Episode 138: Faces of the Industry 2026, Part 1, Rob Lister and Amanda Mattern

[Music] Welcome to the Flux capacitor, podcast about the future of electricity. Francis here with a little something different on the pod today. This National Electricity Month, electricity Canada is introducing you to the people who are the faces of the industry. Electricity Canada's faces of the industry award highlights the work of six industry professionals who have demonstrated leadership in every aspect of the electricity sector. We created the faces of the industry award two years ago and it came out of a simple but powerful premise. The electricity sector isn't just companies, it's also people. The great thing about faces is it's a real grassroots campaign. We had 39 nominations for the award, representing people from all parts of the electricity sector from every region. All we ask for is for the recipient to demonstrate innovation, leadership, and outstanding achievement in their field. This year's award winners have been selected from across Canada and come from every part of the industry, including executive leadership, operations, engineering and construction, line work, and supply chain. What they all have in common is leadership innovation and of course their work in the electricity sector. I had the privilege of talking to all of this year's faces of the industry recipients for the Flux capacitor and it was once again humbling to realize the breadth of experience and talent the electricity sector possesses. I hope you'll experience this yourself as you listen to my conversations with this year's faces of the industry. On the pod today are two of those faces of the industry. First up on the podcast is Rob Lister, CEO of Oakville Hydro and OEC. Rob congratulations on being named one of 2026's faces of the industry. Well thank you Francis, it's a great honor to be included in this award event that the electricity Canada puts on and I feel really really honored. Great, appreciate it. Well you know it's interesting you and I combined I think have 80 years in the sector. Yeah I don't like to admit that too often but yes we haven't seen even myself looking around, we've seen a lot of change. Yeah and I thought maybe let's start with that and start with change because it was innovation was kind of sort of the theme in terms of the nomination for your work here and so like when thinking about innovation the world when we go back to the mid to late 1980s when you and I started hanging out in this sector. Your world has changed hell of a lot. This is a completely different sector like would somebody who would spend their career and ended their career in '86 even recognize if they walked into Oakville Hydro today the work that they're doing? Quite a bit different. Yeah and the in the earlier days it was much simpler. Yeah. Not that they electricity flowed any simpler but it seemed to. Yeah. We didn't have the technology, there was a lot of manual processes. Yeah. It didn't have the visibility into the electricity system that we have nowadays. We don't have the controls and the monitoring that we have nowadays or the capability. So yeah it's very different. Yeah. But some things that come around go around. So back in the other day there used to be a lot of water heater control capabilities on the real distribution system and the utilities would turn the water heaters off in order to manage their peak because the billing for electricity in those days was different and your monthly peak really mattered. Okay. And then we went through an era where that was all removed and now we're back at it and you know that's interesting. You'll get it, right? We go back hydro, hydro, hydro, and a whole lot of water to control the peak load. So it's a very powerful, effective tool for managing electricity system. Right. Basic hot water, electric hot water tank. But previously it was to control the customers peak load and the utility flow. Oh the utilities we used yesterday. Because it is today. The utility, the model then was the utility we had built based on its monthly peak. Okay. And so you would use the hot water tanks to keep your peak down. And once you got your peak down to a certain level and you never had the drama for the rest of the month. Yeah. For today the month started all over again. Okay. Wow. Okay. So as you say what goes around comes around. So let's talk about some of those some of those some of those changes grid modernization, advanced automation. I mean you're company but you as well have been at the forefront of pushing for a lot of these new technologies, these new controls. What kind of benefits have you seen as a result of that? Clearly there are some because you're you've been emulated by you know by a lot of others. Yeah. On the distribution side on the automation. I've worked in a number of utilities where there was next to no automation. Yeah. And I was fortunate I went to Oakwell. They had had a good start on automation. And I cross forward to today. Half our distribution feeders are remotely controlled. Some of them are self-giving networks and they were just automatically on their own address faults and outages. And the advantage for us and we're unique in that we can pretty much transfer our distribution load across any of the five transformer stations that we have. Feeding the town where many other utilities they could be fed from a single feed. Or there is no alternate way. So we have a very significant amount of ability to move load around which helps with reducing when we have planned outages. It helps reduce the number of customers impacted. But certainly when there's an unplanned outage we're able to move the power around within seconds. It's a great advantage. And so we're going to continue to do it more and more. So you said 50% at this stage is worth. 