Open Council

10th Meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee

Open Council

10th Meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee

August 14, 2025, at 1:00 PM

Original link

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

None.

3.   Scheduled Items

None.

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   Code of Conduct for Members of Council and Local Boards

2025-08-14 Staff Report - Code of Conduct-Council and Boards

Moved by C. Rahman

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the Code of Conduct for Members of Council and Local Boards and the Council and Staff Relations Policy BE REFERRED to a future meeting of the Governance Working Group for further review, with an invitation extended to the Integrity Commissioner to attend and respond to questions; it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee received a communication dated August 11, 2025 from Councillor S. Stevenson with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

4.2   Delegation - Ysni Semsedini, CEO and Tanya Goodine, Board Chair, London Hydro - Affiliated Proposal

2025-08-14 Submission - London Hydro Affiliate Proposal-1

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by C. Rahman

That, with respect to the London Hydro Inc. Affiliate Proposal, the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to work with London Hydro Inc. and report back to a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the necessary by-laws and supporting documentation to implement the proposed “Affiliate” corporation;

it being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee heard and received a presentation from Y. Semsedini, CEO and T. Goodine, Board Chair, London Hydro with respect to this matter.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

ADDITIONAL VOTES:

Moved by P. Cuddy

Seconded by J. Pribil

That the delegation request from Y. Semsedini, CEO and T. Goodine, Board Chair, London Hydro, BE APPROVED to be heard at this time.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

4.3   Consideration of Appointment to the Eldon House Board of Directors (Requires 1 Member)

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That Michelle Southern BE APPOINTED to the Eldon House Board of Directors for the term ending November 14, 2026.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

Consideration of Appointment to the Eldon House Board of Directors.

Majority Winner: Michelle Southern

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

6.   Confidential 

None.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by P. Van Meerbergen

Seconded by D. Ferreira

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 1:56 PM.

Full Transcript

Transcript provided by Lillian Skinner’s London Council Archive. Note: This is an automated speech-to-text transcript and may contain errors. Speaker names are not identified.

View full transcript (1 hour, 15 minutes)

[16:32] button. It’s going to turn right and speak from everyone. It’s good. Colleagues, if everyone can take their seats, we’re going to be calling the meeting to order.

[19:27] It being 1 p.m. I am going to call the 10th meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee to order. I want to acknowledge that the City of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabic, the Haudenosaunee, Lene Peiwach, and Adawanda and Peoples. And we honor and respect the history, languages, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The City of London is currently home to many first nations, M.E.T. and Inuit people, and as representatives of the people of the City of London, we’re grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. The City of London is also committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request. And to make a request specific to this meeting, please contact sppc@london.ca or phone 519-661-2489, extension 2425. Colleagues, I am going to look for any disclosures of pecanary interest. I will note that all colleagues are present in chambers except for Councillor Hillyer who’s joining us remotely and Councillor Stevenson is unable to join us today. And I’m seeing no disclosures of pecanary interest.

[20:37] So moving on, we will have no consent items to deal with today. We have no scheduled items to deal with today. We do have three items for direction. And the first of those is the code of conduct for members of council and local boards. So we will start with that one. Councillor ramen. Thank you and through you. So I wanted to start out by first saying, I really appreciate what’s in our package as a starting point for a discussion, but I’d like to refer what’s in our package at this time. I know there’s probably a lot of things that people would like to say about this and I want to provide ample time to do so through our mechanism of discussing this at GWG.

[21:25] Okay. So you’re moving a referral of this item to the next meeting of the governance working group. Councillor Pribble is indicating health second. Councillor Pribble, I saw your hand go up. So just checking. Yes, I would like to second. I would just like to add a really good conversation. My Mr. Mascaring and just I do believe that every council should have the opportunity to ask questions because there are some very important issues included. Thank you. Okay. So we have a motion to refer on the floor. Colleagues, we’ll see that in eScribe if you refresh your screen and that will include an invitation to the integrity commissioner to join us for that GWG meeting. The clerks captured that in there. So, so ramen and Councillor Pribble, I just want to make sure that, okay, and there’s also the being noted that a communication from Councillor Stevenson was received. Any further discussion on the referral? Seeing none, I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote.

[22:36] Your votes, yes. Mr. Trust, so votes, yes. Seeing the vote. Motion carries 14 to 0. Thank you, Colleagues. I’ll just note before we move on to item 4.2, because we do have a delegation here from London Hydro, but I will be working with Ms. Hunt to establish a GWG meeting time where the integrity commissioner is also available to join us. So that is not on the schedule yet, but I’ll be working with her to get one scheduled as soon as possible and we’ll look at all your schedules for availability in regard to your attendance at that meeting. So just a heads up on that. So our next item is a delegation request from our Corporation of London Hydro and looking for a mover and a seconder to approve the delegation, moved by Councillor Cuddy, seconded by Councillor Pribble.

[23:38] So our procedural question is five minutes adequate for the delegation. So I did speak to our guests from London Hydro ahead of time. They are roughly expecting five minutes. I’m going to allow little lenients if they run over 30 seconds to a minute. I know that they’ve gone over their material and they think that they can fit it in five minutes, but then when you’re standing in front of us, sometimes it takes five, 30 or whatever. So I’ll just use a little discretion from the chair to make sure that they’re able to get their comments in. So we’ll open the vote to approve the.

