Episode 130: Leadership, building for the future, and getting back our mojo, with Manitoba Hydro’s Allan Danroth

[Music] As we look at these nation building projects and some of them are tied to defense, we have to get back to that zeal and when you read about Vimeon how they succeeded, one of the ways they succeeded was they got out of British and French bureaucracy that was overtaking their armed forces and they took an entrepreneurial mindset and we have to get back to tapping into that part of our DNA as we embark on this whole nation building and transmission. [Music] Welcome to the flux capacitor, a podcast about the future of electricity. I'm Francis Bradley of electricity Canada. This is number one three zero, episode 130 of the flux capacitor. I've been chatting with the industry's business leaders, thought leaders, new market players and stakeholders. I've built this as an opportunity for you the listener to get a sense of the conversations that are taking place in the sector. In hallways, over coffee, outside of parliamentary committees, in airport lounges and debt industry events. This podcast was recorded in the hallways of just such an event at our Powering Partnerships Summit, adjacent to the meeting of electricity Canada's board of directors and this is with one of the members of my board. My guest on the podcast today is. Alan Dan Roth, president CEO of Manitoba Hydro. Alan joined me for a wide ranging chat. We talk about the challenges and changes in leadership and communication, post-pandemic and the importance of in-person interaction for building camaraderie and effective leadership. Alan highlights Manitoba Hydro's integrated operations, the increasing demand for electricity, the need for gas and renewable energy sources and the potential regionally for nuclear power. We also discuss the political dynamics of running a crown corporation, the importance of regional collaboration and the significance of historical events in defining and understanding Canadian identity. We close the conversation with Alan's book recommendation. Here is my conversation with Alan recorded in Vancouver in late November 2025. Alan, welcome to the podcast. I get to do this one live in person as opposed to over zoom. So it's great for you to be able to join me here in beautiful Vancouver. Beautiful Vancouver, my home province. My home province. Your home province? Yeah, border raise. Well, we might touch on that at one point. But yeah, so we're here. We've got electricity Canada board meeting. We've got a bunch of other events. But I figured we're here in person. Let's not stand in front of screens in our separate hotel rooms and actually talk in person. I'm so happy we get to do that. I can't stand teams. I can't say. I never have to do another teams call. I'll be happy. Five and a half years since the beginning of the pandemic, it seems it's like so much of work just gravitated online. And it's I mean, we talk about other stuff, but maybe just for a minute on that. We mentioned it. It really changed work and it changed relationships and it changed our ability to connect. It has. And what it's created is it's created a bit of a leadership conundrum because you know, one of the first jobs as a CEO is to figure out like what's your succession plan, right? Okay. I give if I get struck down who's next. Right. And part of leadership and part of identifying that is you have to meet people at the water cooler. We're sitting here and pointing folks can't see, but I'm pointing out a water cooler in the room. And you have to you know, just kind of that 70% of communication is body language or 80% of communication is body language. So you lose all of that and you lose the camaraderie, right? Like I always like to start a meeting with the laugh. And there's a lot of easy wins out there, right? Like, oh, did you see the game last night? Oh, did you see this last night or do this or that or whatever. And when you're on when you're on on zoom, you don't do that. Everybody just kind of logs in and they're all on mute. And it's like high france, just high on, hustle and gather. Yeah, good. And like, you don't have that because you're worried about who's recording who's listening and you don't have that camaraderie, you know, you've got a haircut. You know, first thing you said when you saw me, you're going to be here. I can't grow beard. I'll make fun of myself for not being able to grow beard. But that's how you build relationships. That's how you build camaraderie. And so for me, I think it's created a leadership conundrum. And we have people now a quick little story. You know, one of the places I was at previously, we had a person, a very bright young person. And this person, we thought she had a really good future. And she left us for a job. And she left for a little bit more money. We told her we'd manage the money. And she, and then she said, but I get to work virtual. And we're like, well, you can work virtual a couple days a week. And she's like, you don't understand. I get to work virtual every day. And I'm like, for how long? She's like, for the rest of my life. I'm like, you're 27. Yeah. Like, you have all this personality and like, what? Yeah. That's a, that's a thing. And I guess maybe this is the old man moment. Maybe I just won't understand. Maybe I'm the problem. I don't know. But to me, it's just so weird. And you know, how can you ever lead when you're not there? Right. Yeah. I think, I mean, it's a difference between kind of working and leading. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I, you know, it's, I mean, we could go on, but I'm probably need to talk about other things. But I just, I, I have not, we have a hybrid work system. I've been very clear. I'm, I'm not going to lead on that. I'm going to, I'm not fishers. I don't need to lead on that issue. But, you know, I wouldn't hurt my feelings to be in every day. And, and I'm in. And a number of us are in. But that's a choice. And I, and I make it very clear the organization. That's my personal choice. Yeah. Because it just doesn't work for me. I mean, it might be spent for two and a half years. Well, it's not a good for me. Yeah. I don't, I don't think it was good for anybody. And, yeah, we're, we're, we're hybrid as well. And I look at the, value we get out of those days when everybody's together. And, you know, everybody's in the office. And, you know, as you say, the, it's the conversations around the, around the water cooler. It's the ability to connect at a, at a personal level that make all the difference. And it's not only I think a question of leadership, it's also just a question of, it makes you, I think, a happier person, honestly, to be able to connect with people. It does. It does. And it, you know, I've never believed work as a family. And, and, you know, companies that say that, I've never really bought it. Because companies at times can do very cruel things. Right. They can do mass mass layoffs. Well, families don't do that. Or most families don't do that. But we're a community. And if you're going to create a community, right, then you have to have camaraderie. And you have to be, and, into your point, you're there. You work more than you spend time with your, your spouse or your kids. Right. So like, have a laugh. Go for a walk. Yeah. Exchange ideas. What do you eat? What do you watch? What, what, you know, all sorts of interesting things that come out of it. Well, and we're going to finish off with what to read. I saw that there. I always, I always finish off with that. But let's, let's, let's talk a little bit about Hydro. Manitoba Hydro. Yeah. Interesting company. This is kind of the second podcast in a row where, as I was thinking about the podcast, it suddenly made me feel old. Scott Balfour and I chatted last week. And of course, I started off with, oh, I remember when. And of course, here with Manitoba Hydro, I was thinking, oh, I remember when, when I paid Hydro, Manitoba Hydro, but together with this company. So again, it makes me feel a little bit old. But maybe for the listener, kind of where is Manitoba Hydro today? Because it's been a company that's been loving. And it's, and you know, we let it be great to chat about, you know, some of the challenges that you see. But if you were to kind of describe Manitoba Hydro to somebody that isn't from Canada and doesn't understand how, how the system works, how would you describe the company? So we're really unique. We're completely integrated on both the electricity and the gas. And the gas side, right, right. Often joke that we should rename or sell as Manitoba electricity and gas because that's what we do. So we have all the transmission, all the distribution, all the generation and all the retail on electricity. And we also have all the gas and all the retail on gas on that side of the business. So all the pipelines, all the distribution, all that. So we're truly integrated. STEM discerned. So big business got about a million customers all told. We've got, I think, approaching 100,000 kilometers of transmission and distribution of lines. We have 16 hydroelectric dams. I think what most people would benefit from understanding is all of our generations in the north, almost all of our generation is in the north, certainly our big generation. And we have to transport those electrons to the south. So way back when we were some of the originators, the early pioneers, if you will, on HVDC on Big HVDC. So we have three Big HVDC lines. Two of which are approaching, if not already, the oldest HVDC lines in existence in need of major refurbishment. I'm sure we can talk about that in a second. But that's who we are. We're a big business. And here's the other really interesting thing. Now in Del Valle, I've just done something that's really, really unique. In 2008, we opened a tower in downtown Winnipeg. That building was considered, we partnered with the architectural firm in Stuttgart, Germany, the Homa Porsche. That building, when it was built, was considered by many to be one of the 10 most important buildings in the world at that time. That is a living, breathing ecosystem in this building. We were early pioneers on just the utilization of space, the exchanging of air, the whole building exchanges air about every 15 minutes. 40% of the year the building uses no energy for heating or cooling. It's all natural. Articulating blinds and all this stuff censors everywhere, fascinating. So we'll go back to our earlier comment about what a great place to work. We have about 2,000 of our 6,000 people are assigned to that tower. I want a great place to work. I want a great purpose. What a great thing that Manitobans did. And it speaks to the spirit, that and the HVDC system speak to the spirit that existed at one point in time at Manitobaj, that entrepreneurial spirit. And is that entrepreneurial spirit that we're going to come back at? We're trying to find it. Yeah. We're really trying to find it. But it's in the DNA, really. When you start thinking about the history of the company, it's. That's part of the message to the group is, I know it's in the DNA. And I like to say that Manitobaj was a freighter. I like to make it more like a frigate. Still big, more nimble and quick, a little bit faster. That's really what we're trying to do. And tap back into that entrepreneurial spirit. So when you're kind of looking at the medium and long-term challenges, what are the big things on the horizon? You've got demand increasing. Is that going to be a challenge? And then you've got your current asset base that needs to be renewed, refurbished, rebuilt. What are those things looking like? Maybe let's start a little bit about what does the future of demand look like for electricity and the problems? And how are you going to meet it? Right. Right. So, like everybody, we have a lot of headwinds. And so the future of demand is this. But the easiest way to explain it is our previous peak was in place for five years. We broke our peak in mid-December last year. So set a new peak. It wasn't even that cold. Wasn't that windy. Wasn't that bad of a day. Okay. Five weeks later we set a new peak. And several weeks after that we set another new peak. So think about that. The previous peaks were in place for the previous peak was in place for five years. And then we broke it and broke it again in rapid succession. So what does the future look for us? Look like for us. It's like everybody else. It's more and more demand. And I can remember arguing this. Early in my career with some senior leaders saying, you know, demand is going to go up and I remember some senior leaders saying, demand is going to go down. Everything is more efficient. And I'm like, you have to have more of it. Right. I grew up in a house with no TV or one TV. Right. How many screens do I have in the house? If I count all the iPads, computer screens, phone screens and TV screens, you're like about 15 screens in my house. 