50%? Yeah. And I've reduced the truck rolls. We can deal with the amount of outage minutes that we avoid is quite material. Because we can deal with a lot of outages from our control. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Rob, one of the things I do ask folks to come on the podcast is about their journey. And I think we talked about this previously. But just as a reminder, what was your journey to your role today? Yes. Well, I've been very fortunate. I worked at Toronto Hydro for over two decades. I've worked very many roles starting out in engineering. And it worked in the retail arm for a while. And then from there I worked for a geochanged company. And we did a lot of workout west with geochanged installations. And then I worked for an energy services company in North of Toronto and had a number of energy related portfolios. I was managing consultant there for a while between roles. And then I worked for another utility as a consultant for six months, helping them with some of their strategic work. And then I worked for Horizon Utilities for a few years. And then I ended up in Opal as CEO with a great journey. Yeah. And then at Oakville, you are at the CEO at Hydro. You also have a holding company. And that holding company, I know again, I talk about emulating. I've always heard a lot of interest from folks elsewhere, particularly people who are in the regulated business, who are interested in what you've been able to do with the holding company in a variety of non-regulated businesses. And I keep, of course, meeting colleagues of yours who are through Oakville Enterprises in a wide variety of sectors and sub-sectors and geographically dispersed. So give the listener a quick description of OEC because it is not a company that sits in Oakville and does stuff just in Oakville. Yes. Well, we've been able to leverage the model in Ontario where the utility can have unregulated affiliates. And so we started out buying hot water tank portfolios. And we had a home comfort business for a while. And then we expanded from there. So overall, we have 17 operating companies right now and through acquisition and investment. We have two locating companies in Ontario. We have an operation in Edmonton, two solar farms, one in Alberta. We purchased last year. We have one in Mayor Belville that we built over 10 years ago. So you have two solar farms. Okay. And three run of the river generating stations in Northern Ontario. Mm. We've got four. We have called distribution construction companies from here in Ottawa to in the GTA. We have one in Calgary. We have four engineering companies that like our model has to diversify both geographically but also through the line of business. So we do telecom, electricity, natural gas and asset management. So we have companies that cover all those. We now have some operations in the United States that we're just starting to find our way there. So we have quite a breadth of unregulated businesses that pretty much clipses the utility in terms of size. I was going to say, it sounds like you're describing something that's bigger than the regulated business. So it's been very good. We're very fortunate. The diversification has really helped to work through the different economic cycles that we all experience. Yeah. And the shareholder is. So our shareholder is 90% of the tonne of Oakville and 10% of Embridge. Okay. So Embridge bought into the company back in 2022. Their great strategic partner for us. We work very well for them and with them and they're also a shareholder. Right. And just a great win-win for both sides. Right. Yeah. So what does the win look like if you're an Oakville hydrocuster? Well, the real advantage that the Oakville hydrocustomer, and this goes back to the electricity act back in the late 1990s, where the model that was set up by the government at the time, was the utilities could create these unregulated affiliates to get scale for the benefit of the customers. Right. And we've been able to achieve that. So through our scale, we have significant efficiencies that Oakville hydro has been able to benefit from. So our operating costs after inflation's factored out have been reduced just because Oakville hydro is not paying full freight for most of their back office resources. Okay. It's split among many, many companies. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. Very rigorous on cost allocation. And so the cost to run Oakville hydro has been reduced because we have the scale that we've been able to create and the expertise that we've got because we have such a broad range of businesses with that becomes an awful lot of expertise that is like a phone call away. Yeah. Yeah. That's really been a benefit. Right. Right. And then on the non-regulated side, that benefit there comes back to the municipality. Yeah. And then of course the municipality on average receive their dividends each year and we've grown the dividends for both. And so their shareholders happy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. First thing you've got to do, keep your shareholders happy. Yeah. Keep the shareholders happy. Keep the customer happy. And then everything beyond that is. Everything beyond that is a bonus. That's the biggest surprise or most interesting change that you've seen when