[24:28] The votes, yes. Can we get your mic closing the vote? Motion carries 14 to 0. Thank you, colleagues. So we will invite our presenters to come up to the podium and I know that we know who you are, but we’ll ask you to give us your names because folks following the live stream may not know who you are. So we’ll ask you to give us your names and then you have five minutes. As I said, I’ll be a little lenient. If you run over a tiny bit, we’ll be okay with that.

[25:11] Thank you. My name is Tanya Goodein and I’m the board chair of London Hydro. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today. From the board’s perspective, our role is to ensure that the organization is sustainable, both stable today and future ready. What we’re proposing is an exciting first step when the positions London Hydro in an even stronger, more competitive space while keeping protections firmly in place for the city and for our core utility business. What’s being proposed is the creation of an affiliate. This is a separate incorporated entity, 100% owned by the city of London. It’s a proven way to support regional collaboration, reduce costs and expand service offerings, especially as the sector transforms with electrification and the increased need for innovation. We’re seeing real opportunities to invest, to support regional economic growth and to better serve both our existing and future customers. It’s also worth noting that London Hydro is currently the only utility of its size in the province without either a cold, cold or an affiliate. Let me be clear, this structure keeps London Hydro and all its assets under the city’s purview. The city remains the sole shareholder. With an affiliate, there will be appropriate limits and approvals required and most importantly, we will work through this process with the city every step of the way to ensure mutual success. Today, we’re simply asking for support to move forward with an affiliate framework and begin working with city staff on the necessary governance documents and we would expect to be able to bring it back for final approval at the end of 2025. This is about smart growth, future readiness and protecting what matters. On behalf of the London Hydro Board, I’m confident that together, we can take this step forward with strength and purpose. Thank you.

[27:05] Hello, I’m Eugenie Stempsadini, CEO of London Hydro. Tania did her part of keeping under five minutes. I’ll see if I can do the same. First, I’d like to thank council for this opportunity to speak to you today. I know the summer months are busy and it is important to get in front of council and I appreciate you making the time for us. I want to highlight three or four elements of the presentation. I’m not going to go through each of the slides. I know you’ve had some chance to review those slides and reach out with any questions that you may have had. My first comment is this is really the beginning of the conversation and not the end. Our purpose here today is really looking for strategic alignment on the direction we’re looking to go and to work with staff on the governance documents that would essentially govern the way this opportunity would move forward. The second comment I would make is something that Tania had mentioned. The affiliate structure has no impact on London Hydro. London Hydro remains the same as it always was. We’ll be 100% owned by the city, we’ll be governed through the shareholder declaration, we’ll have a board of directors, dividend will be protected as well as assets. There is nothing that we are asking that will impact London Hydro in the presentation that we’re making today. Tania also mentioned London Hydro is an outlier. In the electrical distribution industry, there’s roughly 55 utilities that exist today. We are one of only two utilities, over 25,000 customers that does not have an affiliate structure or a holdco structure today. That other utility is probably going to be sold sometime soon, which would make London Hydro even more of an outlier in this in the industry. The reason that this has worked so well, it’s driven opportunities for other utilities in other regions to do, I would call it utility adjacent work. Things that strengthen the relationship, help align with city priorities, help drive economic development and London Hydro is behind in this element compared to what we’re seeing in other utilities within the province.

[29:06] The other comment I would make and one of my last ones is, there’s still lots of work to do. So, the regulation and legislation that set up the ability to create these affiliates was closed in early 2000. We are looking and working with the city or we will be looking to work with the city on finding ways to ensure we can incorporate an organization like this going forward. But what I would say is that there is no guarantees. It is our hope that we can find a way to create an affiliate for London Hydro that can work in the same way that affiliates work for other utilities in the province. And in closing, I just wanted to thank some city staff. Sandra and Alisa have spent a lot of time helping us at London Hydro understand some of the history of affiliates here in the city of London, some of the challenges that the city has seen in going forward. And I think what we proposed here is a plan together in determining how we can create a vibrant affiliate for London Hydro and the city of London. And with that, I hope I’ve kept my five minutes and I’ll yield the time back to you. Well, Mr. Samcedini, perhaps the affiliate can offer some training to other boards and commissions on their delegates presenting to us because you actually came in 24 seconds under time. So, perhaps there’s some great opportunity to do some training there.

[30:22] Thank you for that. We will now look to open the floor for questions and comments from colleagues. Councillor Van Meerbergen. Sorry, before we do that, we’re going to look to see, are you moving a motion first because we do need a motion on the floor? Yeah, I’ll move that motion. And Councillor ramen, you’re prepared to second that. So, can you give us the, Councillor, I assume you’re moving the motion that’s in E-Scribe. So, colleagues, if you refresh, there is the motion in E-Scribe. Councillor ramen. Thank you and through you. I just want to clarify the motion on the floor. If it’s okay to clarify that with you, Councillor Van Meerbergen.

