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Conservative member of Parliament and deputy House of Commons Speaker Chuck Strahl has revealed that he has lung cancer. The 48-year-old veteran MP announced Monday that the disease was diagnosed last month. In a news release, Strahl described the cancer in the lining of his lungs as a condition with no cure -- only treatment.
"I don't see any other way around this," said Strahl, adding that he's normally a private person who likes to be "pretty stoic" about problems in his life. "But my job is so public and expectations so obvious that it can't really be a secret. And perhaps it wouldn't be fair to be secret anyway, because there are so many people who need to know and want to help out in ways small and large." He was once a partner in a road construction and logging firm, and says pathologists determined that his cancer might be linked to exposure to asbestos when he was younger. "My logging days included a time when we used open, asbestos brakes on the yarders, and while my exposure wasn't that lengthy, it was intense. "Typically, 20-25 years later, the asbestos works its ugly magic. Unfortunately, I'm right on time." Strahl was first elected to the House of Commons in 1993. He was re-elected in 1997, 2000 and 2004.
Canada is an "international pariah" when it comes to supporting and dumping asbestos around the world, said NDP MP Pat Martin, who's calling for a global ban on the production, sale and use of asbestos, adding that the recent announcement of House Deputy Speaker and Conservative MP Chuck Strahl that he's battling a form of cancer most likely caused by asbestos exposure should be a wake up call for the government to start moving on the issue.
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