we were talking about it's been four decades with you and I. What's the biggest change that you've seen in terms of the sector as a whole? Well, I think there's a lot more blend of skill sets from all over the world that are now operating in the Canadian electricity sector. And so there's a phenomenal amount of really bright, capable people. No. The flip side of that though, a lot of the bright, capable people don't have the opportunity to learn from the kind of people that I learned from. There used to be a lot more senior people in organizations. Okay. And the expertise and through Osmosis would be able to help people learn and grow. And there's less of that now and the workforce is younger. And which is a good one. One of mine has just an absolute great thing to have the young people in the sector. But there's been an awful lot of knowledge that's left that will probably never be recovered. As a result of just that generational. Yeah. Yeah. It's quite common in a lot of sectors nowadays. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that occurs to me as well in addition to people is supply chains. I know we've talked previously about some of the current challenges of supply chains. But broadly the supply chains have changed over the decades as well. We're now living a world of global procured. So how has that changed your business? A lot more consolidation of supply chains. And it used to be more local, more community based or provincial based suppliers. And it comes back to relationships. You would have more relationships with the suppliers. More one and one through the consolidation. And people get a little bit more distance. So just a little bit different interaction dynamic. And but there's been a lot more standardization on the equipment and materials, which has been a real real benefit. And it's become really more sophisticated. Leak times have got longer. And but it's a very, very fortunate. It's a very robust supply chain system in the electricity sector. And a lot of great people and their partners, like they're part of the family of making it all work. Right. And not right across the globe. Right. Right. And imagine you probably have a broader perspective on supply chain because of some of the other business lines that you're in as well because it isn't just wires and transformers. Your construction company. And the pandemic that was really evident too. There was no pipe for gas installation. It wasn't the resin to make the pipe. So ended up having to use like high density polyethylene, very expensive pipe where normally it would have just ppc pipe. Things like that. And so we worked through that. But yeah, we go through different phases. Yeah, getting a transformer, like a large transformer. It can be a multi-year process that could come from anywhere in the world. So the planning time frames have certainly increased. Yeah, and that's the holding of the toy. Oh, of course, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I imagine that's been a big factor. The pre-corporateization and Ontario utilities would typically have very large inventories on hand. Yeah. And when we start looking at a little bit closer, we realize that not a guy got to be better at material's management and reduce the amount of inventory that's sitting and line it more with what happens if it's operating with a quake going to just in time. Right. That comes with its challenges too. Yeah. Certainly cities. Yeah, yeah, certainly. Certainly in supply changes there today. Rob, I want to thank you for joining to Chattelbeltis. And then once again, congratulations on being selected by your peers. Yes. Yeah, we're really quite surprised at knowing about it. It was quite a surprise. Well, well earned. And delighted you were able to take a minute to chat with me today for the podcast. Well, thank you, Francis. And on your next adventure, all the best, you've had an awesome career. You've been an electricity candidate a great time, a long time. It's been a great time. You really shake the success and the confidence of the association. That's quite no one right across the country. Thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate that. Very sincere. It's a rhythm. Thanks for joining. All right. Thank you. The next guest on the podcast is Amanda Madden. I'm with Echo Electric and the Vice President of Operations. Amanda, congratulations on being one of the faces of the industry. 2026. Thank you so much. It's cool to have an opportunity to chat a little bit about some of the work that you've been doing and that you're being recognized by your peers. So maybe talk a little bit about how crazy has it been? Right? No, because you've been sort of at the forefront of a lot of the work around wildfires. And it seems as though every year is a record wildfire season that beat the previous record. So what's that been like? Crazy. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. And to your point, it isn't, you know, once every 10 years anymore. We really have to plan for these emergencies year over year. You know, I think what I've noticed is that, you know, every year we learn from the previous year. And so, you know, unfortunately, we're getting very, very good at our emergency response and our wildfire response has been, you know, kind of second to none, although you don't really want to be an expert in that field. I think our team at Ako is leading the charge for sure. Yeah. Okay. So maybe tell me a little bit about what that looks like. What does leadership look like in this space? is about being present, understanding, very good. quickly with the situation is ensuring your people are safe and then putting together a plan and acting on that really quickly and oftentimes you know not with all of the information that you'd like to have in your day-to-day operations to make decisions. Yeah. Relying on the team around me, I have wonderful people that work alongside me, their expertise, you know, lean on that but really it's about clear plans, clear communication and executing safely. Yeah. What's one of the things I ask folks to come on the podcast? What was your journey? I mean, when you were a little kid on the playground, did you always dream of doing this kind of work? How did you get sort of from there to here? It's funny you asked that, so no. (Laughter) There's a few people say, oh yes, I knew what I was. But yeah. Yeah, I've only been in the industry for about 13 years now. Okay. I came into the utility with a customer service background. Oh. How's it hospitality? Wow. Wow. We're this gig. So, probably a very different mold in some of the other executives in the industry, which I think is cool because I think that brings, you know, different perspectives, different experience, different life experiences. And I think all of that put together, makes me who I am as a leader. So, came in very different than other folks probably have. Yeah, it sounds like it. So, what did you bring from hospitality to operations and how did you, what did that path look like? So, I think for me, probably that view from a customer lens is always sort of rooted in all the decisions I make, you know, put myself in that customer's shoes. Yeah. And I think that, you know, all my people, all my teams do that. And so, that's really kind of core in my leadership and the way that I execute. Mm-hmm. Okay. And, yeah, I mean, I know for certain doing the kind of work that you do, this isn't just at-call. Yeah. Right. So, what are those important relationships that you've, you know, been able to foster with other folks? You know, I think that there's many different groups that, you know, obviously peer to peer, relationships and support and mentorship has been really key for me in my leadership journey in the utilities. You know, we are a small but big industry. And so, you know, you know each other. Yeah. I can phone a friend from SaaS Power or BC Hydro and, hey, I think you probably have been in this situation before. What would you do? And so, leaning on each other for that expertise and that knowledge and that camaraderie. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's a wonderful, wonderful industry to be in. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then the local communities, I guess, there's a lot of that. Oh, yeah. Because their customers are at the heart of everything. Yeah. And you know, our teams live where we work. Right. And so, we are part of those communities and we take pride in that. Yeah, maybe just for the listener, given a bit of a sense of, you know, what is the service territory? Because we're talking about, you know, not where, like sort of the majority of people's urban experiences are, right? That's very true. Yeah. So, we are, you know, predominantly in the central and northern part of Alberta. We serve about 230,000 customers. Yeah. And we have 37, what we call, you know, district offices or regional offices. And they're, you know, anywhere from high level Alberta to Jasper. Right. So, we're, you know, spread out pretty far geographically. And we operate in some challenging areas and challenging terrain. So, we are embedded in all of those communities. Mm-hmm. And we're proud of that. Right. Right. So, when you say your people are in the communities, we're talking about spread across a pretty wide. Yeah. Yeah. So, you mentioned Jasper. That was one of the wildfires that was very much in the news. No, I guess it was. Yeah, it was. Everybody loves Jasper. Everybody's got some type of memory about Jasper. Absolutely. And it was a, you know, front page news. It was the first thing you saw when you, you know, booted up your computer and looked at the news while that was taking place. Was having that, you know, focus on what was taking place. Was it an added burden? Was it an added benefit? Has it helped? Maybe people now understand? Because suddenly, you know, for a change, people were actually like across the country, paying attention to what's going on because it was happening in a place that is so beloved. Yes. You know, I think we, it's helped. Yeah. You know, if I think about it now in hindsight, you know, during that experience, it was just noise to me. Really, my focus was on, you know, the safety of my people. Right. Getting the community as quickly as possible so those residents could come home. Yeah. And I think you're, you're bang on that it really has open people's eyes to, you know, what's truly happening and the fact that while fire risk is real and it's happening year over year. And so I think it's open people's eyes to what's going on. At the time though, it, you know, it wasn't our first focus. The first focus was on the community and everyone. Sure. Yeah. Was there any, it just occurs to me, any added complexity because you're talking about Parks Canada. Like, is that, is that a different kind of spin? Yeah. It makes it a little bit more challenging. I mean, operating in, you know, the provincial and federal parks is a little bit different. Okay. You know, perhaps in any other community, but we, we work very closely with parks and, and the municipality all year round on a day to day basis. Right. So I think those established relationships helped us to sort of navigate some of those things that would typically take a little bit longer and may have a bit more red tape than, than you're used to. And so it really wants a partnership. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's wrong. I seem to recall hearing something about like a lack of interoperability between parks, Canada equipment and, and equipment from, from elsewhere, from the firefighters. Was that, was that, maybe that was just an urban myth? Yeah. I think that's more of a bit of an urban myth. Okay. I mean, there was a lot of really good positive work done between multi agencies. Yeah. You know, anytime there's a crisis like that, there's obviously those, you know, first that first day or two where people are figuring out how they work together. It became, you know, seamless operation. Yeah. So when you do multi agency in that instance, maybe give the, give the listener a sense of, because it wasn't just, you know, your company. No, no, it wasn't too. You know, from a utility perspective, obviously, aqua electric, aqua gas. Yeah. We were working with the municipality of Jasper, parks, Canada. You know, the province had some folks that were supporting in the incident command. Right. Task Force 2 came in to sort of establish a unified command structure, which is a little bit different. And, you know, if you've never experienced it before, there's, there's some nuances there. Yeah. So everybody was working through that. And then of course, you know, all the rest of the utilities and CN and, and then residents are part of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that sounds like a, a crowded room when you're bringing all of those people together. How, how complex was that? Or, you know, just incident command structure dictated, you know, how things work and, and they work or. Yeah. So I think that's the advantage to, you know, running your emergency command through the ICS. It's, it's a unified, you know, set of language titles and processes that everybody knows. So that helps to quickly get everybody on the same page. But like I said, I mean, there's obviously a bit of that organized chaos when emergencies like that happen. Sure. But it did help us establish those clear communication and guidelines pretty quick off. So we could get going and start working on, on restoration. All right. Right. So what's the, the biggest lesson learned from all of, all of these experiences around wildfires? What's the, what's the big takeaway from you that, that we want to listen to now about? The big takeaway is preparedness. Being prepared that, you know, these emergencies and these crisis are going to happen. Yeah. You know, taking the lessons learned from the previous year or the previous emergency and incorporating those lessons learned quickly. And then really setting yourself up with the right team to execute. Yeah. Yeah. I think the wildfire season has already begun, right? The wildfire season has begun in Alberta. You know, we're actually, I wish to knock on some wood here, but it's been fairly stable. So far, we're looking at a pretty warm summer ahead of us. There is some precipitation, though, which, you know, we all across our fingers for. It's funny when you work in the utility industry, you're, you love the rain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In many ways, yes. Yeah, we do. And some of those cooler temperatures. So we're cautiously optimistic about the year ahead. Now, 2027 might be a little bit different. Alberta is looking to have the hottest year on record. So whatever we do this year, we're going to be prepping to do again next year. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And then you know, when you're kind of assessing how to, how to things look, it's through the lens of what the last couple of years have been like. Absolutely. So when you're saying it's looking fairly good, that's from the lens of we've had like three of the worst fire seasons over the last couple of years. Yeah, I think about, you know, in 2023, our teams had our incident management teams activated for the 161 days. Well, like you kind of put that into perspective. You're an emergency response mode for 161 days. Almost half the year. And you know, that wasn't that much different for 2024 or 2025. And so it's really become part of the norm. And as I said, that's why we need to be prepared for. We have, we schedule it. So we have incident management teams on rotations so that we can actually give some folks a bit of a break, which was a lesson learned from 2023, where, you know, I'd be the big bad guy that canceled everybody's vacations. And if you're working in an incident management team. And so those are just some of those lessons that we learn along the way that we have rotating shifts on. know that between this time. I mean this time on emergency response doesn't really matter where it is in the province. And so that helped to balance some of that with our teams. >> Right, right. Well Amanda, I want to once again congratulate you. You were nominated by members of your team and you were selected by your peers from across the country. And so congratulations on being one named one of the 2026 faces of the industry. Thank you so much. I'm so appreciative. [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 CA. And it includes links for this episode on the show page. And let's continue the electricity conversation on our Facebook page on Instagram and at electricity dot CA. [MUSIC]