[31:38] So, what we’re looking to do, or what I was looking to second, is to move forward with the next steps in the affiliate process. So, I just want to ensure that we encapsulate that in the motion that this allows London Hydro to now work with city staff in order to bring forward a report on this matter as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you. And so, with apologies, there was draft language, but it wasn’t saved in E-Scribe. I just asked the clerk if they can click the save button so that everybody can read it through. And that should be visible to you now if you refresh your screen. And so, for those who may be watching, the motion reads, Councillor ramen, did you want to read that out? Sure. To the London Hydro Inc. Affiliate Proposal of Civic Administration, be directed to work with London Hydro Inc. and report back to a future meeting of the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee with the necessary bylaws and supporting documents to implement the proposed affiliate corporation. It being noted that the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee heard and received the presentation from Y. Sam Sidini, CEO and T. Goodnight, Board Chair, London Hydro with respect to this matter.

[33:01] Thank you. And trust our board, our council representative on the board, to have that all set. Councillor van Mirberg, that’s capturing your intent. So, I’m seeing thumbs up from both. That’s on the floor. And now, I’ll call these questions, comments. And Councillor van Mirbergen, we’ll start with you. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for the presentation. A very informative and it makes a lot of sense. But if you have a question, can you describe the difference between the structure being proposed today and what the last council approved? What’s different?

[33:43] Mr. Sam Sidini, thank you for the question. So, in structure, it would look very similar, or the same to any sort of outside party looking at it. There are two affiliate companies running side by side with separate shareholder declarations, separate board of directors, separate businesses that are running forward. The difference is sort of the technicality in how and how the affiliate is going to be incorporated. The original incorporation that was approved by Council was a Municipal Services Corporation, which is actually precluded from doing some of the activities that we would see within an affiliate organization. So, for example, an affiliate organization that would be incorporated under the Municipal Services Act couldn’t do transmission opportunities. That’s specifically precluded from municipalities to be able to do that work. The other element is municipalities are not allowed, or they are allowed to conduct business in other municipalities, but they need the permission of that municipality to conduct that business. So, as you would see, it would sort of set up in a way to not allow the elements of these affiliate businesses that we’re looking to do. But if you look at it, it actually looks exactly the same. So, from the outside, you wouldn’t really see a difference between how this incorporation is looking to happen versus what was approved to the last Council.

[35:01] Okay, thanks very much. Appreciate that. Hey, I have Councillor ramen next. I also have Councillor Mayor Morgan, Councillor Pribble, Councillor Cudi, and Councillor Trussow. Councillor ramen. Thank you. And I appreciate the discussion that we’re having here today. And I want to say that this isn’t new or novel. And it’s something that we’ve discussed this term of Council already. And what I think is really important for us to realize is, again, the point that’s been made already, and that is that we are behind the curve on this. And we really need to get in front of where we’re going with electrification here in the province of Ontario. I have to say, under your leadership, I think you’ve helped to establish an even clearer direction for London Hydro and for myself as a Councillor. And I think the engagement that we’ve had now with in the community, it gives people the comfort as to where this is heading in terms of growth for the city. We’ve seen some great momentum with things like West Five.

[36:09] And those are innovative projects that we need to be able to move the needle on and to do that better and to move those things further, we have to be able to have a structure that allows us to do so. So I’m wholeheartedly supportive of the way that we move forward on this. And if you know, if it were possible to go faster, I think that would be even better. I just look at all the opportunities that I’ve seen and heard from Oakville Hydro, Ottawa Hydro, and the things that they’re able to do under an affiliate model. And the main point of this is that it benefits citizens of those communities, but it also has benefited people across Ontario with the affiliate work they’ve been able to do. And that’s not even with the possibility of dividend growth in the conversation at this time. So I think there’s lots of really great opportunity here. It’s regional opportunity, it’s local opportunity, and it’s an opportunity to reduce costs. So I do think that there is a clear reason for us to move forward at this time. Thank you.

[37:16] Thank you, Councillor Raman. Mayor Morgan. Yes, I’m going to echo what Councillor Raman said, and just add a few of my own points. So I remember the first discussion that we had on the concept of an affiliate. And for colleagues who either followed that or were on council at that time, if you recall, the structure was to put an entity between the city of London and London Hydro. That’s creating a bit of a separation from the more close and direct relationship that we had. And that was something that council was not interested in this time, and I think continues to not be interested in. But this structure is actually one that we talked about supporting.

[37:54] The idea of having a parallel organization that could work intimately close with London Hydro to take advantage of opportunities that other municipalities are taking advantage of. And at the time we contemplated a municipal services corp, but I think, quite appropriately, so the advice to go down, more down the section 142 corp line, which is an existing structure that is out there working and then enabling the type of investments and opportunities that an affiliate like this could make is certainly the appropriate model to follow and pursue. As Councillor Raman said, other municipalities are already doing this, and they’re doing it quite well, and they have well-established, well-developed affiliate structures. They’re taking advantage of other investment opportunities that are returning increased dividends and revenues back to municipal stakeholders, including their municipalities as well as the citizens of those municipalities. For us, not to seize this opportunity means there are other entities that may operate in that space and seize those opportunities for us, or will continue to fall behind other utilities in the type of innovation that an affiliate corporation can provide.