20 screens in my house. Yeah, they're all energy efficient. But they're all on all the time. They're all listening all the time and Larry and Alexa and this and that and the next thing. And then start plugging in your car. So the future is more and more used. And so if you think big picture, where we need to get to as a country and I'm speaking more for the country less so for Manitoba at the moment is just virtual grids, you know, and so virtual power plants rather. And so, you know, vehicle to grid technology and what they're doing in England and this idea that, you know, look, if you all plug in your vehicles at a set time, I'll commit to you all contract to you that I'm going to have your vehicle powered by seven o'clock in the morning. But I may not start powering until 2 a.m. Right. And they drain it down. I may power it down. Yeah, you tap into it. You use it several times. Yeah. And you extrapolate that and you look at what some of the more innovative players are doing and I'm not saying we would do this. But if you sort of just think, if you blue sky, just sort of think outside of the box, you know, power companies that sell cars and chargers, there's power companies in Europe that are now selling cars and chargers. There are power companies in Europe that are now giving discounts if you're near a wind firm. Well, guess what? Suddenly everybody wants a wind firm in their backyard. That's a switch, yeah. Right. That's a switch. Right. Right. Just like, hey, I'm going to give you a discount on your bill because you're going to let me put a wind firm on the back. I'm going to give you another discount on your bill because I'm going to sell you a car and you're going to let me charge that car. You're going to hit on an app and say, I'm done for the night. You choose, you know, whether it's 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, whatever you're done for the night. Now I'm going to charge your car and you just need it back by 7, burning an emergency. And then, oh, by the way, you're also, I'm also going to give you a hot water tank for free. With the commitment that between us that we're going to keep it at 140. But when I really, really need it, no more than five times a year, you're going to let me turn it down to 137. Right. Right. That's where we've got to go because we have these big build projects and I, they're probably not going to work in the future. So whether it's big dams and BC or big dams and Kuwak or big dams and Manitoba, I don't know that we're going to get the social license to do that in the future. And the other thing that's happened is the length of time to build these is going up and up and up. Right. And so who can park their balance sheet for that long to build that? So how are we going to meet the demand? Well, I think in the short term, we have to do more gas and we can look at renewable gas and do some things when people are going to be upset to hear that. We've got to have some gas and some wind and some solar. Yeah, you're looking at that in Brandon. Yeah. And we've got to do that. We need the gas just for peaks for the days of the year where we can't kick the curve down the road. And then I think the play, I don't, I don't, I don't, profess to have any great knowledge. I mean, lots of people are thinking this way, but I think the play is, can we do nuclear and can we do nuclear at pace? That's going to be the question. Right. And folks that I'm watching, obviously I think we're all watching Darlington. We're all, I think those of us that are watching are watching Tennessee Valley Authority. And then I think the, you know, I'm going to do a big shout out here. I think Rupert and his crew over in Saskatchewan. I think they're on the sun. And I think that they're really, you know, I've toured their facilities, I've toured their gas plans. It's really interesting the culture they've got going there. You know, they build a gas plan, they take the learnings, they build another gas plant, they build a better, they take the learnings, they build another gas plant, they build a better. They bring that, they have that entrepreneurial DNA. It looks like to me. And I just, I'm, I'm betting, I'm betting on Rupert in part because he's my neighbor. So he gets it, gets it right. I'd like to be a part of that. And I think the other thing that we're going to have to do, we're going to talk about this on the panel tomorrow is, you know, we talk about East West, right? Well, we're a big country. We're a big country with bad weather and lots of natural resources and lots of, you know, right tolders and whatnot, distance and distance and distance and long distance, right? But can we start thinking more regional? So what is a region? You know, is Manitoba and Saskatchewan a region? Is Manitoba and Saskatchewan Alberta a region? Right. Right. Right. And if we become a region and then we do some energize and we start to figure out a way to just kind of move some power around or we'll some power, you know, to different areas, like does that benefit us? We have to, we all know we've evolved north to south. We have to go east west and the U.S. is going east west. And that's what the U.S. is doing. You know, they're doing HVDC lines between Minnesota and Montana, I believe it is. And they've got, you know, you can go on and look at the different developers and It's sort of these 300, 400, 500 kilometer or mile distances that they're doing. It's not close to close. But it becomes a bit of a patchwork. But it works, right? It could work. And I just look at Austin thing, you know, at the risk of sounding like Trump. I look at that border between Austin's Saskatchewan, and I mean, it's just a line, right? Like I can erase that look. It's just a line. And, you know, if I can do things better in my jurisdiction, why wouldn't I do that in benefit Saskatchewan? And if Rupert can go and do things better in his jurisdiction, you know, why not participate with him? You know, I mean, we can move. If I can move these electrons from the far north of the Manitoba to the far south of the Manitoba, surely I can move these electrons from Regina doing a much shorter distance. It's a shorter distance and it's an easier distance if you've ever drove it. It's a lot easier. It's a lot flatter, a lot straighter. A lot flatter, a lot straighter. And if you don't have how many lakes and rivers do you cross when you're coming all the way down from the north? Yeah, a