Executive instability continues at Nunavut’s power utility

The Qulliq Energy Corp. will get its third short-term boss in less that two years, following the departure of Alain Barriault from the president’s job on June 15. (FILE PHOTO)

The Qulliq Energy Corp’s revolving door opened and closed once again June 15, disgorging one short-term president and admitting another.

Alan Barriault, who served only about nine months in the top job at QEC following his appointment on Oct. 14, 2014, has left the Nunavut public, Premier Peter Taptuna said in a news release.

To fill the hole, Taptuna has named Peter Tumilty, an assistant deputy minister at the Department of Finance, as “short-term president.”

Tumilty, the third short-timer in a row to serve as boss of the troubled power utility, took over June 15.

Prior to Barriault’s nine-month stint, veteran bureaucrat Peter Ma held the job for about 11 months.

Ma had replaced Peter Mackey, who the GN dumped in November 2013 following a series of human resource scandals that produced embarrassing headlines for many months.

But compared to the three people who succeeded him, Mackey was a grizzled veteran. Following his appointment in 2009, Mackey held the job for all of four years.

At the same time, the board of directors that’s supposed to oversee the QEC has also suffered turmoil and instability over the past two years.

In January 2014, Simon Merkosak, then the chair of the QEC’s board, quit after losing a power struggle with the GN following Mackey’s ouster.

Merkosak took five of the six remaining board members with him and the GN re-stocked the board with new appointments.

The utility didn’t get a fully restored board until June 2014, when the GN plugged its last four vacancies.

But this past Feb. 13, the QEC’s new chair, David Omilgoitok, quit to take a job as boss of the Kitikmeot Corp.

The GN named Julie-Anne Miller of Iqaluit as the interim chair of QEC’s board but has yet to name a permanent chair.

Meanwhile, the power corporation faces a growing list of potentially crippling problems.

The QEC, which charges its customers the highest per-kilowatt-hour rates in Canada, has found no obvious solution to the problem of how to replace its aging, diesel-guzzling fleet of power plants.

In 2011, the QEC estimated it needed at least $250 million in capital to bring its decrepit power stations up to date.

But in his 2015 federal budget, the federal finance minister, Joe Oliver, did not come through with a $200 million contribution for power plant upgrades that Nunavut’s finance minister, Keith Peterson, had lobbied for.

Oliver did increase Nunavut’s permitted borrowing limit, however.

That’s not the only headache. This past September, Peter Ma, while still serving as QEC boss, revealed the power corporation had wracked up a $12 milllion cost overrun on upgrades to the Iqaluit power plant.

Originally budgeted at $28 million, that work ended up costing $40 million.

The QEC also underestimated constructions costs for new power plants in Qikiqtarjuaq and Taloyoak.

And this past May, Keith Peterson, the minister responsible for QEC, put the kibosh on plans for a hydroelectric plant near Iqaluit, which means that for the future, the GN faces increased dependency on diesel.

“As a government, we simply cannot afford mega-projects here in Nunavut,” Peterson said in the legislative assembly.

Meanwhile, the GN will seek a permanent QEC president by way of a job competition.

Taptuna’s news release gave no reason for Barriault’s departure, but thanked him for his past work in the public service.

A reliable public servant who brought a rare degree of competence to his work, Barriault had previously served as principal secretary to the premier and as president of the Nunavut Housing Corp.

At the NHC, Barriault had been brought in to help clean up the mess left by the NHC’s infamous $110-million cost overrun on two big social housing construction, which has since been attributed to widespread GN bungling.

Also on June 15, Taptuna named Virginia Qulaut Lloyd as associate deputy minister of the Department of Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs, an upgrade from her previous job, executive director of strategic planning.