Selling EPCOR water or wires would come to Council
A report arrived at Council today on how any future decisions would be made regarding the sale or transfer of major assets still in EPCOR that Edmontonians depend on. The report responded to a motion I put forward in the summer asking for this information. [Download the report here.]
[Clarification added Oct 3: Just to be clear, I asked these questions as a hypothetical. There are no proposals that I’m aware of to sell EPCOR as a whole or any part of the Water, Wastewater or Electricity Distribution & Transmission assets in Edmonton. The Capital Power spin-off was it.]
In a nutshell, the city regulates water and wastewater, and as regulator approval would be required if ownership of the potable water plants, the water pipes, or the wastewater plant were proposed to change. This decision would come to a council meeting.
Furthermore, even though Electricity distribution is regulated by the province, there is a franchise agreement in place for the use of right of way for power lines and any change to this agreement would also have to come to council for approval. Electricity transmission assets (high voltage) are treated differently in terms of regulation and other legalities, so the sale of such might not come to a Council meeting.
The report indicates that EPCOR would also need to seek approval from its shareholder (also the City), which it normally would do at a closed meeting, to sell any major assets.
So what we’ve learned is that the process might start behind closed doors between company and shareholder, but in the case of the utilities that people have expressed concern to me about losing (namely, water, wastewater and power distribution) there would be a Council debate on the matter – one would hope that this would not occur in private.
Councillor Henderson proposed a motion aimed at changing some of the governing documents to explicitly require that there be a Council meeting to consider any proposed sale of major assets in Edmonton, but it was defeated 7 to 5. I supported his motion.
In fairness, there was disagreement among councillors about the practical realities of owning a competitive business, and how this conflicts with our desire for transparency as elected officials. In this instance I leaned toward transparency going forward, having learned a valuable lesson about what a relative lack of transparency in the Capital Power decision process led to in terms of confusion and angst among the public.
I think a lot of the fear on this issue comes from losing control over something that the citizens “own”, and something that “we” get recurring revenues from. The past sales of public items to private operators has always resulted in an increase in costs and a decrease in services to consumers.
Sure, the city will get a nice one time injection of cash, which will get gobbled up in the waste of Bureaucracy.
The city (along with every large organization) wastes huge amounts of dollars in farming out this and that, either to consultants or from meetings that need meetings that need even more meetings.
Why do you think that the Federal Gun Registry ended up costing a billion dollars, when it was at best, a 5 million dollar project that any competent web programmer could have done in 6 months easily? Leaving the padding of expenses and outrageous rates being charged, you are left with paying consultants to attend meetings that have to be nit-picked and delegated down the chain, because you need more meetings to discuss the changes.
On a personal level, I have to wonder when the politics of being politically correct will turn into the reality of dealing with common sense. The people for the most part seem to have that, why don’t politicians? Do note, I am not implying that you don’t… I’m saying that on a whole, the “system” doesn’t, and neither does the Mayor.
thank you for sharing this information. I am very glad your site exists and you take the time to keep joe public informed. you do a great service for this city by keeping this site active and updated.
thank you.
as for power and water distribution. I personally would prefer the government have a controlling power over these assets, and keep them public. by the nature of these utilities they are monopolized. it is only cost effective to have a single power grid, or a single water way in the city. since only one connection to the power and water system goes to my house, I would prefer that connection I depend so greatly on be provided by the government. needless to say, I trust the government more in a monopoly situation, than a profit seeking corporation. this corporation may be inclined to fake a blackout to drive up prices, or simply cut back on power production or water quality standards in the interests of lowering operating expenses and increasing profits.
monopolies are known to be corrupt within the system of free enterprise, for the customer has no choice to discontinue service and find a better provider. at least with a government we have the right to representation, and can demand better services (with the threat of a undesirable election result for the candidate). in a corporate monopoly, the customer has very little power. only the shareholders have power, and there interests end at increasing the value of there shares.
We seem to be hearing more rumblings about selling off Epcor. Admittedly, I’m not that familiar with the whole situation, only having been in Alberta a couple of years.
I don’t understand why governments are so eager to sell off assets that generate revenue and help keep taxes lower for citizens. It would seem that some of our government officials are listening more to the lobbyists and those who would like to own these assets.
In BC, where I came from, it’s something the neocon Liberals are all to eager to do. I think that if the promise has been made not to sell off those assets in the past, government should stick to them. I know, I’m a dreamer.
I’ve added a clarification to the post which reads as follows: “Just to be clear, I asked these questions as a hypothetical. There are no proposals that I’m aware of to sell EPCOR as a whole or any part of the Water, Wastewater or Electricity Distribution & Transmission assets in Edmonton. The Capital Power spin-off was it.”