takes decades to show symptoms. Once breathed in, asbestos fibers can remain in the lungs for years without being noticed. Several diseases are associated with the exposure to asbestos-containing products, such as lung and colorectal cancer, asbestosis, and mesothelioma.

Tracey Ford lost her father to mesothelioma in 2008, 18 months after he was diagnosed. It is an incurable form of cancer in the lining of the lungs caused almost entirely by exposure to asbestos.

”He and my mom, they had just started their retirement. They worked for decades, very hard, to have a long, healthy retirement and he didn’t get that. So it was really sad,” she said, a little teary-eyed.

Her father, Dave Ford, had a long career working as an electrician for a pulp and paper mill. Tracey Ford believes her dad was exposed to asbestos when handling wires and other products containing asbestos fibers.

”He was exposed through his workplace unknowingly,” she said.

”Health and safety were a big deal to him. He was very safety conscious and if he had known, he would’ve taken whatever precautions were necessary. It definitely would’ve made a difference.” [Tyee]

Source: Asbestos Threats to Health Rise as Demolitions Skyrocket | The Tyee

Strategic Deal in 16 Key Ridings Can Scuttle Harper: Tech Pro | The Tyee

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Data cruncher details how parties, voters could work together to beat Tories.

Source: Strategic Deal in 16 Key Ridings Can Scuttle Harper: Tech Pro | The Tyee

Party Platforms Stoke Generation Divide, Says Advocate

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UBC’s Paul Kershaw: ‘opportunistic’ pitch to middle class skips over struggling young Canadians.

By Andrew MacLeod, October 16, 2015, TheTyee.ca

Paul Kershaw

‘The middle class is breaking down along age lines,’ warns UBC prof and Generation Squeeze advocate Paul Kershaw.

Many Canadians will be surprised to learn that the middle class tax cut Liberal leader Justin Trudeau keeps talking about is not for them.

“Nine in 10 Canadians think they’re going to benefit, because nine in 10 Canadians think they’re the middle class,” said Paul Kershaw, a University of British Columbia professor in the school of population and public health and the founder of the advocacy group Generation Squeeze.

While Liberal advertising, talking points and press releases promise a tax cut to help the middle class, they seldom define who would benefit.

For that, one needs to turn to the party’s 88-page platform released last week, which spells out that the 1.5 per cent decrease in the tax rate applies only to taxable individual incomes of between $44,700 and $89,401.

That means to see the maximum tax cut of $1,340, a household would have to have two earners at the top of the income bracket, or a household income of nearly $179,000. On the other hand, anyone making less than $44,700, which is most people, would see no benefit at all.

As the NDP pointed out in a press release, the Canada Revenue Agency’s figures for 2012, the most recent available, show that 67.5 per cent of taxpayers earned less than $45,000. Put another way, nearly seven out of 10 taxpayers wouldn’t benefit from the Liberals’ proposed tax cut.

The NDP also noted the irony of Trudeau promoting the plan at a campaign stop at a Toronto grocery store, an industry where the average annual salary is around $22,000.

A Statistics Canada table shows that for individuals in Canada in 2013, the median total income — the amount that half of all people earned above and half under — was $32,020.

Opportunistic pitch

Kershaw called the Liberal pitch to the middle class “opportunistic,” and said the discussion ties into a debate about whether or not the middle class is doing worse or better than it did a decade ago.

While one side says the middle class has never been better off and the other says they’re struggling, the question really depends on taking a closer look at who is doing well and is doing poorly in today’s economy.

“The middle class is breaking down along age lines,” Kershaw said. “A tax break will be too blunt to address that.”

While the country has successfully reduced seniors’ poverty in recent decades and real estate gains have swelled the net worth of longtime property owners, younger people are doing worse as a group than they were a generation ago, he said. The challenges include a job market with stagnant wages, escalating home prices and student debt taken on in pursuit of an education.

The Liberals, and the other parties should be tuning their pitches to better address the generational discrepancy, Kershaw said.

Kershaw recently crunched the numbers from the platforms of the four main parties to compare them from a generational standpoint. He presented his findings in By the Numbers: A generational guide to voting in the 2015 federal election.

“There’s a dizzying array of dueling promises made by parties,” he said. “For the average voter it’s impossible [to compare]. That’s what this report is really designed to be about.”

‘Pocket change’ for younger Canadians

Kershaw found all four parties were committed to protecting spending on retirees, even as the population of seniors in Canada swells. In comparison, he said, “All parties invest pocket change in younger Canadians.”

The Conservatives would spend the least per person over the age of 65 at $2,691, while the Liberals were the highest at $3,008, just slightly above the NDP and Greens. A big part of the spending is for health care, a system disproportionately used by older Canadians, which all the parties would maintain.

Per person under the age of 45, the Conservatives would spend $494, the NDP $822, the Liberals $835 and the Greens $1,004, according to Kershaw’s report.

Piggy bank graph

Generation Squeeze compares parties’ per-capita pledges for retirees and young people.

None of the parties is offering much of a plan to address high housing prices, a major driver of the generational divide in big cities including Vancouver and Toronto, he said. “There’s little talk in the platforms about how to resolve that issue.”

Each of the parties has its strengths, he said, crediting the Liberals for their plan to invest in infrastructure, the NDP for its plans to provide $15-a-day childcare and increase spending on Employment Insurance, and the Conservatives for efforts to control spending on health care.

But the Greens stood out for their focus on younger people, he said. They were the only party talking about student debt and they have a plan to create a youth service corps to provide job experience.

Among the other three there was much similarity, and little imagination on what would be possible to support young people, he said.

Kershaw pointed out that the Conservatives plan to collect less tax than the others, so will have less to spend. But while they would spend 10 per cent less than the other parties on retirees, their spending on young people would be 40 or 50 per cent lower.

Even people likely to benefit from Conservative tax cuts might be unhappy that their gain would be at the expense of their children and grandchildren, Kershaw said. “That’s a louder conversation we have to have in this country.” [Tyee]

Feds Using Old, Inaccurate Data to Set Temporary Foreign Worker Wages | The Tyee

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                 Sketchy stats driving down Canadian pay rates, says Alberta labour fed.

Source: Feds Using Old, Inaccurate Data to Set Temporary Foreign Worker Wages | The Tyee