[39:04] I know this is the very first step, and I also know that there’s also some asks that will have the province in setting up this particular corporation. So, given we are the sole shareholder of both London Hydro and the proposed sole shareholder of the entity, certainly I would be very comfortable if we wanted to add into this motion a direction for myself to assist London Hydro in any sort of advocacy with the provincial government that is necessary to try to seek the proper permissions. I mean, I’m happy to do that anyways, but if colleagues feel like expressing that explicitly in the motion, I’d be very comfortable having that added in and giving me the clear support from council that I will go out and do that work on behalf of council in support of the work of London Hydro, given the direction to set this up. Again, recognizing this is just the setting up of the corporation, but we may have some asks of the provincial government. So, I’m happy to, you know, if colleagues feel that’s appropriate, I’m happy to add that as an amendment in that direction to myself, which is a little bit odd, but council to to request for me to do that. The other piece I wanted to add is, I often say in this chamber and in the media, like we only have so many places that we can seek revenues from, right? We’ve got property taxes, we got user fees, we got government grants, we get some money from London Hydro, some money from things like the casino operating in our city. Now, if we’re actually going to be meaningful and pursuing opportunities that might grow dividends or create other income streams for the municipality, we’re going to have to actually engage in these types of spaces and actually move in a more innovative way into these sorts of entities.

[40:40] Like, when you look at the example transmission of what an entity like this could do, there are other municipalities out there recognizing that Hydro One doesn’t have the capital capacity to build all the transmission assets that they might need in the province. So, other entities are going out there and building those for them either by themselves or with conglomerates of other municipalities and then selling those back after they’re built to London Hydro for a significant profit, right? We could actually be in that game in a meaningful way if that’s the right approach. And I said, like, we have to decide what the affiliate will do down the road, but that’s the type of thing that is happening in other places in the province that we are not currently taking advantage of in London or in the region of southwestern Ontario. So, I think an affiliate structure could also provide some regional leadership or regional partnership to engage in those sorts of opportunities that are being pursued in other parts of the province. The southwestern Ontario should be taken advantage of with the leadership that we can provide with the assets of London Hydro, a very mature and sophisticated organization that can actually engage in this in a thoughtful way that has the actually the staff at their disposal to enter into these sites of arrangements and pursue these opportunities to leverage that for the benefit of the region.

[41:46] I think is something that not only is a great advantage to the city of London and their taxpayers, but to southwestern Ontario being competitive in the energy market, which we know is incredibly important and growing an importance given the energy demands of the United States, the stuff that is happening in talking about energy evolution and the electrification that’s happening in this province. So, I am fully behind proceeding with this step. I’m very supportive of anything I can offer to support this, and I’d be happy to entertain a direction from council for me to assist them, which I intend to do anyways, but I’m happy to have that formalized if colleagues feel that that’s a necessary step. Councillor Cribble.

[42:26] Thank you. I have a couple of questions. The first one is your presentation includes all the positives and if there are potential any negative risks, if you can also comment under the liability and the risk in relation to the equated investment in the affiliation. Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Yeah, so whenever you go down a venture, I know you always hope things go well. I think the beauty of an affiliate is it allows us to set up a structure in which we can mitigate risk. So, if London Hydro today, for example, we’re, I don’t know, to undergo generation assets, we’re allowed to do that within London Hydro. We can build generation assets. The problem is you have an organization that has over $400 million in assets. So, if something goes wrong and the bank or someone else comes after those assets, they can get them within London Hydro’s assets. The nice thing about structuring an affiliate organization is that you can separate those assets into its own company. And the only assets that can be looked to reflect the cost that were made, were the assets that you had purchased. So, the equity, I think that’s what you are alluding to there, Councillor Pribble, is the equity portion is really the part that is up for risk when you’re doing these types of affiliate organizations. This is where we look for the shareholder declaration to define a couple of things. One is how big of a risk can we take without having to come back to Council? And both for individual projects, but also as a whole. So, you wouldn’t want me to say, for example, our current shareholder declaration says we can make investments under $5 million.

[44:02] You wouldn’t want me to make 15 investments of under $5 million and come out and say, sorry, guys, didn’t work 15 million times five. That was 75 million, my apologies. So, we’re going to be looking for those opportunities to really ensure that Council understands what its maximum exposure is in any of the endeavors that we go forward with. So, having said that where the affiliate helps, is it puts those assets aside? It’s only those assets then are encumbered in terms of the work that’s happening. It protects London hydro assets and it protects city of London assets. So, that’s why I think it’s a large advantage to have an affiliate and that’s why we’ve seen other utilities use these affiliates to ensure that they protect the rate base of the regulated monopoly. Councillor Pribble. Thank you for that. I want to follow up. Give a comment on the city’s future governance and also the ongoing oversight. Mr. Simsadini. So, I think it would be premature for me to lay out what that exact governance is. We want to have conversations both with my board of directors and, of course, city staff as well to get, I think, alignment in the direction that we would move forward. Having said all of that, I would say that it should look very similar to what the governance is at London hydro. My goal would be to have a shareholder declaration that aligns very closely with the original declaration that we have today, something that city staff is comfortable with, something that the employees at London hydro are comfortable with. I think that’s the best way forward to ensure that we don’t have great deviation between how we run an affiliate organization and how the city sees us running London hydro itself. Councillor.

