ACT Foundation and TransCanada Corporation partner to bring lifesaving CPR training to youth in Ontario and Quebec communities

OTTAWA, ON, 17/09/07

The Advanced Coronary Treatment (ACT) Foundation is pleased to announce that TransCanada Corporation is partnering with ACT to bring lifesaving CPR training to youth in high schools in Ontario and Quebec.

TransCanada is donating $90,000 as a lead community partner to support implementation of the ACT High School CPR Program in Clarington, Hearst, and Thunder Bay, Ontario and in Louiseville and Trois-Rivières, Quebec. The partnership will see nearly 6,000 Ontario youth and almost 1,500 Quebec youth empowered with the skills and knowledge to save a life each year.

“We are thrilled with TransCanada’s support as a lead community partner,” says ACT Foundation Executive Director Sandra Clarke. “Without their important contribution, the program in these communities would not be possible.”

The ACT High School Program is driven by a strong community-based model of partnerships and support. ACT fundraises at the community level to donate the mannequins, the training for teachers to become CPR instructors for their students, and the curriculum resources schools need to set up the program. TransCanada Corporation is playing a key role in this area.

“The health and safety of the public and our employees is one of TransCanada’s top priorities,” says Brian McConaghy, vice-president, TransCanada Community, Safety and Environment. “Because TransCanada does business in the local area, we seized the opportunity to help these young students gain the ability to make a serious contribution to the health and safety of others in their community.”

Today, ACT and TransCanada are launching the CPR Program in Hearst and surrounding area. This implementation will see over 650 youth trained each year using 205 donated mannequins.

The ACT Foundation’s goal in Ontario and Quebec is to set up the lifesaving CPR program in every high school. To help make this possible, ACT has secured provincial-level commitments from the governments of both provinces to enable the Foundation to seek matching funds for program resources at the community level through a public / private funding partnership. To date, the ACT High School CPR Program is in over 400 Ontario high schools and over 600,000 Ontario students have been empowered to save lives. In Quebec, the program has been brought to nearly 160 schools, reaching over 23,000 youth each year.

Research indicates citizen CPR response can improve survival rate for victims of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest by almost fourfold. With eight in 10 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occurring at home, empowering youth with CPR training as part of their high school education will help increase citizen CPR response rates over the long term.

About the ACT Foundation
The ACT Foundation is a national, award-winning charitable organization dedicated to promoting health and empowering Canadians to save lives. ACT is driving a national campaign to establish CPR as a mandatory program in every Canadian high school. ACT raises funds for CPR mannequins for schools and guides schools in program set up. To date over 1 million youth have been trained in more than 1,000 high schools across Canada. The Foundation and its core partners are winners of Imagine Canada’s “New Spirit of Community Partnership” Award. Core partners are companies in the research-based pharmaceutical industry: AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada, Pfizer Canada and sanofi-aventis. They provide ACT’s sustaining funding and are committed to the Foundation’s national goal of promoting health and empowering Canadians to save lives. For more information visit:www.actfoundation.ca.

About TransCanada Corporation
With more than 50 years experience, TransCanada is a leader in the responsible development and reliable operation of North American energy infrastructure including natural gas pipelines, power generation, gas storage facilities, and projects related to oil pipelines and LNG facilities. TransCanada’s network of wholly owned pipelines extends more than 59,000 kilometres (36,500 miles), tapping into virtually all major gas supply basins in North America. TransCanada is one of the continent’s largest providers of gas storage and related services with approximately 360 billion cubic feet of storage capacity. A growing independent power producer, TransCanada owns, or has interests in, approximately 7,700 megawatts of power generation in Canada and the United States. TransCanada’s common shares trade on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges under the symbol TRP.