Atco boss criticizes GNWT over Hay River power franchise loss

Atco’s chief executive has accused the NWT government of getting it wrong – and discouraging investment – by allowing the publicly owned power corporation to take over Hay River’s franchise.

The NWT Power Corporation is wholly owned by the territorial government. In 2016, Hay River’s town council picked the power corp over Northland Utilities (which is co-owned by Atco) to distribute power locally.

The transition has been held up by eight years of litigation, arbitration and regulatory scrutiny. Regulator the Public Utilities Board just announced the transfer can go ahead, against Northland’s wishes.

Northland had argued in part that allowing the power corporation to take over Hay River’s franchise would cut out the heart of its South Slave customer base, making it harder for Northland to run a viable operation in other communities.

The Town of Hay River, however, framed the issue as one of a municipality’s right to freely decide who distributes its power.

Atco shares ownership of Northland Utilities with Dene-led firm Denendeh Investments. The two companies each own 50 percent of Northland, an arrangement first reported in 2015 and formalized in 2022.

On Thursday evening, Atco boss Nancy Southern announced Northland will be rebranded as Naka Power. Naka means “northern lights” in some Dene dialects.

Immediately before making that announcement, Southern aimed blunt remarks at NWT deputy premier Caroline Wawzonek and other GNWT staff.

“I had great hope … that we would have the opportunity to prosper in this wonderful land, only to find that a very cherished part of our assets would be expropriated by NTPC,” Southern told attendees.

Referring to an Indigenous leaders’ economic forum that has been taking place in Yellowknife this week, Southern said: “For the last two days, we talked about incenting investment, getting it right with the investors to build a prosperous mining future, to build security and the opportunity to invest in the NWT.

“And our investment – your investment, as Dene people – was taken away. I don’t think it sends the best of messages to future investors, and it certainly doesn’t send the message that we heard for the last two days.”

Wawzonek, who was in the audience, declined to comment.

The final financial terms of the franchise transfer have not yet been determined.

While the decision to switch the power franchise came from Hay River’s council, the power corporation had to submit a bid in the first place to be considered, setting up a battle between a private company and a government-owned corporation.

The power corporation has maintained it can offer Hay River residents cheaper power rates than Northland – an assertion that Northland has queried in regulatory filings.

Commenting earlier this week, before Southern made her remarks, NTPC said it was “pleased the PUB has determined that the franchise transfer is in the public interest.”

Naka Power is born

In making her comments, Southern sought to emphasize the 50-percent share of Northland owned by Denendeh Investments, an ownership structure increasingly promoted by both Denendeh and Atco as a unique selling point.

The culmination of those efforts came in Thursday’s rebranding of Northland as Naka Power.

As Denendeh Investments president Darrell Beaulieu explained to Southern after her opening attempt at pronouncing it, the emphasis in na-ka falls on the second syllable.

The name change, he said, meant “reaffirming our commitment to providing safe, reliable service to customers across the Northwest Territories” at the same time as reflecting the culture of the company and the region’s peoples.

A promotional video shown on Thursday tied the name and the northern lights connotation to the company’s purpose of providing energy, and hence light, to homes across the NWT – even if its days doing so in Hay River are numbered.

Beaulieu, reinforcing Southern’s remarks about the GNWT’s role in the transfer, said: “That reconciliation piece has been a real challenge.”

In a press release accompanying the rebranding, he was quoted as saying he hoped Naka Power could help drive “more widespread Indigenous participation in the energy sector.”

Beaulieu said the name change had been inspired by late Yellowknives Dene First Nation Chief Edward Sangris, who was the first to suggest such a move.