Podcast appearances and mentions of Victoria Day

Welcome to 90th Glitch In The Matrix Stories Collection! Today we have 13 stories that will make you question reality itself, submitted and posted by everyday people. Today we have stories about disappearing objects, strange happenings, time skips and quantum immortality. So, turn down the lights, tune in, and let the haunting tales of everyday people take you down that dark and creepy road. Remember, these aren't just stories... these are true experiences that remind us that our world can truly be scarier than fiction. Have a Story To Submit? ➤ https://www.astheravendreams.com Or Post to the Subreddit ➤ https://reddit.com/r/TheRavensDream Thank you to all of the authors that have stories in today's Video... Peace Love Cali, Gray, Richard pennington, Beckie5, Victoria Day, Biagio C., Alex Reynard, Sharon, Michelle Sealy, r2deeptoot, Jasper Silence As Well As Any Author That Has Requested Anonymity. 'As The Raven Dreams' is a community where we explore the darker parts of human existence through true and harrowing stories. From sinister encounters with strangers and stalkers, to terrifying experiences that defy explanation and unsettling mysteries that linger in the shadows, I am here to tell you the most haunting narratives ever whispered. Much Love, and Sleep Well... ----- #TrueScaryStories #AsTheRavenDreams #GlitchInTheMatrix #RedditStories ➤ Stories include a content warning for language and sensitive/disturbing content. Viewer discretion is always advised. ➤ ALL Audio of this Podcast are copyright of AS THE RAVEN DREAMS / RAVEN ADAMS and may not be duplicated, in any format, without explicit permission ➤ If you like any of the following stories, consider subscribing! - Dark Web horror stories, creepy lets not meet stories, stalker stories, Glitch In The Matrix Stories, Unexplained Horror stories, Paranormal stories, cryptid encounter stories, Crazy ex lover stories, creepy neighbor stories, quantum immortality, true scary stories from reddit, or any other True horror Stories! ➤ And Remember; You are loved, you are important, and you are valid. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Time Stamps  00:24 ➤ Story 1 7:44 ➤ Story 2 12:33 ➤ Story 3 28:46 ➤ Story 4 31:11 ➤ Story 5 36:09 ➤ Story 6 41:08 ➤ Story 7 43:55 ➤ Story 8 49:10 ➤ Story 9 55:53 ➤ Story 10 58:11 ➤ Story 11 1:01:51 ➤ Story 12 1:03:32 ➤ Story 13 Two ad spots at 8ish and 56ish minutes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The holiday season is here and 2024 is coming to a close. It's a good time to reflect, so we're looking back at five of the top episodes of thinkenergy in 2024. Join your host Trevor Freeman, as he unwraps the year's most important topics surrounding the future of energy in Canada. Listen in for how experts are guiding change with insightful data and how they're communicating facts about the climate crisis. Plus, learn about new energy policies and ongoing updates to the electricity grid. Related links Episode 134 (What the data tells us): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/what-the-data-tells-us/ Episode 122 (Climate communication): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/summer-rewind-climate-communication-motivating-change-with-re-climate/ Episode 138 (Energy policies deep dive, part 1): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/energy-policy-deep-dive-with-nicholas-rivers-part-1/ Episode 136 (Modernizing the electricity grid): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/summer-rewind-modernizing-the-electricity-grid-with-the-advanced-distribution-management-system/ Episode 135 (Modernizing Ontario's energy future): https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/vision-quest-modernizing-ontarios-energy-future-with-the-eda/ Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en  To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405 To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod Transcript: Trevor Freeman  00:07 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at thinkenergy@hydrottawa.com  Hey, everyone, welcome back. Depending on where you live, you may notice that it's getting a little chilly outside. There is actually a couple snowflakes in the air or even on the ground, depending, again, on where you live. Up here in Ottawa, where I am, it's definitely starting to feel like we're getting close to winter, maybe not quite there yet, but like we're getting close to winter, which does seem to be happening later and later every year, because we're near the end of the year, we thought it would be a good idea to kind of look back at Think Energy over the last 12 months, and this has been an interesting year, both for Think Energy as well as for the industry we work in for Think Energy. It's been an interesting year because we transitioned hosts, and that brings me into the picture. So, I took over the hosting chair earlier this year, and I've really had a great time having conversations with folks and getting to dive into topics that either I know a little about, but not the full picture, or sometimes don't even know that much about. So, it's really been fun to do that, and it was fun to look back over the year at the different episodes that I've recorded and get a sense for where we've come with the show. The industry we work in has also been full of changes, and I think that is just the new reality. Every year, at the end of the year, I could probably say, wow, that was a really impactful year., things changed a lot. Hopefully all that change is in the right direction towards this energy transition, towards cleaning our energy and getting off fossil fuels. But like anything, change will be a bit up and down. Today, we're going to look back at the year and highlight some of the moments from our top episodes. These are the episodes that resonated with you, the listener the most, the ones that kind of got the most listens and the most reaction from and it's fun to pull out some of the impactful moments for us from that, from those episodes. So, in the holiday tradition, we're gonna go back and pull out some holiday treats from our from our favorite episodes, if you will. We're going to start by going all the way back to April, when I had the pleasure to chat with David Coletto, the founder and CEO of abacus data. So, David gave us a snapshot of what Canadians are really thinking about when it comes to the future of energy and our planet. This conversation is the perfect starting point for this episode, because it really lays the groundwork for understanding what Canadians think and feel about the energy landscape and how we will move forward. So, what did David's research reveal about how Canadians prioritize climate change amongst all the other things that are vying for their intention? Here's what he had to say when I asked him about evolving attitudes towards this pressing issue. David Coletto  03:24 Coming out of the pandemic, though, and I think the defining mindset up today, which is really important to understand, to then understand why people will be resistant to certain public policy choices on climate, or may not be ready to fully embrace a transition, is that most Canadians right now, and I say most, I mean, like 80 to 90% of them, I believe, have a mindset that's very much tied to scarcity. And that is that is a real shift. And what that means is that a lot of the things that people have come to expect they can get in their lives are either more expensive, harder to find or get or they fear losing what they already have, and those are often tied to issues like housing, the general cost of living, and healthcare. And so that mindset then causes us to view public policy decisions, broader economic forces and our day to day lives to a very different lens than one where I describe as there's plenty of everything, right, and a plenty mindset means I can take risks. I can perhaps pay a little bit more, even if the perception is that I pay more, even if it's not true, in order to achieve other kinds of goals. But when I'm the perception of struggling every day just to get the kind of life I want, or I'm the one in three Canadians who feel like they've completely fallen behind, that is going to make it much harder for me to be persuaded to do things that feel like a big change, or feel like they're going to disrupt my life more than it already is. Now, if we expand that and then we say, okay, so how do we overlay that? Add on to views around the broader issues around climate change, energy transition, I think what's clear in the long-term trends is the vast majority, 90 plus percent of Canadians believe climate change is real and is caused by human behavior. Overwhelming majorities believe that we that's actually a crisis that we have to do something about. And in the shorter term, the last, I would say, 12 to 18 months, as a result of you and me, Trevor, I don't know about you, I grew up in, you know, in Ontario. I never once in my entire life stepped out on a June morning and saw smokey skies and, you know, take my dog for a walk and bring her home, and she smells like smoke. That was never part of my experience. My wife grew up in Alberta, much more likely to happen in in in Western Canada over time. So, I think there's also become a realization that's firmed up, that if we don't do something about this, that it's going to have not just theoretical consequences for the earth, but actual implications for my life. Won't be able to do certain things, my health might be compromised, the value of my property might be at risk, I may not be able to ensure and so that, I think, has created far more desire or demand to see action. But what's muted it, at least in the short term, is that scarcity mindset, where people have basically said, including young people, which is the most fascinating thing, is people often assume younger Canadians are more likely to, you know, say climate change is a priority. For the first time and probably ever that I've tracked this, we now have younger Canadians. If you're under 30, you're the least likely to say climate change is one of your top three priorities. And that's because other issues, like housing, like economic security, like the cost of living, have overtaken them. And so short-term fear of short term scarcity has, at least for