Canada’s Trudeau Approves Controversial Pipeline Expansion
A tugboat operator secures a floating razor wire security fence during an emergency response exercise at the Kinder Morgan Inc. Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, last September. A new expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline would significantly expand tanker traffic in the region.
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Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has given the green light for a second time to a $5.5 billion pipeline expansion that has attracted strong opposition from environmentalists and some indigenous groups.
Trudeau, an ardent supporter of green energy, has found himself defending the 620-mile Trans Mountain pipeline expansion since his government first approved it in 2016. The project is meant to bring petroleum from oil sands near Edmonton, Alberta, to tanks in Burnaby near Vancouver on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
Last year, opponents won a suit in Canada’s Federal Court of Appeals to temporarily halt the expansion, but Trudeau’s government subsequently purchased the existing 715-mile pipeline from the Canadian division of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP for about $3.5 billion in an effort to move the project ahead.
At Tuesday’s news conference in Ottawa announcing that the project was back on, Trudeau justified the move by saying the money reaped from the pipeline would be channeled back into green projects.
“We need to create wealth today so we can invest in the future,” he said. “We need resources to invest in Canadians so they can take advantage of the opportunities generated by a rapidly changing economy, here at home and around the world.”
Trudeau said the pipeline would deliver oil to the Pacific Coast for shipment to Asia, reducing Canada’s dependency on selling its petroleum to the United States.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May was quoted by the CBC as calling Trudeau’s promise to funnel profits from pipeline into clean energy technology a “cynical bait-and-switch that would fool no one.”
“If you’re serious about fighting climate change, you invest public funds in renewable energy,” May said. “And there’s no guarantee that this pipeline will ever turn a profit anyway.”
The majority of First Nations communities have signed off on the expansion, but some still oppose it.
The expansion is designed to move nearly a million barrels of oil each day — triple the flow from the existing pipeline. That is expected also to significantly boost tanker traffic on Canada’s Pacific Coast from just 60 vessels a year to more than 400, according to The Associated Press.
However, opponents of the Trans Mountain expansion warn that the risks of spills will rise dramatically.
Trudeau said he expects “shovels will be in the ground” this year.
In Rural Wyoming, This Program Is Designed To Help Patients Manage Medical Needs
Managing chronic pain can be particularly difficult for people in rural areas because of the necessity of frequent doctor visits. Volunteers in rural Wyoming are trying to help.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
When you live in a rural place, the doctor’s office or emergency room can be hard to get to. For people living with chronic conditions, that makes life complicated. Wyoming Public Radio’s Maggie Mullen reports on one program designed to help rural patients manage their medical needs.
MAGGIE MULLEN, BYLINE: Gary and Celeste Havener live 40 miles outside of Laramie in southeast Wyoming. They spend a lot of their time growing vegetables and riding horses across the prairie.
GARY HAVENER: And any time you get on a horse, anything can happen.
MULLEN: A few weeks ago, Celeste fell off her horse.
CELESTE HAVENER: Had a very ungraceful dismount and tweaked my knee pretty good.
MULLEN: Afterwards, she laid on the ground for a while, trying to figure out how hurt she was, but also wondering if a visit to the doctor was worth it.
C. HAVENER: After it didn’t get better, I did go to town.
MULLEN: This kind of decision-making is something she and her husband do often since they both have other health issues. Gary deals with pain from injuries working as a carpenter, and Celeste just recently wrapped up radiation treatment for breast cancer.
C. HAVENER: I think most rural people choose Dr. Denial as their first choice. Dr. Google is their second choice.
MULLEN: In a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 26% of rural Americans say there’s been a time the past few years when they needed health care, but did not get it. A majority of them say it was because financial barriers kept them from seeing a doctor, but almost a quarter of them say it was because health care was too far or difficult to get to. That’s where Janet Korpela comes in.
JANET KORPELA: In a rural area, if someone can manage their own health better and go to the doctor less often, then that’s a win for everybody.
MULLEN: Today, she’s running a leader training with eight volunteers for a program called Healthy U.
(SOUNDBITE OF TABLES BEING MOVED)
MULLEN: They arrange tables in a circle so participants can all face one another. The people from this training will go back into their communities to teach patients living with chronic conditions how to better manage their health. These leaders don’t need a medical background. Korpela says, they just need to be willing to do the 40 hours of free training.