lot, a lot. There's no roads. That was one of the big eye openers. You know, I've lived in a number of different provinces and I'd been the Manitoba. But until you're there, you know, they call these lakes inland oceans. They're massive. You get in a plane to go up to Gillon. And you look at both sides of the plane. And as far as you can see, it's water. They're massive. Yeah. Absolutely massive. You know, full coast guard stations, the whole, like, it's just some kind of big fisheries. You know, and they used to call it New Iceland, right? And so it's just, it's really maybe, and again, maybe I'm, maybe the listeners are much smarter than me, but it's just really open my eyes. You sort of look at a map and really, really look at a map and go, "Man, that really is something like that is massive." Yeah, right. Yeah. So, yeah. So you've mentioned you worked in a number of different provinces. I always ask folks to come on the podcast and build their journey. Sure. And I always make the same joke. So, Alan, when you were a kid in the playground, you always dreamed of doing it. No. All right. So, what was your pathway from the playground to Hydro? Well, like every Canadian kid I dreamed of being a hockey player. Okay. And I grew up in BC. Yeah. I grew up in BC a little bit of a stint in the, in the Middle East. So, I grew up playing, you know, hockey and road hockey. And I always say, "If I had size and speed and could skate and shoot, I would have been a heck of hockey player." Well, those four. Yeah. You would have had. So, the only four things hold me back. It's just like my hockey career. Well, I could skate. Yeah. It would be a start. So, then I, so we grew up in Southern BC and then my dad moved us to Iran. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And we were in Iran when the revolution hit. Okay. '79. Yeah. And we got lifted out under Operation Baton. And so we got lifted out. And the only work that my dad, my dad was a pulp miller. Worked in pulp mills. He was a power engineer. He was a steam, a boiler and steam turbine generating expert. Oh, wow. He was the, what's known as the first class power engineer? Yep. And so he went to print trooper, which was on North Coast to BC and a roughened tumble, a community, a roughened tumble mill. And he went up there and he stayed. We stayed. And so that you'd recall, you know, those were tough times, right? The '80s and high interest rates and all that. And I was one place where there was work. And so we just, we settled down. We stayed. My sister, I've got three other siblings. My youngest sister's still there, a reason her family there. And so anyways, you know, good place to grow up. And did some work in the mills there and in the steam plants. And then eventually went to other parts of BC and then Alberta as well, working in pulp mills. Culminated in me, running a pulp mill in NACQIC, New Brunswick. Just a set of Frederickton. Yeah. So at the time, I was the youngest, one of the youngest, if not the youngest pulp mill manager in Canada at the time, I was 35. And that mill, fascinating reading if you can dig up the old, globe mill article. So the previous owner had stolen the pension. So the mill had been shut down for 16 months on four hours notice, stolen the pension. And I was 35 and there was guys working at that mill that had worked at that mill. For 35 years, that had no pension. Think of that. They'd started to work at that mill, the year I was born and they had no pension. And it was just devastating to the community. But we came in, it was with Tomiske, a company out of Quebec, out of Tomiskeming, a Frank Dittori, Timbeck, and Birla out of India. It was a joint venture partnership and they restarted it. And that was incredible. So I know this is a power podcast, but just it's a big, heavy industrial plant and we didn't lock it. They didn't lock anything up, drain anything or rotate any shafts or lubricate any pumps or any bearings or anything. For how long? 16 months. With some of the most corrosive, caustic chemical substances you can imagine. We broke everything. We broke everything. The first thing we did was we went in and we killed all the rats. This is a place that's coming fastened with rats. And then we started to take back it. We jumped shafts, like massive shafts and right off the bearings, jump up 10 feet up and 5 feet over and we broke everything. But it was a great learning experience. And it was a real, first real test of leadership. It was a funny story. So how did I get to lead that? This guy called me and I just love the story. He called me and he said, you know, yeah, my name's So and So and he's like, I want you to come out here and run a mill. And I was on shift at the mill in Prince George at the time. And I said, look, I said, appreciate this, but I said, I don't think you want it. I think you want my dad. And he said, no, no, no, you said you're the young one, right? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, we have a problem with this particular kind of boiler and your dad's an expert in that. We hear you're pretty good in that. And I said, okay. And he said, and I'll never forget this. He was a real character. He said, we went through the A list of guys. We had no takers. We went through the B list of guys. We had no takers. We were at the top of the sea list. And we figure if we get you, we'll get your dad too. He'll come and he'll give you advice in the background. And he was a rug. So blue. Next thing you know, hey sweetheart, said to my wife, you know, we're moving from BC to New Brunswick. Had a great time. Great fun, great time. The mill still run today. Great thing for the community. Wow. Yeah, it was great to get that. That's a real success story in a really, really, really tough industry. And I always say about that industry, you know, it's 400 inputs from 200 suppliers. Somebody always has you over a bell. If you can manage in the pulp industry, you can manage anywhere. I really, surely believe that because that is a tough, it is everything Warren Buffett says, don't do. Capital intensive non-preparatory. Don't do it. Here we're doing it, right? So then I left that. I left with, as I like to say, I left with 50% of the grandkids at the time. So there was a real poll to go back. And so after several years, okay, we're going to go back. And it was like, well, where are we going to go? And there was an opportunity to run a coal-fired generating plant just outside of Edmonton. And