now, pushed down fears about the longer term scarcity that climate change will create. Trevor Freeman  07:00 Super interesting. I really like this conversation with David, because it was really great to get into the psychology of climate action and some of the barriers we need to overcome. I mean, there's a risk of thinking about climate science and the collective action that we have to take as being very scientific and data driven, and a lot of sense as it is, but we are all still people in the mix here, and we need to choose to take action, and how a country and a society, and in fact, that globe chooses to take action is really dependent on how we feel and think about it. So, this was a great conversation, and good to get that insight from David. It really kind of gets us to ask ourselves, what is going to mobilize and motivate the majority of people to take action when their focus is on more immediate needs? And that kind of ties into the next conversation that I want to highlight, which is actually a conversation that my predecessor, Dan Seguin had with Amber Bennett, the deputy director of rec climate, who talked about how we can perhaps move the needle when it comes to a large segment of the population that wants to take action but aren't entirely sure how. So, Amber shed some light on how to engage this movable middle, if you will, those people who believe in climate change, but maybe need that extra nudge to prioritize action. So let's hear what Amber had to say. Amber Bennett  08:29 I feel compelled to say that I think the term movable middle is used differently by different people. I think when the context of, you know, the work that we do, it kind of comes out of, you know, some of the themes that I was talking about in the last in the last question or last answer. It's this idea that, you know, people are kind of undecided, or they're conflicted about an issue, so they could move either one way or the other, but they're not, at the moment, oppositional, right? So, if you think about, you know, a broader population, there is a segment, you know, of Canadians whose identities are really built around the idea that they don't believe in climate change, they're not going to support, you know, climate action and whatnot. There's also on the other side, a whole group of Canadians whose identity are built around I'm a climate activist and I'm a climate advocate and, you know, and I'm an environmentalist, and so they're on the other side, but most of us just kind of we live in the middle. Some are more well informed than others, but for the most part, people are concerned right in the middle. They have they you know, when they ask yes, we want the government to act, we are highly supportive of it. But when it comes down to it, it's this tension around the fact that, because they may not be well informed, they're not thinking about this. They have many competing priorities. They're kind of undecided, or sometimes they're just conflicted about an issue, right? Because, on the one hand, as an example, yeah, I think we, we absolutely need renewable energy. We need lots of, you know, solar panels. I just don't want them on my house. Or we need lots of, you know, solar renewable solar farms. I just don't want them all over the landscape that I cherish from my childhood. So there are many things that you know are underneath of that are operating underneath for people that kind of create some conflict for them. So, people, so when we talk about the movable middle really, I think what's important is to acknowledge that most people are concerned, they want and they support action, but they're undecided, potentially, about one particular aspect or issue of it, or there's some other kind of thing that's happening for them that's creating a conflict, or they're kind of uninformed. So, you know, I think that you know one example, or rather, I'll back up that uninformed piece is particularly important right now as we see more and more kind of organized misinformation and disinformation, right? So, as an example, when I'm in focus groups, I can predict with very, you know, the lot of certainty. What are some of the kind of key narratives that are going to surface where people are kind of undecided. One of them might be, well, EV batteries are actually worse, you know, for the environment, than, you know, driving a car. Or there's no way that we're going to be able to electrify everything the grids can't support it. Or it may be solar panels actually create more emissions when you produce them than they save in their lifetime. So these kind of, like very dominant or kind of reoccurring pieces of information, and when people who are not thinking about this a lot or deeply as much as maybe you or I or people who are listening to this, so when, when people encounter these, this kind of information or confusion about what are the actual solutions, they really don't know what to think, right? So, like, a third of us sit within that category, right, of I actually don't know how to make sense of the information that that I'm hearing, right, and I don't trust so much of it, because I know that, you know, I know about misinformation. I know that I shouldn't be, you know, trusting everything that I hear, etc. So that's kind of the deal with the movable middle, right? So they're belief climate change is real, they're not climate deniers. They just may be conflicted or undecided or just not, you know, as informed, because they're not thinking about it on a daily basis. So, you know, as an example, when we talk about the challenge, you know, part of this is really, I think, being more clear about the cause of climate change, but also, what are some of the challenges that we're seeing that are related to climate change within our communities. You know, I was listening to a program, CBC program, the other day, and there's an entire community in Newfoundland that's actually moving back from the water. And this is, you know, after the aftermath of of hurricane Fiona and whatnot. So, you know, some of the challenges that we're seeing, what's the challenge that we're trying to overcome? And ideally, I would right size that at a community scale, right? So people feel overwhelmed when it's my personal, individual problem, but if we can begin to talk about this as a community challenge, then people are much more likely to engage because they don't feel like they're in it all on their own. 14:34 Playing into that idea that it takes a village to tackle climate change, let's go to one of our other popular shows this season with our guest, Nicholas Rivers, who's an associate professor of Public Policy and International Affairs from the University of Ottawa. I had a great chat with Nicholas about the role of public policy when it comes to action related to climate change, and we can't really discuss the world of energy in 2024 and not talk about one of the biggest and maybe most misunderstood topics in Canadian energy, carbon pricing. Carbon pricing is one of those things that we all hear about. We all kind of have an idea of what it is, but maybe it's not exactly what we think it is. So, it was really helpful to get Nicholas to break it down for us and to help us really understand it. So, let's have a listen to my chat with Nick Rivers about carbon pricing. Nicholas Rivers  15:32 Let me start out by saying, What's the point of carbon pricing? Because I think it's not evident for lots of people. It seems like a crazy idea. The basic idea is that we live in a market economy, and a market economy is one where the market responds to the cost of producing something and the desire of people to buy something, and so the market sets the prices, and the market determines how much gets produced in response to the prices, and how much people buy in response to the prices. It's not directed by some other entity, and the market economy tends to work best when the prices of things reflect their costs. So, if I want to go buy some bread, the idea in a market economy is that the price of the bread that I buy should reflect the cost to produce the bread right, the cost of the grains that are used to make it, and the cost of labor and the machines that are required to make it. And if that does reflect the cost, and there's a motivation for the bread maker to make the bread for me and so it'll be there when I want to buy it. And the idea that behind this carbon pricing is that there is a cost to me producing carbon emissions, right? So it the cost is it makes the world a little warmer, and there's a cost in lives and livelihoods and Well Being from climate change, but I don't pay a price, right? I don't pay the cost. I'm not required to pay the cost, because this is a non market good. No one's producing climate change. It's a public good. And so the idea behind carbon pricing is, hey, the market doesn't work for this kind of good. One way we can fix it is by attaching a price to carbon emissions. So it's just like bread. When people, you know, use it, they have to pay the price to reflect the cost. And so that's the kind of basic fundamental. And the idea that economists have had for a long time is that if we properly price carbon emissions, people are going to use an awful lot less of them, because now their actions now their actions reflect the costs. Okay, so, so that's the kind of basic idea behind carbon pricing. Canada has brought in a carbon price federally in 2019 provinces implemented carbon prices, some of them much before that, so Alberta brought in an industrial carbon price in 2007, BC brought in a carbon price throughout all emit for all emitters in 2008 and Quebec as well. So, the federal carbon price now is kind of the law of the land, in the sense that in that 2016 meeting that I mentioned, where the federal and provincial governments agreed about carbon pricing. The agreement was, we should all have a carbon price. Let's like this a level playing field. Let's all do our piece. And the federal government kind of took that message back and developed a federal carbon pricing benchmark, which said, hey, provinces, you can do your own carbon price as long as it's at least, you know, this certain level of stringency. But if you don't do it, we'll bring in our federal carbon price instead. Okay, so provinces have the ability to do something on their