[45:45] And the oversight will be able to be done with, let’s say, AGM and other meetings, if you can just confirm that, please. Mr. Simsadini. Correct. The AGM structure would be exactly the same as you have from London hydro today. The affiliate would come in front of council, provide financial statements, ask for the board of directors to be approved, audited statements, approval of board of directors. There’s a couple more things. Oh, the auditor selection as well. So, those three items would still come to council every year to be approved by council.

[46:21] Councillor Pergott. Thank you for answering all my questions and thank you for this very positive proposal. Councillor Cuddy. Thank you, Chair. And through you, just a quick question, Chair, the Mayor was suggesting an amendment to the motion. I will second that amendment if we want to put it forward now or well, because I believe the if I could. So, if I can just provide some direction, Councillor Cuddy, the Mayor didn’t actually put a motion on the floor, so there’s nothing to second. I would also suggest, as the Mayor mentioned, he will undertake that work anyway.

[47:03] So, whether or not we, I think he was just more suggesting if people felt that it needed to be written in, he would be fine with it being written in, but that he was going to be a part of the advocacy anyway. So, right now, there’s nothing on the floor. Thank you, Chair, and my apologies. Mr. Simsadini, it’s good, Linda. Thank you very much for coming. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Atene. Mr. Simsadini, I don’t know if you recall, but our first meeting, we had a coffee at the bicycle cafe. We chatted. I think he’d been on the job for about three weeks. And you talked about creating new revenue streams, which, you know, for someone looking at utilities industry and looking at creating new revenue streams, this was really novel for me. I really, and I really appreciated it, because you’d already given it some thought and consideration. And I appreciate that. And to Councillor Raman’s point, you know, we can see a turning point now at London Hydro in the creativity that you’re bringing to it. And thank you for your leadership. I really appreciate it. In a very short time, you’ve really created a new culture, and I appreciate that.

[48:12] But my question is, why should this council approve this affiliate structure now in advance of opportunities being brought forward for consideration? Mr. Simsadini. Thank you for your comments, Councillor Cuddy. That means a lot to me as I celebrate my one-year anniversary here at London Hydro about a week ago. So I appreciate it. I’ve been here for that time. You know, why should we do it before there’s opportunity? There’s that great statement, and I’m going to try and get it a little bit wrong. But it was when was the best time to plan a tree? And everybody says 20 years ago, and when’s the next best time and it’s today? And this is how I feel with the affiliate. This is something that would have been great if we had constructed 20 years ago and would have had that history and that experience to grow the the affiliate over this amount of time. The truth of the matter is opportunities come and go. And if you don’t have a structure in place and governance in place, you don’t know as an organization if you can take advantage of it or not. And I would rather do that hard work upfront to ensure we’re aligned in the direction that we’re going, to ensure that we have agreement about what’s sort of good and what’s not as we look at these opportunities so that when they do come forward, we’re ready to act. And I would say that’s the biggest reason why we approve something today as opposed to waiting for a baked opportunity to come in front of council. At that point, it just gets very difficult to get through this process. And I really want this process to be one we do together. Working with city staff is important to me. I think people having trust in the process is important. So I think as we move that forward, it’s better to spend that time now and not be rushed by some end state. So we can get it right. And we’re ready to move on to the next steps when when they present themselves. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I like the tree analogy because well, it’s always better to plant the tree ahead of time. At least you know what type of tree you’re planting and what the potential fruits of that tree might be. And I’m certainly not going to vote no on this today because I just have too many questions about what this is about.

[50:21] I still I still need to have a better understanding. And I don’t know if we can do that today or whether that’ll be flushed out in the report. But at some point, I’m going to need to understand better. And I think the public’s going to want to understand better exactly with more precision. What can this entity do that’s a public benefit that the current structure cannot do and wait against that are two other factors. Number one, if if the current legislation is too restrictive, such that there are useful activities that we can’t undertake under the current legislation, might it be more cost effective? And I’ll get to the cost thing in a second. But might it not be more cost effective, especially if we’re thinking of doing advocacy to just amend the underlying regulations to allow this type of affiliate activity, whatever that whatever that’s going to be.

[51:25] Could you respond to that first? Mr. Samcedini. Sure. Maybe one of the examples that I can give and it was one that Mayor Morgan brought up in his comments was around what happened with PUC up in St. Marie. So PUC, there’d be a distribution company probably around 25 to 30,000 customers. I apologize anybody from St. Marie if I got that wrong. They also run water out of their utility as well. And they created a transmission business as well. They have a large customer up in St. Marie called Algoma Steel. Algoma was going through a large change of their furnaces.

