Exploring the MCC Proposal
I spoke at length with Managing Director Pancoast at one of the City’s public engagement sessions on June 6 and learned a lot! She spent about 20 min with me and two other people at my table and answered all our questions, even the challenging ones. I then attended the public hearing on June 24 to get a more fulsome picture of what the MCC would look like. I was neutral going into these sessions, and now I'm in favour of the MCC. Here’s some thoughts.
Council essentially needs to collectively re-learn the energy business every four years. Generally speaking, they are not going to be experts in the energy / utility field. This slows down decision making and leads to redundancy and inefficiency on the part of City staff who play teacher instead of doing their jobs. A MCC would be fit for purpose and comprise experts in the utility generation and delivery field. We would maintain exemption from the Electric Utilities Act, and the MCC would not open utility generation or delivery to private suppliers or competition. A Rate Review Committee will be set up to act as the regulator. From the City’s MCC FAQ:
“The rate review committee would be independent from the energy business… They would be charged with increasing transparency in the rate setting process and recommend fair and competitive rates for ratepayers.” Also from the same FAQ: “An MCC will not change the risks, but could reduce the City’s exposure in three ways: 1) Provide increased governance and oversight of the energy business with the addition of a skills-based board. 2) Enable greater access to capital to invest in strategies that could reduce the Energy Business’ exposure to regulatory and market changes. 3) Increase the predictability of cashflow between the MCC and the City.”
I cannot comprehend the people who think this is being "rushed". The City has been working on this MCC proposal for at least 18 months to two years. They had an exhaustive outside consultation, and several meetings around it. They have shared A LOT of information about the MCC proposal, and the public has been given multiple opportunities to engage and learn.
I absolutely disagree that this should be an election issue in the form of a referendum or plebiscite. The public is not the best group to make this decision, because we are usually apathetic at best or deliberately ill-informed at worst. The professionals including Director Pancoast and her team are best positioned to make a recommendation to council and get this decision made. Let me be clear: Public consultation is important. We should be informed and given a chance to provide feedback. I firmly believe the City has acted in good faith on this point, providing multiple information sessions, and publishing a massive amount of information on the subject. Some of that info is linked below, and much more can be found in various parts of my “Resources” page here: https://www.adamkoch.ca/community-resources
I also disagree that this should be a decision left to a future council. This council has been involved in the entire process. After the election, what will certainly be at least a partially new council of people - who may or may not be up to speed on this process – will have a huge learning curve ahead of them and will not be ready to action anything on day 1. If a new council is left making the MCC decision, it'll be delayed by several months to at least a year, compounding the problem. As of writing, there are still 3+ months before the election, and I am in no way interested in council pausing this decision for that long. I’m also very concerned that if this decision is pushed to a future council, it will essentially become an election issue. I think that opens up the possibility of people making wild campaign promises on this subject that they can’t keep, and it could steal a lot of oxygen from competing priorities.
Below are just some links that I found helpful in writing this blog, and there is a lot more thorough information contained within them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azUJb91OyoU
https://shapeyourcity.medicinehat.ca/mcc/widgets/201912/faqs
https://shapeyourcity.medicinehat.ca/mcc
I know many folks have strong feelings on this topic. I’d love to hear them!
— Adam