own, and if they don't do anything, the federal government will bring in a carbon price. And so what we've got now is a kind of a system that's a bit piecemeal, where some provinces have a their own carbon price, and other provinces have not implemented a carbon price, and the federal government has brought one in their place. The Federal carbon price has two parts. One is a consumer facing part, so for people like you and me, and for people or for for institutions that are not giant emitters, like a university or hospital or a mall, for example, they all are subject to what the federal government calls a fuel Levy and what the rest of us call a carbon tax. Big industrial emitters, like a pulp and paper plant or a steel plant or a big electricity generator are subject to a different scheme. It's still a carbon price, but the way it works is a little different, and it's called an output based performance standard. So I'll speak about each of them briefly on the industry side. The way it works is that each facility that produces a lot of emissions gets a target, and it's usually a same target for everyone in the sector. So the target could be like the target is for a steel sector you got to produce steel with a carbon intensity of less than, say, one ton of carbon per ton of steel that you produce. So they get that target, and if they manage to get their facility emissions below the target, they get a reward in terms of a carbon price. And if they if their emissions are above the target, they have to pay a carbon price. Trevor Freeman  20:32 A financial reward. So they get some sort of incentive to being below that benchmark. Nicholas Rivers  20:35 They basically get carbon credits, which have a financial value bet you so you can trade them for dollars. So that's the way it works. On the industry side, on the smaller emitter side, like you and me, it works a little differently. There's a levy on fuels. So any fuel that we might buy, like natural gas or gasoline or diesel, that contains carbon or releases carbon when it's combusted, is in a fee is imposed in proportion to the amount of carbon that's released from that fuel when it's burned. But and you and I are required to pay that fee. Now, we don't pay it directly to government. It's imposed at the retail level, so the you know, the gasoline station will pay the fee on our behalf, but then it'll raise the price of gasoline in the amount of the fee. Gotcha, that's the main part of the system. The other thing with respect to this consumer carbon price is that all that revenue that government collects is put into a pot and then it's rebated back to us. And you've probably heard about this, if you check your bank account, there'll be a Canada carbon rebate in your bank account, or at least, each household will get one, not each person. That's right, so it depends on who files their taxes first in each household who gets the rebate. So you want to be the first in your household to get your taxes done, but the money basically is raised from consumers in proportion to how much fuel they burn, and then the government collects it up and rebates it back to consumers equally for all households. Okay, so a lot of people are confused about this part. It's like, Why? Why would they go to this trouble? Why would they raise money and then rebate it back and this is an important point. This isn't a traditional tax, right? In a traditional tax, government implementing the tax to raise revenue to, you know, buy, build a bridge or to fund a school or something like that. That's not what's going on here. The point of this fuel Levy, or carbon tax is to provide incentives for people to change their behavior, and in particular, it's to fill fix this market failure we talked about earlier, where the cost of carbon emissions isn't reflected in their price. And so when the carbon price gets high, it will make a lot more sense for us as individuals to choose the Low Carbon action as opposed to the high carbon action, save money doing it. And on the rebate side, the rebate side, the rebate is designed so that we don't get punished, we don't lose our you know, we don't become lower income as a result of this. And so it goes back to each of us equally. So no matter whether I do this, you know, whether I take the Low Carbon action or I don't take the Low Carbon action, I get the same amount of rebate back regardless. 23:19 I was really glad to have Nicholas explain carbon pricing to us on that episode and in that conversation, it seems really complex at first, but really when you break it down, it's fairly easy to understand, regardless of how you feel about it. It's not that complex of a topic. So speaking of complex things. Our next highlight takes us really deep into the nitty gritty of electricity grids, which is the world that I live in. So I had this really interesting chat with my colleague, Jenna Gillis, who is the director of distribution engineering and asset management here at Hydro Ottawa. I talked to Jenna about the technological advancements that are happening in grid modernization and more specifically, what Hydro Ottawa is doing on our grid modernization roadmap. Jenna explained how this exercise of modernization is so critical and crucial to get us to that future of energy that we can envision where we electrify things, where there are distributed energy resources, there's more automation. We're more efficient on our grid. In order to get there, there's some work to do. So let's listen to what Jenna had to say about building a grid that's ready for the future and delivering more reliable and sustainable energy. Jenna Gillis  24:40 So our overall grid modernization strategy is guided by five key objectives. So I'll go through each one of those and give you kind of a high level blurb on what it is that we're trying to achieve with grid modernization. So the first one is enhancing reliability, so the more monitoring. Using devices, you have in the field to understand the state of the grid, the more remote capabilities you have in order to operate and, you know, isolate and restore the better reliability you have. The ultimate goal is moving towards an automated process where you have all of the foundation of the equipment, the communication channels and the auto the analytics to make decisions, and you can get outages restored much more quickly. The next one is what we call flexibility. So adaptive grid flexibility, so we want to make sure that the grid is dynamic to all of these changing energy demands that we're seeing come online. So things like heat pumps or electric vehicles or solar generation or battery we want to provide more options for the connections and be able to have the grid respond dynamically to these changing conditions. Next one we have is fortified resilience and robust security. So resilience is really about the ability to do to withstand disruptions. And I'm talking about that from, you know, a physical asset perspective, but maybe also a technology perspective as well. We want to make sure that we have a good diversity to be able to recover from disruptions. And we know there will always be disruptions, as we've seen, kind of with the weather in the little last little while, and then as we get more and more connected, we need to make sure we're safeguarding assets from cyber threats core to everything we do. We do, we want to make sure that we're thinking about the customer, and so we're looking towards strengthening customer engagement empowerment. So we've talked about, you know, getting more data back from the field and being able to unlock new new ways of doing things, new tools, and providing some of this information back to the customers to help them be better informed about their energy uses and their their low profile and what they want to do with their equipment. And then finally, sustainable decarbonation and renewable energy integration. So we really want to look at reducing our carbon footprint by optimizing our planning and operations processes. So we talked about a little bit about automation, you know, that will reduce our need to roll trucks for crews to physically go out in the field and operate devices. And basically everything above we talked about was, you know, being able to incorporate renewable energy sources. We want to make sure that we have the ability to bring these resources online and leverage them. So hopefully I've done some justification in terms of, you know, mapping out how complex this actually is to deploy. And so our grid modernization roadmap is set out basically a set of initiatives over the next 10 plus years. So we've kind of, you know, got it, got a good handle on the objectives we want to unlock over the next 10 years. And so we've laid out, what do we need to do to unlock those, and what's the timing of that? So we also need to understand that this is going to be dynamic and constantly evolving with, you know, technology or market drivers. So you know, the this roadmap is only as good as it is today, until, you know, something changes tomorrow, and we recognize that this is going to have to be dynamic and evolving. So due to the complexity of it, we decided to basically bucket the program into six different component layers so that we can really get a sense of how one feeds into the next, as I kind of talked a little bit about the pyramid before. So the first one is physical infrastructure. Number two is sensing and measurement. The third is communication. Fourth is data management and analytics. Number five is control and optimization. And then finally, the last, number six is business and regulatory. And so all of our initiatives fit underneath one of those six components. And with all that change, we need to have the right people. We need the right people, we need the right skill set. And some of these skills are things that we haven't done before. So these are new responsibilities, new skill sets, to the organization. And I'm going to put a little plug in here is that we're hiring right now. So take a look at our careers page. If I if I've painted an exciting picture and you want to be a part of this, take a look. We're hiring some of those skill sets today, and this stuff is going to span multiple years, right? So I feel like in the past, we kind of had, you know, like, oh, well, that's a five year program