same thing. Just with capital power? Yeah. Appcore. Appcore at the time. Up to the time. Okay, before they spun off. Yeah, so it was the Genesee generating plant, 1,300 megawatts. Yeah, Genesee, yeah. One sub, two super critical boilers, of course, first class power engineer. And so boiler steam and all this kind of stuff. And my mouth coal. Mine and 5 million tons of year coal. My mouth coal joint venture operation was shared, another great company. So I was like, let's go do this. And then capital power was created. So for the listeners that might not recall. So appcore regulated utility owned by the city of Edmonton, been around for 120 years, was doing wires in, water, and power. And they decided to spin the power off into a public-created entity called capital power. Provided that capital power, the city Edmonton had. And I believe they still do have a golden share that said the head office of capital power will always remain in Edmonton. So we were spun off and that was okay. And then through that, we got up to some senior levels of leadership within the organization. And then they went through a retrenching strategy. We sold 19 power plants to Atlantic power out of the US. And I oversaw that transaction and then of course, there was this retrenchment. And then I ended up finding myself looking for work. So teenage kids by that time, emerging teenage kids, just on the precipice of becoming teenagers. And very big and soccer players. Both my kids are big soccer players. And so made some investments and stuff. And sort of family investments, small stuff, really just essentially just bought myself a job. But that was good. because that allowed me to flex that entrepreneurial muscle. - Right, right. - And really try to understand, there are different skill sets, right? To manage thousands of people and then to manage a couple dozen. It's a different skill set. Where you're the chef cook, bottle washer, everything. - All one. - All one. So did that and then once the kids were sort of in an age where they were on their way, it was like, okay. Now get back in and eventually found my way back into the pulp paper industry and then found my way to Meditoba Hydro. I had applied for this job at Meditoba Hydro back in 2018. I didn't get it. And but when the job came up again, I was like, hey, remember me? I'm still interested. (laughing) Many years later. So here we are. And it's a different company than it was in 2018. Different challenges. Different pressures. - Yeah. Different government. - Different government. - Right. So shareholders changed, yeah. - Yeah. It's a really interesting thing, right? Like the shareholders always constant, right? - Yes. - The shareholders is the people of Meditoba. - Yeah. - But the political ideology and the voice speaking for the shareholders changes. And so, you know, it's really interesting is you try to develop strategy. You take policy from them and you take, you know, governance from them or guidance from them rather and then you take guidance and governance from your board and then you layer on your own personal things in terms of what you see and what you think the organization needs to do. - Yeah. - And then you try to come up with a strategic plan. - So you've worked for investor-owned companies and now you're running a major crown. - Yeah. - From a governance standpoint, is it more complex because of that there's shareholders, but then there's a political dimension that changes potentially every four years or so? - It really is. It really is. So if you go back to, you know, if you go back to sort of my first big leadership job, you know, Tembek, Berla, you know, Tembek's public traded. Berla's privately held but massive. They're like the Irvings of India. Like they're massively 35, 40 billion. They were top five or top 10 in the world in like concrete, copper, aluminum. It was just like insane with these folks. We're involved in, but very micro. Very micro. And Frank Dittori, who was a great guy, great leader, did great things at Tembek. He was just a very micro guy. - Yeah. - And so you learn a lot there. But also they had good governance structures and they were very good at like, we're going to be micro, but we're a governance board. We're not a management board and you're going to be responsible for managing this thing. Then you go to EPCOR. And EPCOR, you know, what had happened there, you know, over the years the leadership had carved out a rhythm where, you know, they got very successful. They were in three provinces and eight states at the time. And they cut a big check, dividend check to the city of Antennair. So they had a lot of attitudes. So they function almost like a public company. They had a blue chip board from across Canada to this day. You see that? You still see that they've got a blue chip board from across Canada. And they just had really good structures. And even though they only had one shareholder, okay, which is the people of Ebonton. And even though the leader would change and the political ideology would change from time to time, they had a structure in place that basically, the mayor and council couldn't enter the building like they couldn't pick up the phone and give direction. Their voice was the person they put on the board. So very, very good governance. So when EPCOR split generation old capital power, all that infrastructure, all that framework, all that sort of governance muscle, if you will, was already there, right? This crown, you know, crowns are created differently, right? And a lot of times they're created outside of the Canada Business Corporation's Act. And they are under their own act. And so ours, if you look at it, it's really actually quite unique. But regardless of how we're structured, Manitoba Hydro, unlike any other province I've lived in, has evolved to where it's a wedge issue to win elections. And politicians will tell you that I will struggle to get a certain part of base activated. I might struggle to get white pickup driving, bulk app wearing males between this age demographic. But to me that I say, and the opposition is gonna privatize Hydro, they click and they listen. And there's this idea that were, they call it, we really don't like this. They cost the crown jewel. And my response is, well, the jewels are pretty tarnished on this week, careful here. So great company, but we just, we haven't made the investments we should be making. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. - And so we've evolved to where we're a wedge issue to win. And that is in an industry where it takes you 10 years, well, we'll just use rough numbers, it takes you 20 years to build it down, 10 years to build a nuke, five years or less to build a gas turbine. The four year election cycle, is the shortest of all. - Tessent fit, right? Like we have long lead time things that cost a lot of dollars, see federal government and fighter planes, right? Like we have, - It's sort of big years, yeah. - Yeah, like you can't win this around. You know, we as an organization, we need clarity and intent and direction. And if we get that clarity and intent and direction, we can do great things. But unlike, yeah, I joke, and I say that, and there's no disrespect to, Crystal Riley, I retired now, lovely man. I used to joke with him a little bit, a few times that I met him was just like, basically, I grew up BC, and nobody in my family knows who the CEO of BC Hydro is. And I'll sit in my family, like do you know if it's a man or a woman? Nobody knows. - Right. - But you would not believe the amount of people that know, like we are on the front page of the paper every second day. - Yeah. - And it's a bit of a problem because the temperature is so amped up. You know, I joke, we have, we do really good work. And we have great people. And, but where everybody's favorite punching bag. Oh my God, where everybody's favorite punching bag. - That's gotta be hard. From a governance standpoint, from a, and it's probably, probably at times hard on the staff, on the team. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That can't be easy. - No. - It's very weird, like, we'll do things. We'll have somebody from the community come out and say, I want, you know, I would like you to do this. Or I would like this piece of land over here. I'd like to turn into a parking lot or something. I'd like to do something with this piece of land, you know. And very respectful. We're always very respectful. And we try to answer everything that we get. Well, I ask it very detailed, like, no, you know, it's, you know, it's no, but it's no for these reasons. Little, little, little, one term planning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Next thing, you know, it doesn't even go to the board. It just goes right to government. And next thing, you know, you got to call back from government. Hey, what about this? It's like, really like, like, we have 2000 buildings. And I don't know, thousands and thousands pieces of land. And big things to worry about. We get talking about this thing. So it's different. It's different. One of the things that I've noticed just in terms of, it's different is a change in the government's interest in, because we were talking about interconnections earlier in the, the Kovalek hydro fiber link. Yeah. Is the previous government I didn't think was enthusiastic about it, but the current government is now interested in that project. Is that really? So we've been asked, so this is the hydro fiber link up in the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we've been asked to set aside power to do this. And, you know, if you look at, if you look at the Scandinavian countries, like they've electrified a lot of their north. The north, yeah. And we have it. And so when you talk about critical minerals and when you talk about national security and when you talk about, as they were in the last election, both leaders talk about, you know, getting a defense base in the north. And when we talk about melting ice gaps and all this thing, and there's basically going to be a land race going on in our Arctic. Right. Yeah. And we need to defend this, right? Well, it's pretty tough to defend something if you don't have power. Yeah. Right. And so getting power up there, I think, if you look at things of national importance, you know, that's definitely it. It's definitely important. In addition to getting the critical minerals. And in addition to linking the community. because the one thing that's also gonna happen is what's gonna happen when we run a power line to all these different communities? Well, we're gonna clear it right away. And that right away can become a road, or a winter can become like a pretty decent snowmobile trail with like some very clear boundaries, you know. Bush and trees on either side. That's right. You can be straight this way. Like that's one thing we do very well. All of us in this business, we do very well. You know, you're flying around this country. You can see big long straight lines over some pretty incredible terrain. And so I understand the passion behind it and the reason behind it. And our government has asked us to look at it and they put in a transmission study and we will take a look at it. They've asked us to set aside power off in the future to do that. And that's so there are our owner and that's the direction and that's what we'll do. And I understand the reasons for. Here's the other side of it though, is who's gonna pay for it? Right. Because, you know, we're gonna have to run it from a point, call it somewhere near Churchill. You know, maybe not right in Churchill, maybe a little bit to the Wester wherever, a little bit further south of the world. But from somewhere down, you know, up around there, we're gonna have to run a line. And that line's gonna go for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kilometers. Well, who's gonna pay for that line on the mental toll beside? Right. Like, why would my rate pierce? And that's part of the quirks of the hydroact, right? I can't cost the rate pierce any money unnecessarily on Dooly. And so we have to understand who's gonna pay for that. And I really believe that when we talk about nation building, and when we talk about the things that we have to do, I believe that power and transmission is one of those things. And we really need to figure out East West and also North, not south so much, but like North. We have to figure that out. And it can be a tremendous boom to the economy, and it can be a tremendous learning for the country in a great moment. Because of course, if you've got big transmission line going up, well, guess what else you got? You got a big fiber links going up. Yep, right? And you can also, I mean, make the right way big enough. You can get a road. You can get a big enough, you can get a pipeline. Like, there's a lot of things, how big you want your right way, right? Like, it doesn't just