[52:06] So so currently they had these blast furnaces that were powered with natural gas or some other combustible. And they decided that they were going to change those furnaces to arc furnaces. So electrically fed furnaces. The size of that installation was somewhere around 350 megawatts, which is about half the size of the city of London in one customer. And essentially they needed transmission upgrades to happen as part of the work to get these arc furnaces in and to create the economic development opportunities of Algoma Steel in St. Marie. St. Marie had made some really good decisions years earlier and they had purchased areas to make it transmission corridor so they knew they could connect to the transmission line. So when Algoma Steel went forward to look to connect, they were actually able to provide a proposal that was cheaper and quicker than Hydro One’s proposal to be able to connect them. And what this meant was Algoma Steel could get onto their business of making steel as opposed to worrying about how they were going to connect their new arc furnaces. That’s one great example of something that a distribution utility is not allowed to do. We’re not allowed to be involved in transmission activities, but an affiliate that gets a transmission license can. So that’s a prime example of what would be in the public good about going through an affiliate structure like this. And sorry if I didn’t answer any other part of your first question, please let me know. I’ll get to the other parts. What would be the downside of simply trying to amend the current regulatory structure to allow this additional flexibility? Has that been tried and failed? Has Aema worked on it? Have other municipalities lobbied for this? And the reason I’m asking this is it sounds as if we’re going to set up a whole another structure with a whole another board. And I am going to ask the question of what that’s going to cost. Would it be possible to be a little bit more efficient and leaner if this was brought into one entity that had perhaps some enhanced legislative authority? Mr. Samcedini. Although I can’t comment if legislation was tried to be updated to permit these activities. What I would say about it is and I think somebody made this comment with me on a phone call or maybe it was actually the London Free Press aren’t regulated monopoly sometimes a good thing. And the answer is yes. And when I look at the distribution space protections and the regulatory risk that goes on to having a distribution company is important. We want to ensure that electricity is here today and tomorrow in 100 years from now. London Hydro is celebrating its 115th birthday this year as an organization. So it gives you a sense of our sort of long term horizon.

[54:50] When you start amending legislation to allow other activities within the LDC you can put those LDC assets more at risk. Some companies will you know lean on those regulations and go as far as they can. Others will take a conservative view. But ultimately as I see it if you were amending those regulations you would put distribution assets at risk. Whereas if you have an affiliate you’re not putting any London Hydro distribution assets at risk. And the other thing that I would say is that in legislation this was contemplated. They you know they had this they must have had this discussion about putting it within the LDC or allowing an affiliate. And what we’ve seen is almost every other utility is taken and every other municipality is taken the way of the affiliate as a way to reduce that risk and provide the upside benefits for their citizens.

[55:35] Councilor. Okay. So we’re going to set up a separate entity. We’re going to have a separate board. Presumably they’re going to have separate meetings. They’re going to have separate reports. Are they going to be hiring separate staff? Mr. Samcedini. So we would use the way we envision it today is that the the staffing of the affiliate would take some members of London Hydro staff used in the affiliate as well. This is a much more efficient way to operate affiliate opportunities. As that affiliate grows I’m not saying that there wouldn’t be a time that we would hire directed staff but in saying that we would have to have revenues that would that would make those payments. Our goal here isn’t to keep coming to City Council asking for money. It’s to have a place where we generate income from ideas and investments that can then eventually go back to the shareholder. Do you have to the chair an initial estimate as to what these startup ongoing administrative costs would be on an annual basis? Mr. Samcedini. As we define the structure exactly, we will bring that back in the next discussion with Council if Council believes that this is the direction forward. But I would say the general approach we were taking is to minimize those fees. One of the reasons that we looked at the structure and had discussions with Council was about additional costing. If you went into a classic Holdco model, I’d say the thing that was proposed one of the last times, you actually create two new organizations, two new boards of directors. There’s more cost in feeding that structure than there is in this one. So I would say in us looking at the structure it really is about minimizing investment and ongoing costs, but we can bring those exact costs to you when we have a better understanding with City staff about what the structure looks like. Councilor. Thank you. I look forward to that and my final question is why would something of this nature not be put forward through the budgetary process as a business plan? Ms. Dator-Spier or Ms. Barbong. Thank you, Chair. So the creation of a corporation isn’t necessarily something that would go through the budget process. Certainly the request before you today is to create basically a shell of a corporation and look towards pursuing that through the work that would need to be identified as to how it would go forward. So the business plan piece would then come forward after the fact and certainly there’s different approaches. How this is done previously was a little bit different than this time around, but certainly not through the budgetary process from that process, but a business plan that is an alternative that could be pursued to do the business plan and then obviously you have to then do all the work on the back end to be able to go forward to do it. So both valid approaches depending on what it is you’re trying to achieve at the end. Okay, well all in all then thank you for all that information. I still have a lot of questions and I’m going to want to have answered before I ultimately go to approve this. One of which which I didn’t put forward yet is if this is a wholly owned affiliate and there are legal obligations and there are liabilities and those liabilities can’t be met by the assets of the particular sub-entity. When London Hydro or ultimately the city still be liable for those anyway and I’m not asking for a legal opinion on that today, but that’s the sort of question that I think needs to be answered along with the costs in the next report. So I’ll be voting yes on this, but I just want to flag what some of my concerns are and I hope that these questions are answered by the next stage. Councillor Hopkins, I have you next. Thank you Mr. Chair and thank you Mr. Samsadini for being here and for your delegation as well. I guess you know just to start off and reiterate what you just said, this is the beginning of the conversation. I appreciate you being here.