and then, and then you're done. No, like, this is going to be a continuous evolution, and these can span multi years. And I talked about it before. We need to be able to adapt and pivot to meet the requirements of technology and our customers, and we need to expect that. And so we need to build the that ability to stay dynamic through these multi year programs, to make sure that, you know, we maybe we need to change what our grid modernization objectives are halfway through. And that's okay. We can do that. Teresa Sarkesian  29:39  That was great, and this type of work on the electricity grid will ensure that we have a more robust and sustainable and smart grid that will enable all kinds of innovation, like more rooftop solar, more battery storage, and really empower our customers to be part of the energy solution. You can certain. Finally, count on there being more conversation about this on the think energy podcast. Moving forward, this next year, we're going to dive into even more details about some of the changes that are happening on our grid. So for our last highlight episode of 2024 my guest Theresa Sarkesian, President and CEO of the Electricity Distributors Association, painted this really vivid picture of some of the changes that she's seen over the past 15 years in the industry, and talked about the need to really ramp up electricity production in the years ahead. I think this is a really important one, because it does give us a picture of how far we've come, and reminds us that as much as it feels like we are on the cusp of change and a lot is going to change, looking forward, we can't lose sight of the fact that we've really started to evolve and change already and that some great stuff has already happened. It's a powerful message to close out our year end recap and a reminder that this is a marathon, the energy transition is a marathon, not a sprint, and it's not something that we're going to complete overnight. We're not going to get there in one night. So let's listen to what Theresa had to say.  I've been at the association now for 15 years. I'm just marking my 15 year anniversary. So feels really apropos to kind of reflect and look back. So I want to break down my answer into two parts. I'm going to talk to you about some, I guess, just my own personal observations about the electricity system writ large. And then I'm going to talk more about the changes in distribution. But some of the changes that I thought were really quite significant and profound, sort of when I joined the industry in 2009 I joined at a time when there was the Green Energy Act and the province was looking to connect all kinds of renewable energy generation to the electricity grid. So that was fairly significant. Another thing that was happening with the province is that they closed down coal fire generation that was pretty massive. In fact, I think at the time, it was the largest kind of carbon reduction initiative in North America. And I think even to this date today, I think it still is. So it's something that Ontario really has to be proud of. Another thing that you know at the time, I think that was fairly significant. In 2015 is just the expectation of what the demand would be. What was interesting, sort of like the past 15 years, the demand from customers for electricity was actually flat or declining, and that's all changed now, 15 years later, where we're now forecasting massive increases in in demand of energy, which could potentially be doubling in the future. And the other point I'd like to make is just the nuclear renaissance that we're having. I think when I joined the sector in 2009 I'll tell you, I think the public opinion of nuclear was actually quite low, and that's been completely turned around. Lots of geopolitical events around the world, I think, have driven that, and now that nuclear is having a huge Renaissance, and you're seeing, you know, lots of new investments in nuclear, and we're not talking about shutting down reactors anymore. We're talking about refurbishing and expanding. So those are some of the things that I've observed over the last 15 years that have really changed and for local distribution companies, I think what I have seen is a growing expectation by both government and the regulators for electric utilities to do more to both support the grid reliability and meet growing expectation from customers. So I started in the sector in 2009 it was right on the brink of implementation of smart meters and time of use. And what was interesting is that was mandated, and there were very few jurisdictions in the world that actually had mandated smart meters and time of use pricing. So again, Ontario is was one of the first. And so that was a big change for LDCs to move from, you know, smart meters and having to bring in that technology and also support the technology of time of use. I did mention the Green Energy Act at the time, we suddenly had to connect 1000s and 1000s of new solar and wind generation as well. And that was all new. There were no protocols. There were no standards for that. So that was fairly significant as well. And when I kind of fast forward to, I guess, more recently, there have been a lot of changes from government. I think they've really supported our industry. They understand the trust that we have with our customers, and they've implemented a number of new changes in terms of rate structures. They've asked us to implement ultra-low rate pricing that can support overnight electric vehicle charging, and they've also asked us to introduce a green button digital platform that allows customers to download their energy data and share with their parties. For, you know, different assessments and tools for lowering energy costs. But it's all not, you know, unicorns and kittens. There's challenges to for our sector, grid resilience was, you know, not really. People talked about it in 2009 but not like they're talking about it now, because of climate change and we are seeing more frequent storms, causing, you know, obviously outages for the customer, and also significant damage to the distribution grid. And I know that Hydro Ottawa has faced more than its fair share a very disruptive storms over the past few years. We have, yes, I can't remember which Victoria Day weekend or we had. I didn't ever know how to say it the direct show or the direct co direction. So there we were getting storms we've never even heard of before, and unfortunately, I think that is our new normal. So grid resilience is something that we are very concerned about, and we need to make sure we've got the appropriate investments for that. So those are just a few of the highlights that you know when I came into the sector, sort of things that were kind of ramping up, and then what's happening now? But I guess what I could say, the commonality is there's constant change in this sector, and what I'm seeing going forward is that change is going to be accelerated. Trevor Freeman  36:11 Very cool. So it is really fascinating to think back 15 years ago and imagine that we didn't have smart meters. Our electricity demand was fairly flat and even declining. In some cases, it's so different than the world we're in today, and sometimes it's hard to even look at today. We're constantly looking forward into the future, and so it's important to remember where we've come from. So there you have it, folks, it's been a fascinating year in energy as it is. Every year, as I said at the beginning of this episode, I don't think there will be a year in the near future where we don't look back and say, wow, a lot has changed. A lot has happened. We've looked at everything from kind of the psychology of climate change to the nuts and bolts of grid modernization to the role of policy, and looked back at how our grid has already changed. It's really been a fascinating look back at some of these conversations. So as we wrap up this episode, I do want to extend a really big thank you to all of our amazing guests who have shared their expertise and their passion with us this year. A huge thank you to all of you, the listeners for tuning in and kind of diving into this world of energy with us, and that's really why we do this. It's to engage with you folks. And also we just really like talking about energy. We hope that these stories have kind of sparked your curiosity and ignited your imagination, maybe even inspired you to take some action, whether it's reducing your own carbon footprint, understanding, sort of your own energy needs, or how energy gets to you, supporting clean energy initiatives, or really just taking a bit of a closer look at the world of energy. With us, there is one more episode to come after this. It's going to be a feature on kind of the defining topic of the year. I won't give it away here, but surely you can guess what it is, and we'll chat with you again one more time before the end of the year. Until then, thanks for listening.  Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review. It really helps to spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you, whether it's feedback comments or an idea for a show or a guest. You can always reach us at thinkenergy@hydroottawa.com

