This paper analyzes the discrepancy between the early developments of medical knowledge on the health hazards of asbestos and Quebec’s asbestos policies that allowed its mining until 2013. From the historical analysis of state discourse on asbestos, we shed light on three strategies of issue redefinition that overlapped since 1949: 1) redefinition of a class issue into a nationalist issue, 2) redefinition of a health issue into a technical issue, and 3) redefinition of an issue into a non-issue. We argue that these strategies contributed to the invizibilisation of workers’ health problems and thus allowed to legitimize asbestos mining. Ultimately, the study of asbestos policy in Quebec underlines how constructing the meaning of an issue can potentially resolve objective contradictions between science, economic imperatives, and human rights.