Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I think it's also a matter of the level of due diligence that the board has demonstrated over the years. We'll get the members saying, “If the board has looked at it, and you've done a business case study on it and it's a good move, we trust you. That's why you're there.”

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Just further to that, the federation has asked for representation on a lot of government committees. Currently, we sit on a cost-monitoring committee of the transmission system—on the expansion of that. The Alberta government looks at the federation for input from a consumer's vo

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  There's a restriction on the size of the micro-generator in that you cannot produce more than what you will consume over a given period of time. In Alberta, all generation has to go through the Alberta electric system operator. They're the ones they are basically selling that e

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I didn't quite catch that.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  You will be billed for the difference that you're consuming. That's all.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The original generation not only spent the dollars in building the system, but they also built a reserve to operate the system. If there were a severe storm that came through or something that required a significant investment, the dollars were already in place for them to spend;

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The environment we operate in is a regulated world. Each individual rural electric co-op has its own board of directors. Under the legislature, we have our own control. We do our own regulation. That's only because we serve our own members. Our shareholders and our members are th

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Alberta is quite different from Ontario. Only the wires are regulated in Alberta, and that's to prevent duplication, so that you don't get a wire running down each side of the road. So that remains regulated. The generation portion is deregulated. The actual retailing of the ene

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  If I can just add to that, the government's role is not to do the work but to create an atmosphere and a social environment that would stimulate consumers to work together for their own betterment, to help themselves and virtually create a better country and world that we all liv

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Actually, the REA I'm in, which is different from Merv's, was the first utility in Alberta to get into the wireless reading. Prior to that, we had contracted a meter reader, which would read a meter every other month and were about 85% to 90% accurate. Now we've replaced them w

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  It is a unique situation, as Merv said in his original presentation. I guess, back in the 1940s, it appeared to be the only way that power was going to get into rural Alberta. In 1941, less than half of 1% of rural areas were served by the system, and they were only the ones that

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Each co-op has its own designated boundaries. And that's not only the case in our situation, but with any co-op, especially if it's a not-for-profit organization. If it gets involved in an industry where it can be very profitable to an investor-owned corporation, once the infrast

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Alberta is kind of different from most other provinces in that it went through the deregulation process, often referred to as re-regulation, which may be a truer picture. This is where they separated out the distribution wires of anything less than 25,000 kilovolts. Then it had t