Summer rewind: Ontario's electricity sector is evolving, as the province navigates the transition to cleaner energy amidst rising demand. In thinkenergy episode 135, we explore the grid's structure and key players, highlighting the crucial role of distributors (Local Distribution Companies or LDCs) in facilitating this transition. Guest Teresa Sarkesian, President and CEO of the Electricity Distributors Association (EDA), sheds light on LDCs' frontline efforts and contributions shaping the energy landscape. Related links   Teresa Sarkesian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresa-sarkesian-53898613/   Electricity Distributors Association: https://www.eda-on.ca/  Green Button information: https://www.oeb.ca/consumer-information-and-protection/green-button  Electrification and energy transition panel report: https://www.ontario.ca/document/ontarios-clean-energy-opportunity-report-electrification-and-energy-transition-panel  Ontario Electricity Support Program: https://ontarioelectricitysupport.ca/  Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en     To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod     Trevor Freeman Hey everyone. Well, it's officially summer, and the think energy team is taking a break to recharge over the next two months, but also to plan our content for the fall. So stay tuned for some great episodes in the fall. Not to worry, though, we still have our summer rewind to keep you engaged. This is where we pick out some of the great past episodes that we've done and repost them. So whether you're lucky enough to be sitting on a dock or going on a road trip or if you're just keeping up with your commute through the summer, it's a great time to revisit our past content. You will hear past episodes from my predecessor and the host chair, Dan Sagan, as well as a couple of mine from the past few months, and you're welcome to check out your own favorite past episodes as well. Wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you have an amazing summer, and we'll be back with new content in September, and until then, happy listening.   Trevor Freeman  0:07   Hi, welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the frontlines of the energy transition. Join me Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and even up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you've got thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics that we should cover, we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to us, at think energy at hydro ottawa.com Hi, everyone, welcome back. Now it's no secret that Ontario's electricity sector is transforming rapidly as it moves to both decarbonize the grid itself, you know, we have a very clean grid in Ontario, but it's not totally carbon free. And to support the growing demand for electricity as our customers across the province, take steps to electrify and change how they use energy. The show is all about exploring those changes, among other things, and today is no different. But before we dive into our conversation today, I think it would be helpful for me to spend just a few quick minutes on some basics about how our electricity grid is structured in Ontario, and who some of the key players are. Now I know some of our listeners will know this already, but it can be hard to keep track of all those key players. And Ontario's structure is a little different than some of the neighboring jurisdictions no two jurisdictions are exactly alike. So, a refresher is never a bad thing. Now the most basic description is that electricity is largely generated at central generation facilities. So, think nuclear power plants are your electric generating stations, some gas fired generating stations and large-scale wind and solar installations. We call these entities generators simple as that. That electricity is then transmitted across the province in an interconnected grid of high voltage transmission lines, which also connect to other jurisdictions such as neighboring provinces and states, and Ontario, Hydro One runs the transmission network. Now you've probably seen this transmission network. These would be the large metal towers that you see out in the middle of a field when you're driving along the highway or in rural areas that have electricity wires strung way up high in the air. The last stage before it gets to the end user is called distribution. So, this is where electricity is taken from those high voltage lines stepped down to a usable voltage for residential and commercial customers via transformers and substations, and then distributed over a network of overhead and underground wires, then these would be the wires that you would see at the top of those wooden or composite poles that are along the side of the road in your neighborhood. The entities that run this distribution part are called distributors, again, simple as that. So, there's a few other key players that are worth mentioning here. Energy Policy is primarily the jurisdiction of the provincial government, who sets the general direction and associated rules and regulations accordingly. The Ontario Energy Board or OEB is the regulatory body who governs what all those other players do and enacts the government mandate. And finally, at least for today's purposes, we have the system operator. It's called The Independent Electricity System Operator in Ontario, or IESO, who runs the system. So, if you're in Windsor, Ontario, or Ottawa, or North Bay, and you want to turn on your air conditioner, or plug your EV in to charge, the IESO is responsible for making sure there's enough power on the grid to handle that load. So, I hope everyone is still with me and feel free to pause and do some jumping jacks if that was a lot to take in. Our conversation today is going to be focused on the role of the distributor. So, for full disclosure, as you know, I work for hydro Ottawa who is one of those distributors, we serve most electricity customers in the City of Ottawa, and the neighboring village of Casselman and in Ontario, you will often hear distributors referred to as local distribution companies or LDCs. So forgive me if I slip into that acronym throughout the conversation today, that's really just the sort of common name that we refer to those distributors as. But I'll try to mix it up and make sure that, that I'm explaining that acronym throughout as well. So the distributor is really the front line, the customer facing entity of the entire electricity system. If you are an electricity customer, and you think about the electricity system, you are probably thinking about your distributor. Chances are you get your bill from a distributor, even though for most customers, most of what you pay on that bill doesn't actually go to the LDC. Some of it stays with your local distribution company, but most of it goes to the transmitter to the generator, to the IESO etc. When the power goes out, it's probably your LDC that you call and it's your LDC that will give you a restoration time. Sometimes outages are caused by issues up the line, so to speak in the transmission portion of the grid. But often the issue is a localized one. And it's your LDC that is identifying the problem and fixing it, whether that means rolling a truck to string new cable, or performing switching to work around the problem. And finally, it's your LDC that is really on the frontlines of the energy transition. While all parts of the grid must then have started to change, the LDCs are really working hand in hand with our customers to identify where and how fast and new demand is needed to bridge that gap between customers and policymakers to enable more and more renewable generation. And also to determine what new technologies or programs we need to pilot and scale up. And it's really the LDCs that are driving change in the way that electricity is managed at the individual customer level moving forward. So to help us make some sense of this, I'm happy to have Teresa Sarkesian on the show today. Teresa is the president and CEO of the electricity Distributors Association, which is a role that she's held since 2016. This is actually Teresa second time on the show the first being back in December 2021. So we're happy to have Teresa back, Teresa, welcome back to the show.   Teresa Sarkesian  6:23   Thanks so much, Trevor. I'm really delighted to be back.    Trevor Freeman  6:27   Yeah, we're glad to have you. So, like I said, you were back on our show in 2021. I don't know if it's because of how COVID has changed our lives or if this is just the way things go. But sometimes, you know, weeks seem like years. So 2021 is a long time ago. Let's start by refreshing our listeners on the role and mandate of the electricity Distributors Association.   Teresa Sarkesian  6:49   Sure thing so the electricity Distributors Association, or the EDA our little acronym represents Ontario's public and private electric utilities that distribute electricity to 5.4 million homes, businesses and institutional customers across the province. And I should note that those 5.4 million customers really refers to build accounts so you have families that are behind a build account. So effectively the millions and millions of Ontarians and businesses that operate and live here are customers of our utilities. And as you know our members are on the front lines of power, and have developed a strong trust with their customers by providing safe, reliable and affordable service for over 100 years. The EDA itself provides analysis and networking and advocacy for our members to ensure that the energy policy direction and framework in Ontario is fair and balanced, supporting the financial viability of utilities to deliver service and ensuring affordability for customers. And long term, we are looking to ensure that our local distribution company members can become the premier energy solution providers to their customers, and that they're able to provide the value-added services that customers are already expecting from them but are going to grow with the energy transformation and electrification in the future.    Trevor Freeman  8:09   Yeah, it's kind of like I said, when people think about the electricity sector, they're probably thinking about their distributor. And the EDA is kind of that common voice for those distribution companies. So, you first joined the EDA back in 2009, and have been the president and CEO since 2016. So, we'll look ahead and talk about the future in a minute. But before we do that, tell us about how things have changed so far during your tenure. How are things different from 2009 When you first joined the organization?   