[59:44] I do want to emphasize though Mayor Morgan’s the importance of the mayor’s advocacy with the provincial government. Councillor ramen reminded me of West 5 and the challenges of West 5 and being able to share the electrification and some of the challenges that they faced was all provincially regulated and it really did surprise me how much we are a creature of the province when it comes to energy and I really do think a lot of advocacy with the provincial government is going to be needed. So and again you know sometimes when things are too good to be true there’s usually ways that we start to realize what we can and can’t do and I think we have to try that. I have been on past councils where we tried different things. Nothing happened and again like you said it’s the beginning of the conversation. I do have maybe a question through the chair. I’m happy that you’ll be working with staff. That’s where a lot of the work that I am going to depend on will come from for me to understand what the affiliate is going to look like and how it’s going to work.

[1:01:06] But I also heard that we’re going to be doing this by the end of 2025. So I would assume the report coming back to us will be a decision a point that we will have to make a council. So if I’ve got that motion right I’m just preparing myself and again you know lots of questions as protecting the public utility. I’m always very cautious. It’s just my nature but really looking forward to seeing what comes back to us and again thank you for being here.

[1:01:43] Thank you Councillor Hopkins. We have any other speakers? Councillor Frank. Thank you and just one question through the chair. I just want to confirm that the affiliate structure would help London Hydro realize additional clean energy opportunities. I know that’s been discussed a bit but could you maybe provide an example of how it could help? Mr. Simcedini. Great. Thanks Councillor Frank for the question. I can give you a pretty concrete example of what’s happening today. So there was a new ISO program that was released that would allow the creation of more solar assets. The issue that we saw is the utility about that new program was programs in the past simply said you build it and you get paid X cents per kilowatt to produce. So from a business perspective it was really easy to see what your payback was, what your rate of return was if it was a good business endeavor or not.

[1:02:40] In this last element when they’ve released the new ISO bidding process they’re actually bidding it on day ahead pricing. So utilities are having to understand the market, get into that market. There’s a little bit more risk associated with the build that you’re producing. So we decided to sit out of this round just to understand more, get more detail on what the day ahead market looks like, what the risks are to utilities. But a prime example would be, as I said earlier, if that asset was in London Hydro our assets would be at risk if we didn’t get it right. If we put that within an affiliate organization we can restrict the risk to the equity investment that we make within the affiliate. So I think that’s a positive way forward. One of the comments earlier in my time at other utilities we had actually got the bank to do non-recourse debt financing. So what that meant was whatever the project was we were looking to undertake in the affiliate, the bank verified it based on that investment. They didn’t care what the City of London’s assets would have been, they didn’t care what London Hydro’s assets would be, they based it on the business plan of the project you’re bringing forward. So in that way again we’re able to reduce the risk to the assets of the City of London and London Hydro and ensuring that the citizens of London are taken care of. Mr. Frank. Thank you. Yes, I appreciate that explanation. I’ll be supporting this. I feel like it’s headed in the right direction towards investing in our green economy. It sounds like we’ll be able to get revenue, there’ll be more local jobs created.

[1:04:11] So I see this as a win-win-win moving forward and look forward to it coming back to us later this year. Sorry, I was distracted by the clerk there for a moment as we were just discussing process but Mr. Semcedini, did you want to offer any? No question. Thank you. Councillor Layman. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Mr. Semcedini and Ms. Goodein for your presentation today. As the Mayor mentioned, London Hydro has been to us before with a restructuring ask. The previous time I wasn’t totally on board with, I had had some concerns. What excites me more about this is the regional aspect that is very clear in the material and discussions that I’ve had with yourself. As a regional leader, London, I think, has to look outside. The city of London is going to be the size of Hamilton as we’ve heard many times and as housing is an exponential growth pattern, we’re already at half a million. We’re taking that place as a regional leader in southwest Ontario. So I guess with that hat on, I want to drive to the economic aspect of it. How will this restructuring assist you in going after the next industrial opportunity? Very aware that we compete for industry not just within Ontario or Canada but worldwide. And how will this structure allow you to add value to the competition for that? And how will this structure allow you to work with LEDC in a team effort, a collaborative effort when we chase the bigger things? Mr. Semcedini.

[1:06:11] So I think one of the big things in my experience with driving economic development, I’ve been a huge proponent of alignment between the local utility and economic development. If I think about the fact that there’s 50 municipalities, 55 municipalities that own their electric distribution company, that gives us an advantage over the 300 other municipalities that are in the province. Why is that? Companies look for things like deal certainty. They want to ensure energy has become a bigger issue than it ever has. Both on how do they conserve, how do they get things built quickly, and how do they get things built as cost effectively as possible? I think having the affiliate and some of the discussions that I’ve had today even with things like transmission, things like a distributed system operator. So a DSO model, I didn’t want to get hugely technical here, but there’s a number of utilities that are looking to work together in an affiliate fashion to create what’s called a DSO. And what that would allow utilities to do is essentially create contracts with their customers to produce electricity and sell it onto the grid. So instead of us having to upgrade our sizes of our transformer stations or do other work, we could actually have those customers generating onto the grid and we could pay them a fair market price to be able to do that. So all of these activities within the affiliate on the transmission side, on the DSO side, will allow us to have a better proposal for someone looking to come to town.

