Anna Mehler Paperny – Global News
Amid consternation over a defunct census and leeriness towards its less reliable replacement, a group of cities has banded together to build a database of their own.
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Railway owners in Lac Megantic explosion had brakes fail before
Leslie Young, Anna Mehler Paperny and Aalia Adam – Global News
The dozens of oil-laden rail cars barrelling downhill to Lac Mégantic this past weekend sparked a hellish inferno and unprecedented devastation. But that wasn’t Montreal Maine & Atlantic’s first runaway train.
Lac Megantic: How safe is transporting oil by rail?
Anna Mehler Paperny – Global News
The petroleum car explosion that set Lac Mégantic aflame and killed at least five people has also thrust oil transport into the spotlight.
Toronto ditches National Household Survey for historical comparisons
Anna Mehler Paperny – Global News
Statistics Canada’s National Household Survey is too unreliable to compare with previous long-form censuses, Toronto has decided.
Canada’s biggest city won’t use the new survey to inform historic trendlines unless Statistics Canada provides better technical information that puts planners more at ease.
Toronto, like other cities and a multitude of government and private organizations, relies on data from the long-form census to get a sense of where the community’s going.
At least, it used to.
Interview: Natural Resources Minister talks pipeline safety
Anna Mehler Paperny – Global News
Joe Oliver says relax.
Canadians should rest assured the country’s 800,00-kilometre pipeline network is safe, he says, and Ottawa’s making it safer. The Natural Resources Ministerannounced measures Wednesday to keep energy companies on the hook for their environmental damage.
Feds aim to calm public fears over pipeline safety
Anna Mehler Paperny and Leslie Young – Global News
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver says new rules for pipeline companies make a safe system safer and the companies more accountable.
But even as he touted tougher penalties and expectations of corporate transparency, he said there’s no need for the National Energy Board to beef up enforcement or publish its own investigation and inspection reports.
Alberta government failed to act on flood prevention report
Anna Mehler Paperny – Global News
Strategies to prevent another devastating Albertan deluge sat on the provincial government’s desk for more than half-a-dozen years.
And the now-retired MLA behind that report got more attention for it this week than he ever had.
Amid search for survivors in Elliot Lake, a scramble to manage the message
Stephen Spencer Davis and Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News
As emergency crews searched for survivors buried beneath the rubble of a collapsed mall last summer, both the rescue teams and government staffers struggled to rein in a muddled message in the glare of media coverage and a distraught community.
A year after Elliot Lake mall collapse, a community that ‘can’t seem to move on’
Anna Mehler Paperny and Jennifer Tryon, Global News
Heather Richer was in her van at dawn June 24, ready to drive to work before her Sunday customers trickled in.
It was only after the car was in motion that she remembered: There was no work to go to. The mall that housed her restaurant was a crumpled hulk after a crashing rooftop parking lot sent concrete slabs through two floors the previous afternoon.
Alberta sour gas leak continues as extreme flooding prevents shutdown
Anna Mehler Paperny and Leslie Young, Global News
A gas pipeline ruptured by flood-driven debris continued to leak sour gas Thursday evening as a record-setting deluge in southern Alberta prevented workers from shutting it off.
a business of misfits 