Teresa Sarkesian  8:40   Yeah, and you know, this is almost like perfect timing, Trevor, because I've been at the association now for 15 years, I'm just marking my 15-year anniversary. So, feels really apropos to kind of reflect and look back. So, I want to break down my answer into two parts. So, I'm going to talk to you about some, I guess, just my own personal observations about the electricity system at large. And then I'm going to talk more about the changes in distribution. But some of the changes that I thought were really quite significant and profound, sort of when I joined the industry in 2009, I joined at a time when there was the Green Energy Act, and the province was looking to connect all kinds of renewable energy generation to the electricity grid. So that was fairly significant. Another thing that was happening with the province is that they closed down coal fired generation. That was pretty massive. In fact, I think, at the time, it was the largest kind of carbon reduction initiative in North America. And I think even to this date today, I think it still is something that Ontario really has to be proud of. Another thing that you know, at the time, I think that was you know, fairly significant in 2015 is just the expectation of what the demand would be. What was interesting, sort of like the past for 15 years, the demand from customers for electricity was actually flat or declining. And that's all changed. Now. 15 years later, we're, we're now forecasting, massive increases in in demand of energy, which could potentially be doubling in the future. And the other point I'd like to make is just the nuclear renaissance that we're having. I think when I joined the sector in 2009, I'll tell you, I think the public opinion of nuclear was actually quite low. And that's been completely turned around lots of geopolitical events around the world, I think, have driven that. And now that nuclear is having a huge Renaissance. And you're seeing, you know, lots of new investments in nuclear. And we're not talking about shutting down reactors anymore. We're talking about refurbishing and expanding. So those are some of the things that I've observed over the last 15 years that have really changed. And for local distribution companies, I think what I have seen is a growing expectation by both government and the regulators for electric utilities to do more to both support the grid reliability and meet growing expectation from customers. So, I started in the sector in 2009, it was right on the brink of implementation of smart meters, and time of use. And what was interesting is that was mandated, there were very few jurisdictions in the world that actually had mandated smart meters and time of use pricing. So again, Ontario is was one of the first. And so that was a big change for LDCs. To move from, you know, smart meters and having to bring in that technology and also support the technology of time of use. I did mention the Green Energy Act at the time, we suddenly had to connect 1000s and 1000s, of new solar and wind generation, as well. And that was all new. There were no protocols, there were no standards for that. So that was fairly significant as well. And when I kind of fast forward to I guess, more recently, there have been a lot of changes from government, I think they've really supported our industry, they understand the trust that we have, with our customers. And they've implemented, you know, a number of new changes in terms of rate structures, they've asked us to implement ultra low-rate pricing that can support overnight electric vehicle charging. And they've also asked us to introduce a green button digital platform that allows customers to download their energy data and share with third parties for you know, different assessments and tools for lowering energy costs. But it's all not, you know, unicorns and kittens, there's challenges to for our sector, grid resilience was, you know, not really, people talked about it in 2009, but not like they're talking about it now, because of climate change. And we are seeing more frequent storms, causing, you know, obviously, outages for the customer, and also significant damage to the distribution grid. And I know that hydro Ottawa has faced more than its fair share of very destructive storms over the past few years, we have Yes, I can't remember which Victoria Day weekend where we had, I didn't ever know how to say it the derecho or the derecho. So there, we weren't getting storms we've never even heard of before. And unfortunately, I think that is our new normal. So, grid resilience is something that we are very concerned about, and we need to make sure we've got the appropriate investments for that. So those are just a few of the highlights that, you know, when I came into the sector sort of things that were kind of ramping up, and then what's happening now, but I guess what I could say, the commonality is there's constant change in the sector. And what I'm seeing going forward is that change is going to be accelerated.    Trevor Freeman  13:40   Yeah, I mean, it's, it's fascinating to listen to you lay it all out like that. Thinking back to 15 years ago, it's hard to even remember, you know, not having smart meters, having meters that really just ticked forward and measured your consumption over the course of a month, and someone would come and read that. And, you know, having declining or even flat demand profiles that aren't increasing is so different from the world that we are in today. But I think what you said there at the end is really important. We are in our industry, an organization that knows about change, we're constantly changing, which helps us as we look forward into your point, we're going to see that level of change and the pace of change accelerate. So, I think that sets us up pretty well. So, let's start to look forward, then I know that the EDA is about to launch a new vision paper. So, we're going to dive into some of the details. But maybe let's start by kind of a high-level summary of what is the vision that you are trying to lay out with this paper?   Teresa Sarkesian  14:42   Okay, and no problem. So, I think what I want to start just give a little bit of background as to why we did this. We've done a couple of vision papers and implementation plans in the past. But you know, they were like seven, eight years ago and things have changed a lot even in Seven or eight years. So, what we've been seeing, obviously, I think the big change over the last few years has been the big focus on meeting Net Zero targets in 2050, that we are going to get to net zero in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions. Not only in Canada, but this is actually a bit of a global commitment, you know, for countries that have signed on to that objective. So, what happens when you set up, you know, those big audacious goals? You have all kinds of organizations and entities looking at how are we going to get there, how much it's going to cost? What do we need to do to get there? And so when we started reviewing some of these publications, both in Ontario, Canada, and actually in other jurisdictions, they were very good. They talked about what supply mix that we need the investment in transmission, but almost 100% of the papers, Trevor, if you can believe this, just neglected distribution, no one talked about distribution, they didn't talk about how distribution is going to have to change what the investments would be. And then we'll so we said it's going to be critical for us to identify the electric utility role and the energy transition, and how the sector will need to be grid ready to support electrification, economic development, grid resilience, and customer preferences. So we view that LDCs are going to be pivotal in enabling Ontario's low carbon economy, navigating the challenges posed by climate policies, electrification trends, and these evolving customer demands. And with Ontario's growing economy and the demands for housing intensify, LDCs must innovate to effectively meet these accelerating electricity needs and changing preferences. And right now, we've seen the ISO is predicting significant consumption growth from 144 terawatt hours in 2023, to 240 terawatt hours and 2050 not quite double, but it's getting close. And so this rapid growth demands urgent attention to adopt new strategies and to ensure that the local distribution companies can make the necessary investments in grid enhancements to expand the capacity and capability of the distribution system. So while reliability and affordability remain Paramount customers do expect additional value from their utility service. And, you know, we are seeing all sorts of things that are happening, you know, such as the need for swift electric vehicle charging installation, and other upgrades that will increase the electrical load. We see that LDCs are more frequently interacting with businesses that seek utility partners to achieve their energy management, sustainability and ESG goals. And in parallel, the LDC must prepare to respond to increase climate change induced extreme weather events. So recognizing the essential role of LDCs in the energy transition, we've worked in collaboration with industry experts to outline a vision of the role of utilities, so they can enable economic development, housing growth and electrification. And the report identifies urgent and practical steps that LDCs in partnership with the government, and its agencies must take in the near term to achieve the benefits of this transition. So what you'll see in the paper is recommendations related to the need for clear policy direction on regulatory frameworks to support LDCs in becoming grid ready, and with a continued focus on affordability and enabling a customer choice and opportunity. And we also discuss issues like workforce needs. And we also emphasize the role of human capital in enabling technological advancements. So that's very high level what it is, and I will get into it a bit more as we have our discussion further.   Trevor Freeman  18:41   Yeah, I think it's a good way to frame it of the entire sector is changing at all levels. But what you're really doing is laying out that vision that roadmap for the distributors, in particular, and I think that's great. Maybe like, Who is the audience for this paper? Who are you kind of directing this at?   Teresa Sarkesian  18:59   Well, we're still putting the crossing the T's and dotting the I's., but I think it's about 80 pages. So, it's not going to be for everyone, obviously, you know, government decision makers, government, policymakers, people that work in their regulatory agencies and our energy board, the Independent Electricity System Operator, we did try to make it accessible. There is an executive summary that's about two or three pages, which I think will be of great interest to a lot of people to read. And I think it gives a very kind of a high-level overview of what's in the document. So that's something that we're trying to do. And, you know, obviously our LTC members are an audience as well. They've been working with us hand in glove the last few months we've had extensive member meetings we had a board committee that helped steer this paper. But you know, ultimately, the paper is really focused on our customers because its customers and businesses that are driving a lot of this change for the future, whether it's businesses that are on their own journey on environmental, social and governance ESG objectives, and they're looking for more low carbon communities to invest in its customers who are very interested in EV charging, and maybe what the opportunity for the batteries can be to sell that storage back to the grid. It's, it's really the customers that are driving this change.    