[1:07:39] It will allow us to build more in terms of transformer stations when we can do things in partnership. And I think that’s where you’re going to see on the transmission side. It actually helps us bring other utilities under the tent to help bring assets locally, which is a positive. So I think these are all going to be very upside to what’s happening with economic development. And you’ll hear from me, it’s my pledge to this council. I will be wherever you need me when it comes to economic development. I think the utility is a driver for it and something I’m happy to be at any way I can to help drive jobs locally to the city of London. Councillor Lehman. Thank you, Chair. One further question.

[1:08:15] As we mentioned here, we are the shareholder. Actually, it’s 450,000 Londoners are shareholders. And on their behalf, I’ve been a fiscal, a bit of a fiscal hawk on dividends. And recently, the previous council, we’ve been able to get our dividend increase. Thank you very much after 10 years. Going forward, what impact will this have on future dividends to the shareholders of London Hydro? Mr. Samsadini. So there should be no impact to London Hydro’s dividend. So as we continue to grow and that dividend grows, that will continue to happen. Our hope, long term, is to create a stable revenue source within the affiliate as well that will have some dividend potential for the city to help grow it even further than that. Now, as Councillor Trossa pointed out, there’s not a firm business plan in front of you. There’s not a guarantee I can make you today.

[1:09:17] But that’s the goal. The goal is to bring businesses into the community that are going to help through efficiency, through working together, drive green energy, drive the electrification, and also drive a dividend up to the shareholder in the citizens of London. So that’s the goal. I can’t, unfortunately, give you a number of today of what that looks like. But I think that’s sort of the idea that we have going forward. Councillor. Thank you. Good to hear. I just wanted to get that out at the front. Obviously, when you are bringing future endeavors to us, I want that to be part of the discussion as well. Thank you, Chair.

[1:09:54] Looking for any other speakers? Seeing none, I’m going to ask the clerk to open the vote. Closing the vote, motion carries 14 to 0. Thank you, colleagues. And thank you to our guests. You’re welcome to stay and listen to the remaining item, or you’re welcome to return to the other items that you have to do today.

[1:10:32] But we do appreciate you coming and presenting before us this afternoon. Colleagues, we have one item left on our agenda that is the consideration of appointments to the Elden House Board of Directors. It requires one member. We have two applicants. So, as has been our practice, we will put those to a vote. Councillor, trust out. I do have a question for the clerk, if I may. Go ahead. Yes. We had quite a few more applicants last time Elden House was open. Could you just refresh my comment? I’m sorry I didn’t have time to look that up. It was like 12 or 4. How many was it last time?

[1:11:16] It was Ms. Corbin? Through the Chair, the last time we had a membership open, we had two applicants. The City Clerk’s Office has reached out to those applicants to let them know there’s another opening, but have not heard with a response. Councillor. Okay, so maybe it was the initial one at the beginning of the term that had a lot. I just wanted to be assured that from the last time we did this, any unsuccessful applicants had been notified that this was going on. Okay, thank you. That answers my question.

[1:11:54] Thank you for that. So, as I said, colleagues, we have two candidates to select from. So, we will use our run-off ballot process. In this case, with only two candidates, we will come out. We should come out if the software works properly with a winner on the first ballot. So, we will look to see if there are any speakers to either of the applicants before we open the vote. Seeing none, I’m going to ask Vice Chair Raman to take the chair for me. Thank you. I have the chair. Go ahead. Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. So, I’m just going to take a moment to share that I’m going to be voting for Michelle Southern.

[1:12:37] And I will just share with colleagues. I have known Michelle since we were six years old. I will let you do the math on how many years that is. I’m not going to publicly disclose that. However, throughout that time, in all the time I’ve known Michelle, she’s had a passion for history and storytelling. She has served on a public board in another municipality before they located in London. So, she’s got a little bit of experience on a board. She’s got some great experience around marketing and promotions and fundraising. And she actually was able to convince me to visit Eldon House last Halloween for their Halloween setup. So, she’s already driving business to Eldon House for some of their special events. And so, that’s why I’m going to be supporting her on this. I think she’d be a good candidate for the job. Thank you. Returning the chair to you with no one on the speaker’s list. And I will do one other call, see if there’s anyone else who wants to speak. And seeing none, I will ask the clerk to open the vote. Closing the selection process and the winner is Michelle Southern with 13 votes. So, I’m going to look for a motion now to approve the appointment of Michelle Southern to the board of directors. Councilor Van Mirberg and Councilor Ferra, thank you for the moving and seconding. And we’ll just let the clerk finish typing that up. And then we will get the vote open. It’s now open. Closing the vote. Motion carries 14 to 0. Thank you, colleagues. We have no further items for direction. We have no deferred matters additional business. We have no items for confidential session. That brings us to item seven. And this is the first time, I think, in all the time I’ve been chairing SPPC that I have been able to say before 2 p.m. or looking for a motion to adjourn. Moved by Councillors Van Mirberg and Ferra, all those in favor. We can do this by hand. That motion carries. Thank you, everyone.

[1:15:28] Have a great one. And for those who want to see the mayor lose in basketball, I believe he’s going to be playing some horse with shade and sharp over at LMCH’s facility later this afternoon.