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 were able to tap off the wires running from one town to another. It became very clear that the provincial government did not want to get into crown corporations or anything along that line, so what they actually did was....
Rural co-ops are very common in the U.S., so the government of the day sent a delegation of the two private power companies in Alberta down to the States. They viewed what was down there, came back and modified it, and came up with an agreement or contract that these rural co-ops had to sign in order to energize their lines with the private power companies.
So our system in any given area is not a franchise like the gas co-ops have. It is an integrated system. In a given county, you'll have some wires owned by the investor-owned utility, and some owned by the rural co-op.