KORPELA: This curriculum is really designed to be led by pure leaders, which means that the leaders should be equivalent or equal to the people who will eventually be taking the workshops.
MULLEN: One of the things volunteers do in the training is role-play. Korpela is in the role of patient.
KORPELA: My action plan was to take my prescribed medication daily, on time, as prescribed. And I did not do that. And actually…
MULLEN: Volunteers learn to brainstorm solutions. Melanie Pearce and Dawn Garrison have a few ideas.
MELANIE PEARCE: Take your medicine with a regular activity.
DAWN GARRISON: I said, put it by the toothpaste so when you brush your teeth in the morning, you take it first thing in the morning. I’m assuming that you brush your teeth every morning.
(LAUGHTER)
MULLEN: This is called action planning, and studies show it’s effective at improving quality of life and reducing the number of doctor visits or hospitalization.
ANNA D’HOOGE: I mean, I think we tend to think of it as a medical issue in the sense of disease management – like, you just need to go to the doctor or take your medication.
MULLEN: That’s Anna D’Hooge. She’s one of 62 people in Wyoming to complete the leader training. She’s a nutritionist at a hospital in Cheyenne, and the majority of her patients deal with a chronic condition.
D’HOOGE: Hopefully, people will realize, oh, well, I’m not a health care doctor. I’m not a nurse, but I do have these skills, so I can help my friend with chronic disease by doing this.
MULLEN: For D’Hooge, she decided to do the training as a way to make her community a healthier place to live. For NPR News, I’m Maggie Mullen in Laramie.
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Michel Platini, Europe’s Former Soccer Boss, Arrested As Part Of Qatar Inquiry
French former soccer great and former UEFA head Michel Platini, seen here in 2018, was detained Tuesday for questioning related to the inquiry into FIFA’s awarding of the 2020 World Cup to Qatar.
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French anti-corruption police have arrested former UEFA President Michel Platini in a case related to “Qatargate” — the ongoing investigations into how Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup. Platini is also a former vice president of FIFA, soccer’s international governing body.
Platini, 63, was taken into police custody Tuesday and is now at the offices of France’s anti-corruption judicial police in Nanterre, according to the French website Mediapart, which was first to report the news. The French police agency, known by the acronym OCLCIFF, specializes in complex cases involving financial fraud, corruption and breaches of integrity.
News of Platini’s arrest gripped the world of international football. Just four years ago, Platini was the powerful head of Europe’s football association and was seen as the heir apparent to then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter. At the time, the former French soccer star was a FIFA vice president.
But Platini was sidelined by FIFA in late 2015, when the body’s ethics committee suspended him from all soccer-related activities for eight years, citing a $2 million payment it said Platini received from FIFA when Blatter was its president.
That payment was made in 2011, after the Qatar vote and shortly before Blatter was reelected. Critics accused Blatter of paying Platini for his help in securing the World Cup bid for Qatar. Both men denied that version of events.
FIFA’s initial ban on Platini was later reduced to four years — it’s slated to expire in October.
Platini won the Ballon d’Or as the world’s best soccer player three times, and he’s still regarded as one of the all-time greats. But his name has increasingly been clouded by inquiries into FIFA’s choice of Qatar to host the World Cup, in an upset win over bids from the U.S., Australia, South Korea and Japan.
As The Associated Press reports:
“Platini told the AP in 2015 that he ‘might have told’ American officials that he would vote for the United States bid. However, he changed his mind after a November 2010 meeting, hosted by then-President Nicolas Sarkozy at his official residence in Paris and Qatar’s crown prince, now emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
“Platini has long insisted that the meeting did not influence his vote for Qatar less than two weeks later.”
According to French media outlets, as anti-corruption police took Platini into custody Tuesday, they also spoke to two former officials from the Sarkozy era: Sophie Dion, a lawyer who served as the president’s adviser on sports, and Claude Guéant, who was the secretary general of L’Élysée under Sarkozy.
Like Platini, Dion was taken into custody. The official term for Guéant’s status is that of a “free suspect”: He was questioned but not detained.
