Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 16/02) - The plug has been pulled on the Northwest Territories Power Corp board.

The board of directors was fired Tuesday by the territorial government for refusing to withdraw an application for a flat rate.

Former NTPC board chairman Gord Stewart said the territory's demand to withdraw the flat rate would have meant undercutting the board's mandate and losing the confidence of Power Corp employees. - Nathan VanderKlippe/NNSL photo

"They don't leave us much choice," said Joe Handley, the minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, which is 100 per cent owned by the GNWT. "You can't have any board that's out doing its own thing."

Secretary to Cabinet Elizabeth Snider was appointed interim board chair. In addition to Snider, a five-person board of directors comprised of senior government officials has yet to be named.

Yesterday afternoon former chairman Gord Stewart was cleaning out his office on the seventh floor of the NorthwesTel building. Stewart, appointed board chair in March 2000, said withdrawing the flat-rate proposal would mean hurting the confidence of Power Corp management and undercutting the board's leadership mandate.

"I believe that an owner's job is to set direction and not to get involved in one-off issues," he said in a thinly veiled reproach to the territorial government. Stewart said the government should set broad policy directions, then let the board carry those out. Without that, the board loses its mandate.

"You have to enjoy the confidence of the people you're working for," he said.

And, he added, a board that is forced to change direction on an issue as significant as the flat-rate proposal also loses the confidence of its managers.

NTPC applied for the 23.21 cents per kilowatt for residential-use power on Sept. 6. On Oct. 8, Premier Stephen Kakfwi telephoned members of the local media to announce that the GNWT would instruct the corporation to pull back its application.

Kakfwi said cabinet had decided in August to order the power company to cease consultations on the flat rate.

The board denies that, saying communication of the cabinet decision never clearly called for a stop to flat-rate talks. The board even consulted two lawyers to examine the letter, and according to Stewart the lawyers concurred that the letter was unclear on the matter.

Not the first time

"If there was a miscommunication, it might have been somewhere else," he said. "It wasn't between the minister and myself or the board and myself."

It's not the first time cabinet has intervened in the power corporation's dealings. Last September, cabinet ordered NTPC not to apply for a franchise to provide power to Hay River. The power company would have been bidding against local provider Northland Utilities.

Last November, cabinet ordered the company not to issue seven planned layoff notices to employees in Hay River. Those layoffs would have saved about a million dollars.

"This is the third time that knee-jerk politics has derailed this board and the company," said Inuvik board member Tom Zubko.

Other members also stood by their refusal, which they agreed to unanimously.

"I'm well-respected in my community and other communities that my word means something. If I told them one day the rate was good, and the next day said it was bad, what does that do to me?" said board member Rod Hardy, a vocal supporter of the flat rate.

The GNWT hires and releases or fires all board members for the power company. It's the first time in the company's history that the board has been turfed.

Last Friday, public utilities chairman John Hill sent a letter to everyone who had registered as an intervenor in the rate process, warning that the application had been frozen until the board came to a firm decision.

Another board member, Ric Bolivar, said he refused to withdraw from the flat-rate proposal because the GNWT had not allowed the full public its input on the idea.

"The executive council referred to the fact that they are the shareholders of the power corporation, and in my mind that's totally wrong. There are 35,000 other people who are shareholders, and they have the same right as any other shareholders of a corporation," he said. "In all corporations all shareholders have the right to vote."

Bolivar acknowledged the GNWT's right to do as it sees fit.

"But is it morally right to do that?" he said.

Premier Stephen Kakfwi was unavailable for comment.