have to have a transmission tower. And how do we do that? And how do we do that in a country where you're going to cross a lot of sovereign territory, and encroach on a lot of nations, and how do we sort of pull everybody up together and pull everybody along? And that's a question that the big folks in Ottawa will answer, but it's interesting. Right. Sorry, that's a very long answer. No, but I'm not sure what I'm asking. But it's all the things that are going on in our head, as we're trying to understand this. No, and I think if you've unpacked a couple of really important issues, taken all of those things together, the question quite naturally is, why is the rate pair of Manitoba on the hook for this? Right. So now look at what gets the question of what is a rate pair versus taxpayer? What is the nation building a public good and therefore? Yeah. And so now, you know, what a fascinating, and through this whole thing, obviously in my position, I just stay, you know, apolitical. I always exercise my right to vote. That's part of parcel of what happens when you get airlifted out by NATO in the middle of a revolution. And she really likes it. At a very age, I'm always going to vote. Just important votes are important. And I'm proud to say that I vote across, I don't belong to any party. I have voted across the spectrum. And I have no qualms about saying that I voted NDP, I have a liberal, I voted conservative. I vote for who I think is the best leader at the time, and what the country needs at that moment in time, or what the province that I'm in needs at that moment in time. And I just, you know, that's just me. And so what an interesting moment in time to have two leaders that were basically on the same agenda, right? They both had, you know, what, a stance on the US, and they both had a stance on one nation, you know, one project, one approval. Right. Right. And now, layer into that, we have Dawn Farrell in the major project's office, former CEO of Trans-Alton. So she understands power as good as anyone in this country, very, very lovely lady. We have Hodgson, power background as well, don't know him, but former Chair, Hodgson, yeah. Former Chair, I draw one. We've got Savia, you know, clear for the previous council, former president of Hodgson, the president of Hodgson, the president of Hodgson, and, you know, not to be forgotten, BCE, so probably, you know, probably currently at this moment, like probably our most prominent CEO, like most credentialed CEO, right? And then of course you've got Karni, right? And Brookfield, right? And Bank of Canada. Bank of England. So we have four really big brains that basically I believe Karni as well, like four of them, like all get to one degree or two. They all get to one degree or another. They understand power. They understand infrastructure. They understand transmission. Right? So we've got to get it done. Because this is like the moment. Right. This is the moment in time. Yeah. Like never again will you, like, you know, if you can't get a deal done, right? With those four. Like that's, yeah. I don't even want to think about that. Right? All right. I'm going to ask you one last question before I get to you. I feel like I have to reel all your questions. I had all this list of questions. I feel like I've just proudered all the drill and all your questions. So the folks at home, like I think we got the question too. You know what? We were actually rarely rarely getting to the thing. But my staff will tell you, I do this. It's like a gender. What a gender. The gender left. So before we get to the book, I did, I did want to ask a question about, Sure. Because you'd mentioned natural gas earlier. Yeah. And I believe there was a proposal put in for two, two hundred and fifty megawatt gas units. But now the government is saying that probably three is what they want to move forward with their brand. And this is, but this is part of ensuring that you meet peak demand. And also independence from having to rely on the neighbor to the south. Yeah. So look, in terms of the government's policy. Yeah. And so, you know, a man told a hydro again going back to what I just said. Like we just try to be very independent on these things. We have historically exported 20% of our power roughly to the US. And they've been a great customer. But the other part of it is, is we've also imported power from the US. So droughts, cold weather. There are summer peaking load. Right. They need it for AC. We're a winter peaking load. And it's, and we have great relations. And it's truly a case of helping neighbors, neighbors helping neighbors. And the, you know, the folks of North Dakota and Minnesota that we deal with are just fantastic people. You know, Bethany over at Elite Energy and the folks down at Excel and just everybody. I mean, they're just amazing people. And so, so yeah, we stay away from the rhetoric. But at the same time, you know, you, you have to ask the question, right? Like, can I rely on North South? Like what, if I just put my hat on and what is the best thing for Man of Tobins. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't at least ask the question, like, can I rely on that? Like I think I get, when I talk to them, you know, certainly we're part of my soul. And we feel like we can all rely on another. But as we've seen, like no two days are the same. Policy can change on a whim. Policy can change on a tweet. Right. Right. Yeah, it's not, it's not your counterparts and the companies that you're connected to. That's right. And so it's just like, it's the broader thing. The, the thing is we should bolster that. Yeah. And we need to bolster that. We have, you know, a point in time around 2030 when, when we have a need date. And, and what's the fastest way to get, I can't build it down that fast. Yeah. Right. I can't build a new, that fast. No. So, and these are just peakers. You know, they're going to be used single digit percent, one, two, three percent of the time. Mm-hmm. On the coldest days and the. On the days when, you know, if you don't have any issues. On the days when, when we have it. And, yeah, the thing on taking back to where we started, we have three HVDC lines and two of them are some of the oldest in the world. And so the, the life of those lines is 35 years. Mm-hmm. And they're at 55. Mm-hmm. That's a problem. And it's going to take a decade to fix them. So by the time they're fixed, it's, they're going to be at 65. Right. to be 30 