Casting light on Hydro secrets

- The McGuinty government is finding its way on the Hydro file. Killing the Conservatives' plan to sell off safety inspection of the province's nuclear power plants ranks an A grade, even though it's not a terribly tough task to euthanize an idea not yet realized.

Lifting the cap on electricity prices was a more problematic call, given Dalton McGuinty's campaign pledge to keep electricity rates unchanged until 2006. "We're planning ahead for when the freeze ends," McGuinty said in September. The freeze ended surprisingly swiftly after election day, but marked a pragmatic and necessary move.

Here's another piece of low-hanging fruit: McGuinty's promise to make Hydro subject to freedom of information laws. The veil of secrecy descended on Hydro in the spring of 1999 after the Harris government splintered the old Hydro into five successor companies and determined that Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Both companies were taken, to use a Hydro expression, off the grid in FOI terms.

As a result, we were stuck with a whole lot of not knowing.

Take the refurbishment of the four "A" nuclear reactors at Pickering as an example.

We know what level of salaries and bonuses were drawn by some of the first fleet of American experts brought up by OPG to fix the nukes, thanks to provincial disclosure requirements that compel salary disclosure of the top five corporate officers. But then the first fleet called in a back-up armada of U.S. consultants whose pay-plus-bonus-plus-living expenses deals remain secret, and absent the power of freedom of information, can't be effectively probed.

At Pickering, workers past and present talk about the "Million-Dollar Club" at the site — and not without a little resentment.

How many experts were brought up from the U.S. and at what price?

We can hope that former federal energy minister Jake Epp and his committee will dig deep into this as part of his group's examination of the delays at Pickering — nothing but a schedule of unmet targets — and cost over-runs. The final report is due before Christmas. The interim report has not yet been released.

What else lies hidden? A number of former employees have asked questions about OPG's contracting of engineering services to a company called PowerSource Canada. But absent FOI disclosure, it's difficult to determine much about this outfit. It is headquartered in Toronto, or at least a sample of the company's invoices to OPG indicate that's the case. But a visit to the company's Bay Street address reveals that PowerSource rents an office from the Rostie Group, a business centre in Waterpark Place that leases furnished office space, with secretarial support services, to executives. There is no PowerSource telephone listing, nor does it have a Web site, nor could the Rostie Group receptionist locate a PowerSource phone number.

PowerSource was incorporated in Nova Scotia in May, 2002, as a numbered company, shortly before it started receiving contract work from OPG. The only officer named on the incorporation documents is Elizabeth Tran, who lists a home address in Chicago. A 1-800 telephone number on a PowerSource invoice from last November, which billed $1 million to OPG for project engineering services, connects the caller to Elizabeth Tran's voice mail. Tran did not return phone calls.

What is PowerSource and how did it end up in good favour with OPG and how did it come into being on the eve of OPG needing the kind of services it could apparently provide?

John Earl, OPG spokesperson, said PowerSource is a "talent pool company ... OPG has, as a large company, the need to draw engineering talent, engineering and specialty talents, and that's why we use companies like PowerSource." Earl said PowerSource's CEO is Elizabeth Tran.

The service contracts, Earl said, were not necessarily tendered.

"In some cases, time constraints on the project will require that we've done the contracting through various companies, PowerSource being one of them, without tender," he said.

Asked whether any OPG employees have any connection to PowerSource, Earl replied, "To the best of our investigation, none."

He added that OPG scrutinizes all such contracts to ensure compliance with the company's code of conduct.

"In the case of PowerSource, we review the contract, we audit the contract, we investigate the contract, and we do that on an ongoing basis."

In a subsequent e-mail, Earl added OPG's examination of the PowerSource contracts have found "no impropriety."

For years, the Harris and then Eves governments insisted that the Hydro companies, both transmission and generation, needed to be protected from FOI for "competitive" reasons. One-time energy minister Chris Stockwell made the same argument, until he was undone by the revelation that OPG had underwritten some of the transportation costs of that luxe European trip taken by Stockwell en famille.

In opposition, McGuinty insisted such protections must be brought to an end.

In an opinion piece in September, he wrote, "Ontario is not served properly when Ernie Eves's ministers use hydro to finance personal travel and the power companies spend billions of public dollars in complete secrecy."

Well, not complete secrecy. OPG files interim and annual financial statements as well as annual information forms that detail executive compensation.

But that's not nearly enough, which is the new Premier's broader point. The only remedy is complete transparency, and the way to assure the public of that is to reintroduce FOI ASAP.