GOOD TO BE OPEN ABOUT MLA EXPENSES
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HORGAN FACES A TOUGH ROAD
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HIV TESTS FOR ALL ADULTS
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FRIDAY
MAY 16 2014 www.burnabynewsleader.com
The city has taken steps in an attempt to curb ratrunning in the Brentwood area, but a resident doubts much will change. See Page A5
Surgical wait times blamed on inequitable funding Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
COURTESY KINDER MORGAN CANADA
A tanker at the dock at Westridge Terminal in Burnaby. Kinder Morgan is seeking to almost triple the capacity of its pipeline between Edmonton and Burnaby.
City asks 1,500 pipeline questions Submits 300 pages to NEB on Kinder Morgan proposal Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
When it comes to “what ifs” in the proposal to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline, the City of Burnaby has come up with a doozy: What if city fire crews aren’t available in an emergency? That’s among the 1,500 questions the city posed in a 300-page “information request” to the National Energy Board (NEB) in its
role as an intervenor in the pipeline However, the company has not application. consulted with the city or secured Kinder Morgan proposes almost any agreements for that to happen, tripling capacity of its pipeline it says. between Edmonton and From the city’s point of Burnaby to allow for increased view, the company should overseas exports of oil sands be looking after its own crude. emergency response using its “Trans Mountain seems own resources. to have assumed in its For the record, Burnaby application that the City of city hall is officially opposed JORDAN Burnaby would be largely to the project, and its line of responsible for fire, police, questioning shows it. health and emergency services,” Several questions suggest the tank the city says in an excerpt from its farm at the company’s Burnaby submission. Terminal is in the worst possible
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location, being on a steep slope, near residential neighbourhoods. For instance, “Please provide an assessment using a worst-case scenario should a fire/explosion fully engulf the expanded Burnaby Terminal while it was filled to maximum capacity.” Another suggests the company’s Edmonton Strathcona facility is much better located as in, “Why is Burnaby being chosen for a location that is inferior to that of Edmonton?” Please see MAYOR, A3
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Burnaby Hospital has the longest waits for surgery in the Fraser Health region. And the facility’s medical coordinator says that’s because its resources lag behind other hospitals. Dr. David Jones was responding to a Black Press story on how Fraser Health cut back on surgeries earlier this year to avoid an operating room budget overrun. That’s despite the fact surgical wait times at its hospitals are already much longer than Vancouver Coastal region. The two benchmarks the provincial government uses to gauge surgical waits is how long it takes to complete 50 per cent of cases and 90 per cent of cases. For the first three months of 2014 until March 31, Fraser completed half its surgeries within 6.4 weeks – the other half of patients waited longer than that. That’s compared to 5.1 weeks at Vancouver Coastal and 6.0 weeks for the B.C. average. Ninety per cent of surgeries performed in those months at Fraser waited less than 31.3 weeks (10 per cent waited longer). Please see REVIEW, A3