Jessica McDonald has been fired from her job as B.C. Hydro’s chief executive officer. In itself, that’s not entirely unexpected. McDonald had previously been deputy minister to former B.C. Liberal premier Gordon Campbell. Her ex-husband had been chief of staff to former premier Christy Clark.
It’s also known that both the NDP and Green Party want to terminate the Site C dam on the Peace River. McDonald might have been perceived as an obstacle to that.
What should raise eyebrows, nevertheless, is the manner in which McDonald’s firing was handled. In announcing her termination, the board of directors released a statement expressing their “sincere gratitude to Ms. McDonald for her exemplary leadership of, and dedicated service to, B.C. Hydro and recognizes the profound impact her vision, innovative thinking and unwavering commitment to excellence has had, and will continue to have, on the company.”
For this you get canned? Aren’t exemplary leadership, dedicated service, innovative thinking and unwavering commitment to excellence exactly the qualities you want in a CEO? Normally a tribute of this sort accompanies a handsome bonus, not a pink slip.
This raises an important question: What role did the board actually play? A few days before, the chairman of the board, Brad Bennett, had also been let go. His replacement is Kenneth G. Peterson.
But as far as we know, the firings stopped there. That means all the other board members were still in place when McDonald was dumped.
But how can that be? Until the government changed hands, the CEO clearly enjoyed the board’s confidence. Didn’t those board members owe McDonald their support?
No doubt Peterson arrived with instructions from the cabinet to fire the CEO. But that’s not a decision one board member should make by himself if his colleagues resist. So did they? Apparently not.
Is this the new governance model for Crown corporations and other similar bodies such as health authorities and universities? Fire the chair, fire the CEO and the other board members go along to keep their jobs?
It can be argued that among the duties of diligence that board members owe is a duty of loyalty to the owner. In this case, perhaps, the “owner” could be considered the government of the day.
But that is only one among many such duties. Board members are also expected to form a relationship of trust with their senior managers.
It often falls to a CEO or a vice-president of finance to give unwelcome advice, indeed to resist an unwise decision. But that will only happen if the board and management are working hand in hand.
When board members suddenly turn on their CEO, for reasons that look suspiciously like self-preservation, that bond of trust is broken all the way down the line.
It might be felt they had no choice. The message had clearly arrived that McDonald must go.
But as ratepayers and customers, what guarantee do we have that Hydro’s board will act in our interests on other occasions, when its members appear so pusillanimous? For the company faces no shortage of controversial issues.
By replacing the chairman of B.C. Hydro, but leaving the other board members in place, the government forced the latter into an unseemly and ultimately tawdry act of submission.
Any board members worth their salt would have resigned in such circumstances.