years past the end of life date. So we're going to have some capacity that we, and things are changing, flood, tornado. Like, forget that if the reliability of the language, I wonder if a tornado takes out the line, right? And the ability to get parts for that line because it's so obsolete, it's not going to be an impact of hours or days. It's going to be an impact of months, if not years. So good thing. Yeah, we're doing that. All right. So we've got this, what we call it, the flux capacitor book club. We all want to book recommendations. And I actually use it more often than not for my own reading. I've read quite a few of the books that have been recommended by folks. OK. So what book are you going to add to my reading? So I saw that question. I was like, oh, that's good. Because I think like a lot of senior literacy days, I get caught in a trap where the only bloody thing I read is emails and the odd sports story. So personal favorite of mine. And I think it's a really appropriate book at this time. Pure Burton wrote two books, one in particular. So he wrote a book titled Vimy about Vimy Ridge. And if you have never been to Vimy Ridge, it is, I think. Well, it is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. What those young men and my grandfather's cousin was one of them. And what those young men did in those conditions to succeed were the French and the British failed. If you want to know what goes to the core DNA of Canada in this time where the US ambassador is taking shots at us. And what is it to be Canadian? And people are questioning what it is to be Canadian. And a number of your listeners are probably new to Canada. Maybe they're first or second generation. And some are longer generations like me. But it's just a reminder to everybody. Art Country was made and created at Vimy Ridge in 1917 when we succeeded there and everyone else failed. And when you go to France and you go to that monument, you are on Canadian soil. And you walk around that monument and it is the most spectacular monument Canada has ever erected anywhere. It is the greatest monument we have. And I personally, I've always said to my wife, I ever struck it rich, which said nobody ever in the pulp industry. But if I ever struck it rich, I would hire a plane. And I would fly a selection of school kids every year to France to go see that. And to walk around and touch the names on there and to tour around and tour in the tunnels and see what goes on. And to see where those people, you know, my grandfather's cousin, his name, Glossford, his name is on that monument. And what that means is he was blown to smithereens. And they know he was there and there was nothing left. So I'm convinced. Because I've not been. I've been to the beaches of Normandy because my dad landed on the beaches of Normandy. I have never been to Vimy. And I haven't been to the beaches of Normandy. So maybe we'll go together. Absolutely. We'll go together. We'll go together. Absolutely. Because we're all visiting Vimy. Yeah. Okay. So the book recommendation then would be Pierre Burton's Vimy. Yeah. And if you want to go to a step further, Pierre Burton is marching us to war, which talks about Canada's history and some of the other wars. It's a very interesting read to understand what Canadians are about. We fell into this trap, I think, and we're a bunch of peacekeepers. I'll tell this to you. I did a bunch of work with that, Trances. Oh, I know from my dad's stories that we were not. Keep in mind, until recent memory, in the war in Afghanistan, and of course living in New Brunswick, you couldn't help but meet a bunch of young men and women that were going over to Afghanistan. We sent 40,000 people over there, I think 164 died. And at one point, we had three of the five longest recorded sniper kills in history. And I think now we've got three of the top 10. But we just passed Remembrance Day and I just as some of these folks die on and as we're not yet ready to embrace the sacrifices that were made in Afghanistan for the 10 years that we were there. We've fallen into this trap of we're a bunch of peacekeeping, you know. And sure, that's part of what we did, you know, certainly in the Yugoslav conflict and in Rwanda, but there's another part of our history. And I just hope it doesn't get forgotten. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. And you learn a lot about it. And as we look at these nation building projects and some of them are tied to defense, we have to get out of bureaucracy. We have to get back to that zeal. And then when you read about Vimea and how they succeeded, one of the ways they succeeded was they got out of British and French bureaucracy that was overtaking their armed forces. And they took an entrepreneurial mindset to how where the privates could challenge the Canadian generals like this, like what do you mean? We're going to do it this way. Like why don't we do it this way? Why don't we do that? And we have to get back to tapping into that part of our DNA as we embark on this whole nation building and transmission. How's that for a close to bring that back? Awesome. Talk about it. We should be a little more often. Talk about a call back. Talk about a call back to the front end. Awesome. Alan, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time. And you know, we started talking about how it is so much better to do stuff in person. And I think this conversation is a perfect example. We wouldn't have had this kind of a conversation if we were on a Zoom thing. No. No. I appreciate you taking the time. I appreciate you having me. Yeah. Great. Thanks. Take care. [Music] For those that have been with the podcast since the beginning and those that have joined along the way, thanks for listening. Please take the time to rate the podcast on whatever platform you use to listen and let me know what you think of the flux capacitor. You can find me on Instagram as the Brad Bradley on LinkedIn and through our website at electricity.ca. The website for this pod is the flux capacitor dot c a and it includes links for this episode on the show page. This being episode 130. And while you're there, check out the book club page which provides info on and links to the books which have been recommended by guests on the flux capacitor, including Alan's recommendation, Vinny Byte here, Burton. And let's continue the electricity conversation on our Facebook page on Instagram and at electricity dot c a. (bell dinging)