There is no revolving door in Charles Reid's office. One half expects to find one, given the turnover on the top floor of BC Hydro's Vancouver office tower.
The public power company has had four CEOs since 2009. Reid's predecessor, Dave Cobb, who quit last year to take a job with the Jim Pattison Group after just 17 months on the job, says the instability of the CEO's job has a lot to do with the challenge of trying to run a company that has to answer to the government.
"The owner of the company is the government, and there's often conflicting interests," Cobb told Business in Vancouver.
A couple of months before he resigned in October 2011, Cobb told Reid – then Hydro's CFO – that he had named him as his successor as part of a standard succession plan. Reid was flattered but never dreamed he would have to step into that role so soon.
When Cobb left, Reid agreed to step in on an interim basis, and then – with some hesitation – accepted the job full-time in July.
"Charles is a very humble guy, and I think he, frankly, underestimated his own ability to lead BC Hydro," Cobb said. "I think he was very comfortable in the position he was, as the chief financial officer, and he was very good at that. I was confident he could take the next step."
So was Reid's wife, Mary-Anne, the high school sweetheart whom he married 35 years ago and who has been his biggest supporter.
It was his wife who helped him get his first accounting job with Canfor Forest Products (TSX:CFP), where he spent most of his career.
Born in Chilliwack but brought up in Vancouver, Reid was raised by his mother, a single parent, and ended up going to work straight out of high school, pumping gas and working at low-paying jobs. He was halfway through a night school program to get his CGA certification when his wife spotted an ad for a junior accountant for Canfor.
"My wife typed up the resumé on a Sunday night, and she hand-delivered it to the office in the morning for me," Reid said. "Twenty-six years later, I was the CFO of that company."
Reid spent most of his career in Prince George working in Canfor's pulp mill division. He eventually got his CGA and later became a chartered director.
Reid retired from Canfor in 2008. Still in his 50s, he wasn't ready to quit working, so he did some consulting work for BC Hydro and then was hired as CFO. Four years later, when offered the CEO's job, he admits he took it with some hesitation.
"It's not an easy gig," Reid said. "Coming out of the private sector, it takes a long time to get used to a Crown corporation, quasi-government organization. It's a very different world. In the private sector, it's really clear what success is. Here, we talk about triple bottom line, but in fact it's many more than that in terms of bottom lines."
At Canfor, executives answered to customers and shareholders. At BC Hydro, Reid answers to customers, the BC Utility Commission (BCUC) and the provincial government.
"I've been in Hydro for four years; I'm on my fifth minister," Reid said.
In March 2011, BC Hydro filed to the BCUC for a 32% rate increase over three years. It was rejected, and the BC government initiated a review. It produced a scathing report that deemed Hydro's expenditures – including on wages and bonuses – to be "generous at the expense of taxpayers."
The utility has been forced to cut spending and has thus far reduced its workforce by 750 people through attrition and layoffs.
Reid, who makes just under $500,000 annually, said executives at Crown corporations make a fraction of what their peers in the private sector make, but understands that public servants are held to a different standard.
"I do really appreciate the public reaction to this stuff," he said.
It's not just the energy minister Reid now has to answer to. Last year, Auditor General John Doyle criticized Hydro's accounting deferral practices, in which current expenditures are pushed forward to future years. By deferring expenditures – $2.2 billion worth, so far – profits show up on the current accounts, and Hydro has to pay the government dividends on it. Doyle warned that the practice could result in $5 billion worth of expenditures deferred for future ratepayers by 2017. Incensed that Hydro was being accused of doing something "untoward," Reid fired back, saying rate-regulated accounting is an accepted practice for utilities building large infrastructure projects that have long-term benefits.
"Every dollar we spend has to be recovered from the ratepayer," he said. "The only question is when."
Two years ago, BC Hydro installed a new generating unit in Revelstoke for $700 million.
"Do you want to pay for that all today?" Reid asked. "Or do you think that should be paid out over the useful life of that asset? Your kids and grandkids are going to have benefit of that, so therefore it's totally legitimate that they pay for that over time."
According to Hydro's most recent load forecast, the utility needs to increase its power generating capacity by 50% over 20 years to meet the demand of an industrial boom in northern B.C. Meeting that demand, and doing it within the constraints being imposed by the government and BCUC, is just one of the tasks Reid has ahead of him.
But that's not his biggest worry or top priority.
"What keeps me up at night, what bothers me the most, is if anybody gets hurt," he said. "We have a dangerous product – electricity – and we put our workers in harm's way every day. We have had people die on the job, and I don't want to be the CEO when we have any serious disabling injuries or fatalities. I don't want to be that guy."
When he retires for good, Reid will likely spend more time riding his Honda Goldwing on long road trips through the U.S. But he plans to stick with the CEO's job for a while.
"I think that BC Hydro employees deserve a bit of continuity for a while," he said.