Trevor Freeman  20:31   Right Yeah, and I mean, the nature of this medium is I don't know who's out there listening. But I'd encourage, you know, all of our listeners, when this comes out, take a look at it and get some insight into kind of how the distributors role is laid out there. So let's dive into some of the details. You know, you outline obviously, some of the traditional roles and functions of the LDCs. So from maintaining, owning and maintaining the infrastructure, the poles and wires, and doing customer metering and billing, that stuff's not going away, we're gonna keep doing those things. But you also highlight some of these emerging roles that have begun to appear, or that we'll see in the next couple of years, you know, a more of a focus on distributed energy resources, like solar on roofs, for example, that LDCs are going to have to work to both enable as well as integrate into our own systems. It's going to include things like more customer programs, and rate design, etc. I'm curious, you know, how are LDCs going to balance that traditional role that we've already been doing, along with this rapidly new expanding set of roles that we need to tackle?    Teresa Sarkesian  21:38   That's a great question, Trevor. So look, LDCs will continue, as we always have been to be responsible for safe, reliable and affordable delivery of electricity to customers, customers can count on us to do that 24/7. And even with all these anticipated grid expansions, we're not going to be shut down, if the critic dispatches so, you know, we're experts at multitasking in our sector, and we will continue to do so. And with the increases, as you mentioned, in distributed energy resources, and electrification, there are the pressures for us to adapt, modernize and change how we ensure the safety and reliability in the service to customers. And the emerging roles and responsibilities aren't something that's in the distant future. You know, as I mentioned before, changes the constant, we have been engaging in ongoing adaptation. And so when I think about the future, and I think about what we call grid modernization, it really is part of the ongoing continuous improvement, and the pursuit of the digital utility of the future, that every utility is on that journey. So you know, utilities have been bringing in new technologies, particularly related to information technology, communications, and digital solutions. And so while we're in early stages, we are expecting our members to become more digitally based in the future, they're going to be introducing advanced distribution management systems to monitor the grid. And they're also going to have distributed energy resource management systems to monitor all the connections that are behind the meter. So I think what is different now than in the past, is simply that the pace of change is being dramatically accelerated. So for example, it took us about 100 years to get the grid to its current size, yet, we need to almost double the current grid in 25 years. So we have to move four times as fast. And the grid is not going to be built with just simple poles and wires and one way energy flow like it has been for basically the last 100 years, it's going to be a lot more complex, we're going to see two way energy flows, so it's not just us sending power to the customer one way, they're potentially going to be selling back their energy generation or their energy storage back onto the grid. So we need to have that temerity, that two way, power flow. So that's going to be a big change. And we also expect there to be a lot more customer interaction. They want to leverage their own generation and storage behind the meter. And we as utilities, want to be able to leverage that to help us with you know, reliability, Storm outage, other emergency situations. So we see there's going to be a greater interactive relationship with customer than simply, you know, maybe sending a bill to them or offering them conservation programs, it's going to be much more dynamic than it has been in the past. And so, you know, over the last two decades, and we talked about this a bit already, the utility has been modernizing the system in response to government policy initiatives, regulatory requirements, and customer preferences. One other example, recently, utilities were required to implement something called green button. And we've been also engaging by bringing them more into the system through net metering. And a lot of our members are also involved in various pilot projects with the Independent Electricity System Operator and with Enercan to look at all kinds of new LTC models and functions. So and you're going to see a lot of this actually, in our vision paper is that to really be effective, cost effective. To make sure this happens at the accelerated pace, we do need for there to be proactive policy and regulatory changes, to remove barriers and empower LDCs to embrace these new evolving roles in shaping the future of the energy sector. And as I mentioned before, customers are demanding it. And I want to point out a research report that came out by the International Energy Agency just late last year. And they made it very clear that in quite a number of countries around the world, the lack of the regulatory permission to provide more investments in the distribution system is now becoming a significant barrier to new renewable energy projects connecting on the system. And while we don't have that situation here in Ontario, if we don't start moving quickly, in terms of reforming the regulatory context, then we might be like some of these other countries, and we don't want to be that a barrier, you want to be able to enable what our customers want on the grid.    Trevor Freeman  26:07   Yeah, so I'm going to ask you a question about that last point in a minute. But I think your framing of the ways that the sector is going to change, and the way our customers are going to interact with us is going to change is really great. And it's something that you know, often comes up in conversation. And I often say, there is no single strategy or tool here, we can't solve the coming challenges with just more poles and wires. We can't solve it with just new innovative solutions, we need all of those things, we need more poles and wires. But we also need more programming, more innovation, more technology, we need to utilize those distributed energy resources out there on the grid. So, I think that's a great way to frame it. Okay, so let's talk about grid planning a little bit. So LDCs play a really key role in helping forecast the needs of the future, both for our own distribution systems, but also feeding up into those broader provincial needs. So, the insight that we gain from our customers, we pass up to the IESO, for example, so that they can do planning at the provincial level. Traditionally, this is a pretty consistent process. You know, in the past, we get a sense from municipalities and developers, how cities are going to expand and grow. And we've generally been able to count on the typical home using roughly the same amount of electricity as homes that are out there today. So, we account for a certain expansion of commercial customers based on the Intel that we get from those customers. And we know roughly what they're going to use. The problem is that model's kind of being turned on its head a little bit. So, we now need to account for even our existing customers increasing their load because they are electrifying or they want to add EV chargers. And new developments today are likely going to have increased demand compared to some of the historical developments, because we're going to see all electric communities or at the very least more electrified and uses. So I know you don't have a crystal ball yet that tells us exactly how this change is going to happen. But what are LDCs doing to adapt their long term grid planning to account for this uncertainty?   Teresa Sarkesian  28:22   Yeah, you're so right, Trevor forecasting is getting more challenging. And I just want to start with a little story before I get into my answer about that. So, you know, electric vehicles are kind of the hot thing right now. And you know, although people I think are still on a waiting list for certain cars, there's lots of others that are available. And so one of the concerns that our sector had was we didn't know where these electric vehicles were going to pop up. And we weren't getting any kind of pre advanced warning when people started making orders or, you know, advanced purchases for electric vehicles. So we actually did a great advocacy campaign, with the province with both the Ministry of Energy of the Ministry of Transportation, to secure postal code data for utility, so they could see where people were going to be purchasing electric vehicles to help them with their own planning, in terms of, you know, making sure that their local feeders were upgraded their local transformers, and so that just got announced a year ago. But that's obviously not going to be good enough. And that just tells us about electric vehicles, you know, in the near term, but this is I think, you know, having sightlines into our customer behavior, whether we do that proactively with you know, consultations and communications with customers, or we can do it by you know, pinging the meter, or getting data such as postal codes. We are going to have to, you know, adapt and have greater visibility and sightlines into the customer. And so this is that some of that technology that I was talking about earlier, the sophisticated future grid is going to need lots of visibility and transparency, for usage and investment to be able