Hiba Kamel, a third-year McGill PhD student, stood up poised and palpably angry at McGill’s asbestos town hall on Sept. 22. “Some of us are traumatized. Some of us have actually interacted with the dust,” she said.

Kamel is a researcher in the Agricultural and Environmental Sciences department. She is also married and a mother of a young daughter. Now she is reckoning with the worry that she was exposed to asbestos dust fibres in the winter of 2023 and may have brought it home on her clothes—potentially exposing her family. 

The trauma voiced by Kamel along with other concerns from students and staff at the Macdonald campus town hall comes as the latest development in McGill University’s unfolding asbestos problems. Earlier in the week, McGill released an internal report that revealed that leading up to the Winter 2023 Macdonald campus building closures, McGill breached asbestos protocols and Quebec regulators intervened three times between 2021 and 2023. 

McGill Principal Deep Saini weighed in on the situation at the town hall and called it a “broad-scale process failure.” 

Asbestos is a carcinogen that can cause deadly cancers like mesothelioma when inhaled. It was widely used as an insulator across Canada from the 1930s to the 1980s due to its heat-resistant properties. Many McGill buildings on the Downtown and Macdonald campuses contain asbestos. In the last year, McGill has faced asbestos exposure risks on both campuses, with building closures disrupting classes and research.

McGill organized the town hall, which was in-person with a subsequent virtual town hall also taking place in the afternoon, as an opportunity for the McGill community to discuss the report’s findings and recommendations with key management stakeholders—with an on-stage panel answering questions.

The panel consisted of the Executive Director of the report, Pascal Théoret, and members of the newly formed task force on asbestos—Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Fabrice Labeau, Associate Dean of Graduate Education in the Faculty of Science Laura Nilson, and Director of Master Plan Logistics Anne-Marie Huynh. The panel also included the Interim Vice-Principal (Administration and Finance) Diana Dutton, Dean of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Anja Geitmann, and independent asbestos expert Paul Demers, who joined over Zoom. The three task force members are not part of the Macdonald community, nor do they specialize in asbestos research. 

Members of McGill’s senior administration were also present in the front row, including Principal Saini and Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic) Christopher Manfredi, who both gave opening remarks.

After a presentation from the members of the panel highlighting the report’s findings, the town hall went into a question-and-answer period open to the 40-something attendees. Students and staff raised concerns from personal health and stalls in research to demands about accountability and apprehension about the future. 

One professor shared that with the building closures, many faculty members in the Plant Science Department have been moved to temporary offices with little clarity from the administration about what will come next.

“Some of us don’t have labs, […] some of us have moved three or four times [….] What is the plan? When are we going to be back exactly?” the professor said, eliciting a round of applause from the attendees. 

Another professor, who stated that they are in the Plant Science Department, said that their lab is still closed and that the space closures are continuing to impact their research—forcing them to delay a million-dollar-plus project. 

Graduate student Kamel told the panel that she was regularly at a one-metre distance from construction workers, as where she was doing her research was on the construction site. In an interview with The Tribune, Kamel said finding out about dangers of asbestos dust was traumatic and caused her to have a panic attack for which she had to go to the emergency room. 

“I [had] never heard of asbestos, and I didn’t know what it meant or what it was and I never was told that there was any risk of that,” Kamel said. “I’m someone who’s really careful about safety and had I known that there was anything to do with asbestos on this campus, I would have probably reconsidered McGill altogether.”

“It’s nothing short of criminal to not even tell people that ‘hey, this building has asbestos,’” Kamel later added.

The Tribune has been unable to verify if McGill specifically warned students about the asbestos risks at the Raymond building. The internal report confirms that construction workers working with materials that contain asbestos shared the same space with students. 

Frédérique Mazerolle, McGill media relations officer, commented on Kamel’s incident and said that McGill’s top priority will always be the safety of the community. Mazerolle also cited the response from Demers, the independent asbestos expert on the panel at the town hall, who said “From what we know, [health risks to short-term exposure to asbestos] should be very, very low.”

McGill provides information to the university community and workers about asbestos in each building through its Asbestos Web Database, which documents the presence and condition of asbestos in each room of every building. However, the panelists at the town hall said this database is mainly for workers. Members of the audience highlighted how the database is now mostly out of date. 

McGill professors and staff members also raised issues about the lack of risk management and clarity regarding construction projects, as highlighted by the report, with others at the town hall questioning the accuracy of the events detailed. 

In one instance, when the panel was unsure of the answer to a concern about a lack of a risk management plan for a specific project, they looked at the senior administration members in the front row. Denis Mondou, Associate Vice-Principal of Facilities Management and Ancillary Services, did not know the answer.

In an interview with The Tribune, Professor Mark Lefsrud explained how the Macdonald campus asbestos problems have forced him to relocate several times, and that it was only last week that some of his colleagues were able to restart their research properly. He also reflected on the town hall and expressed how more needs to be done.  

“I do like our Principal [….] I like the fact he is trying to solve a lot of these problems, but I still think there are a lot of problems,” Lefsrud said. “The report is pretty vague and it needs to be hammered out.” 

At the end of the town hall, Principal Saini, noticing the frustration in the room, addressed the attendees with his reflections.

“I fully hear your comments about accountability,” Saini said. “I can assure you that I take that responsibility; that, should something like this happen in the future, once we put robust processes in place, […] heads will fall.”

Saini emphasized that, as a scientist himself, he could relate to the concerns and stories of researchers and students in the room, and that while changes will be made, they will not happen overnight.  

“Stories like that take away the pride I feel for McGill,” Saini said. 

This piece was updated at 2:45 p.m. on Sept. 26 to include that McGill has since removed the internal report from its website.

This piece was updated at 6:50 p.m. on Sept. 26 to indicate that the internal report is once again available on McGill’s website.