RED DEER ADVOCATE Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013 A5
What is world-class? B.C. asks Northern Gateway about spill plans BY THE CANADIAN PRESS The B.C. government says its support for the Northern Gateway pipeline is partly contingent upon a world-class oil spill response plan, but the federal review panel weighing the project has heard what constitutes “world-class” is open to a great deal of interpretation. The panel heard Tuesday that Enbridge (TSX:ENB) has committed to a world-class response plan. The project exceeds standards simply because it has taken extended responsibility beyond the pipeline and tanker terminal, testified Ed Owens, a project consultant from Polaris Applied Sciences and one of 10 company experts being questioned under oath this week on marine oil spills. “In reality, there is no standard, there is no number against which one can compare. International best practices are a combination of a number of things — not just equipment, not just how much boom, how many pumps you have — but how do you design the overall system,” Owens said under questioning by lawyers for the B.C. government. “This is not an area that would typically be a responsibility of the project.
This is a pipeline and a marine terminal project and typically their responsibility as soon as the vessel leaves the dock... that becomes a shipping responsibility,” Owens said. “This does exceed, basically, what anybody else has ever tried to do.” Even an agreement on world-standard response times and clean-up capacity eluded the panel. Northern Gateway has committed to a capacity to contain 36,000 cubic metres, or 32,000 tonnes, of oil within 10 days of a spill. Canadian regulations require a capacity of 10,000 tonnes. Alaska, in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, requires a capacity to clean-up 47,700 cubic metres within 72 hours. But the two cannot be compared, experts said. The type of skimmers, emulsifying of the oil in the water, the weather — all affect the response, the review panel was told. It’s “apples and oranges,” Owens said. Trying to eliminate the differences — even between Prince William Sound, where Exxon Valdez dumped 41,600 cubic metres of oil into the Pacific, and the north coast of B.C. — is really challenging, said Owen McHugh, another expert on the company panel.
Canadian dual national suspected in Bulgaria bombing BY THE CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA — A Canadian “dual national” living in Lebanon is believed to be involved in the deadly bus bombing in Bulgaria last July, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird confirmed Tuesday. But key questions remained unanswered as Canada coped with the second revelation by a foreign government in recent weeks that Canadians allegedly took part in terrorist attacks abroad. Baird attempted to fill the information void, by repeatedly calling on the European Union to ban the terrorist group Hezbollah, echoing Israel and the United States. But that did little to prevent the minister from being peppered by questions about this latest incident in Bulgaria, which overshadowed a planned announcement of new measures to deter Canadian companies from bribing foreign officials. Baird said the terror suspect had dual Canadian and Lebanese citizenship, but lived in Lebanon. He added that the suspect is still at large, and it
remains unclear when he was last in Canada. “This is not a resident of Canada. It’s a dual national who I am told resides in Lebanon,” Baird told a news conference on Parliament Hill. “I couldn’t even tell you the last time this person was in Canada.” Bulgaria’s interior minister suggested the suspect was much more active in Canada. “We have followed their entire activities in Australia and Canada so we have information about financing and their membership in Hezbollah,” said Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov. The suspect entered Bulgaria with a Canadian passport, and is believed linked to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group and political party that Canada has designated a terrorist organization. The suspect took part in an attack that killed five Israelis and their Bulgarian driver. “We have well-grounded reasons to suggest that the two were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah,” said Tsvetanov. “We expect the government of Lebanon to assist in the further investigation.”
BY THE CANADIAN PRESS MONTREAL — The son of Canadian Zahra Kazemi says he gets no satisfaction from the reported arrest of the man who sent his mother to an Iranian prison where she was tortured and killed. Stephan Hashemi told The Canadian Press on Tuesday that former Iranian prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi is merely a small fish in the country’s repressive regime. “It’s the regime who are killing people, who are torturing people, who are creating all this misery,” Hashemi said. “It’s not Mortazavi. Mortazavi is just one little guy among them.
Disappearance a hoax: police
“Who is Mortazavi? He’s nobody.” Iran’s state media reported Tuesday that Mortazavi was arrested, two years after a parliamentary probe found the senior government official responsible for deaths by torture of at least three jailed anti-government protesters. Mortazavi, a close ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was taken to Tehran’s Evin prison late Monday night, according to the reports, which gave few details on the arrest. Evin is the notorious facility where Kazemi spent the last agonizing days of her life in 2003. Kazemi was an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who was beaten, raped and killed after her arrest for photographing wives of detainees outside the prison.
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Murdered woman’s son finds no satisfaction in jailing of Iranian prosecutor
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LETHBRIDGE— Police in southern Alberta say the disappearance of a young family man late last week was a hoax. Matthew Aaron Robillard’s relatives called police Thursday when the 25-year-old Lethbridge man failed to show up for work at a Scotiabank in nearby Picture Butte. His car was later discovered with a smashed window in an industrial area near the Calgary airport. Media reported his keys, wallet and phone had been left in the car along with a strange package of cigarettes. He apparently didn’t smoke. Investigators found Robillard, a married father of a six-month-old baby, Saturday morning in a Calgary hotel. They say they are considering whether to lay a public mischief charge. “Matthew Aaron Robillard left of his own volition and took deliberate steps to cast suspicion on his disappearance,” Lethbridge police Staff Sgt. Ian Sanderson said Tuesday. “Police are satisfied Robillard’s family was not complicit in his hoax. They genuinely believed he was missing. “Police are not seeking any other subjects.” Sanderson said Robillard “was not the victim of a crime.” The staff sergeant wouldn’t reveal why the man wanted to disappear. The case brings to mind a high-profile disappearance that also happened in Lethbridge. A decade ago, city alderwoman Dar Heatherington made international headlines for faking her disappearance. The married mother vanished while in Montana on city business and was found three days later in Las Vegas. She claimed she had been drugged and abducted, but later recanted the story and was convicted of public mischief. She was also convicted of inventing a stalker. Following a feud with her colleagues about keeping her job, she resigned from city council. Sanderson said considerable energy went into the search for Robillard. About a dozen officers in Lethbridge and Calgary spent time looking for him.