Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  I'll tell you about an incident. We got involved in the meter reading and we thought we'd have opposition to it. People came to us and said, “Thank God we don't have to...”. The member would read the meter and send the information to the office.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  You fill out the little form, or whatever you had. They said, “Thank God we don't have to do this any more. It was well worth the—”

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Well, we did the airplane afterwards. It was going to be a drive-by. The other thing was Corridor Communications. We got involved in that. We had annual meetings and we had people who were mad because they couldn't get it because they lived in a valley or a subdivision in the va

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Rural Utilities in Alberta has taken a leadership role. They have brought in a guy by the name of Jim Brown. Have you ever read The Imperfect Board Member? It's one of the best selling books on board governance. He's done workshops. He comes to our AGM, and he'll spend a number

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  It's our job to make sure that our board members and directors go to these meetings.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  You're right. In our agreement, we cannot serve hamlets or small towns. But we can serve subdivisions and, hopefully, they don't become hamlets or towns.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  To some extent, yes we can.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  It's 3% of the people, or 1% of the consumption of energy. As for the number of miles of line, I haven't got those figures.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We did a presentation to the transmission committee, and our philosophy is that we have to have a reliable system, that it's really important. In rural Alberta, if a storm comes through, the last people who will get hooked back up will be those in rural Alberta. Therefore, we rel

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We're knowledgeable end users.

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  We're in the process of negotiating. There are two major utility companies in rural Alberta. One is ATCO, and another is Fortis. ATCO has a different wire-owner to wire-owner agreement with their REAs.They can only service single acreages. They do not have the agreement to serve

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  The main reason is that they are member owners of the system. When they drive down the road, they can say, “I own that power pole.” Also, the rates, in most cases, are less than what the utility company is paying. It's an investment in the future. They look back, and some of thei

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  If you look at some of the five factors of success for co-ops, you have leadership—and I guess we have to make sure that we have the right leaders in the community. One of the ways of doing that is by running board governance workshops for people who want to learn more about how

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Okay. We had a real problem with borrowing money, because when any financial institution would look at an REA, they see a pole and a line but really didn't classify those as assets. But because an REA can determine its own rates—you can charge $20 a month today, but tomorrow you

Special Committee on Cooperatives committee  Some of the REAs buy and sell their energy. Others contract with EPCOR or Direct Energy, and they supply the energy part. The other thing is that the REA I'm with is also one of the partners in Corridor Communications. We got into it with the hope that we could read our meters us