to, you know, look at these two way power flows, look at how customers are behaving, in order to better plan the system, we also need to maximize and optimize the data that we have, you know, from our planners, it's going to be vital to protecting the grid reliability and resilience, we're going to have to have more partnerships with municipalities, in terms of their energy planning for the future and things that they want for their community. And, you know, one of the things that we're asking for on our paper is actually to, you know, rethink the distribution system plan, that the utilities have to file with the OMB every five years, and start building in a, you know, Grid Modernization plan within that broader plan. So we can get the regulator to start looking ahead and seeing what these requests are, it'll be important to also have various performance metrics and filing guidelines for grid modification from the energy board. So you know, these are some of the things I think that the membership is going to have to look at but it is going to be a very iterative experience, because it's just it's the pace of change is the big unknown. And so everyone talks about these things. But you know, I saw something today, I think it was from Ford Motor Company, and they're kind of slowing down, it's taken them a while to retool their plants. So that could take an extra two years now for them to be up and running and producing electric vehicles. So there's going to be all these other pieces of the puzzle that are constantly going to be changing a moving and evolving. It is I think, planning for the future is going to be very challenging. And I do expect the province to start talking about this higher level, maybe starting at the end of this year, they just came off a massive exercise related to the energy transition electrification panel. And I do expect to see more guidance from the province as well, in terms of how they're going to manage this planet, because it's not just planning for us. It's planning for everybody else in the system, too.    Trevor Freeman  32:02   Yeah. And for listeners out there, if you haven't had a look at that energy transition electrification panel reports, a really fascinating read. So I'd encourage you to take a look at it. You mentioned a lot of interesting things there. So for our listeners, and I'll probably do a future episode on this so I won't get into detail, but LDCs typically have to file five year rate applications once every five years that really lay out their plans for those five years and how they're going to fund them. So coincidentally, hydro Ottawa was getting ready to do our next one. And like I said, I'll probably talk about that on a future episode. But one thing we did when it comes to forecasting is, we conducted a electrification study that looks at if we electrify by 2050, like our plans, say we will and you know, society wise, what does that mean for the grid? And some of the inputs we took is, you know, what are the federal plans for electrification? What are our own municipal plans for electrification? What are we hearing from our customers, and that really, is helping us modify and change how we do grid forecasting, based on some of the changes that we're seeing from our customers. So I think this is a really important piece that, like you said, we're going to need to iterate on we're not going to get it right the first time. But we're starting to think of how do we need to change the way we do things in order to keep up with what our customers are doing.   Teresa Sarkesian  33:28   I think one thing I've seen more of the last few years, because this is much more complex than it's been in the past that I've seen, like the IESO, for example, they've done more, you know, scenario setting. So when they've had their, you know, their APO's and AER safe, they sort of had other two or three scenarios, and they're constantly updating their numbers every year. So these are other changes that we're starting to see. And even myself, I was just looking at the provincial budget detail the other day, they also set out, you know, scenarios as well. They're just not picking Oh, it's going to be, you know, X amount of deficit. And you know in 2028 they're actually forecasting out different scenarios. So I think that's another piece I see more in play, that people will, you know, showcase what assumptions they have, and will have maybe two or three different scenarios as well.    Trevor Freeman  34:21   Yeah, and I think it's a, it's a great way to tackle that unknown component to where we've never really been through a change like this before. We've never wholesale changed the way we use energy in our society. So there's a degree of uncertainty, obviously, and I think, targeting out that kind of, let's call it high, medium, low scenario, or whatever the metric might be, is going to be really critical for us to make sure we're staying within the boundaries of what's possible and what's probable and refining that constantly as we move forward. So that's a great point. Something else you mentioned a little bit ago, that's, you know, could be a bit of a nebulous term is grid modernization now I've actually got a future episode, and specifically about grid modernization and what hydro Ottawa is doing, I think it might actually be our next one. So we don't need to go into all the details on this. But let's just help our listeners understand what do we mean when we're talking about grid modernization? And why is this important? Why is it important to our customers that we do this kind of back office improvement?   Teresa Sarkesian  35:23   So I'm going to keep it really simple, because I know you're going to do a deep dive on it and a future episode. But essentially, Grid Modernization are improvements that LDCs will make simply to augment our capabilities, and enable us to offer new or improved services to customers. So back office improvements might look like things like real time sensing, and monitoring systems to improve efficiency and reliability. Or we may be investing in new digital infrastructure communication systems to improve safety, cybersecurity, it can also include more visible improvements to safeguard our infrastructure against extreme weather, and climate change to reduce outages. And like one, I guess, example that some of your customers might already be recognizing, you know, we made investments in green button, which enables customers to download their data, send it to a third party if they want to save on customer use. So it really is the whole soup to nuts, it really is not just one type of technology or solution. It is a combination of a whole series of things that the that the utility will need to do. And I think why we want to do it, I think when we look at all of the pressures on the system, from NetZero objectives to housing priorities, you know, to accelerate broadband development, and support electrification, the pressures seems to be never ending. And the only way that we can respond to all those pressures, is to be grid ready. And, you know, like I said, it's it is a form of continuous improvement. It's just that now it's the pace accelerated pace is such so extraordinary, that we need to have a more dedicated plan. But most importantly, we have to make sure we have dedicated attention by policymakers and regulatory decision makers as well. Because right now, there isn't that dedicated attention to this very important task. Yeah,   Trevor Freeman  37:28   Yeah, I mean, it's, it's great that you bring up all these pressures that we're feeling that it's I think it's time we kind of talk about that elephant in the room, our customers often ask us about affordability, or we're hearing from our customers about affordability, I was actually at a customer event not too long ago, and talking about the change that we're going to see here talking about some of this, you know, large scale transition of our of our energy sector. These are not small investments that we have to make. We're talking about both an increase of our infrastructure, you know, you mentioned almost doubling the capacity of the grid. We're talking about modernizing our grid systems, that's a lot of back office work with new technology, and bringing on new programs. Like this is a big change. Energy affordability is already a kind of a challenge today for some folks. So as we get into this new investment that we have to make as we start moving down the path of the energy transition, how do we balance affordability, especially for our vulnerable populations, with the level of investment that we know is necessary to do the things that we have to do? Yes,   Teresa Sarkesian  38:42   Yes, that's the multibillion-dollar question, Trevor. And it's something I'm going to carve out my response, because there's some things that we've put into our vision paper for the future, because affordability is absolutely critical. And as you know, this is basically a massive restructuring of the economy going forward. So, there's may be other participants who might be playing a funding role. So, you know, right now, obviously, you know, customers aren't monolithic, and you know, residential customers who are struggling to pay bills. Do you have some programs that they can, that they can access, they have the low income Energy Assistance Program, they have the Ontario electricity support program. Some of those are funded by the tax base, some are funded by other electricity customers. The province also gives a rebate to customers in Ontario, and that's a pretty big rebate. I don't think a lot of residential customers are aware of it but it is over 7 billion annually to residential small business customers. That's a lot of money. But I don't know if customers really appreciate that. So I don't know what's going to be available going forward. These are some of the challenges that you know policy makers, you know, have to address as well. So, when we were thinking about this as part of our paper, we sort of looked at it from a number of perspectives. So, the federal government has set up all these Net Zero targets, they've set out, you know, targets for electric vehicle manufacturing, as well. And so it might be appropriate for them to share part of the burden with this massive energy transformation. And it's interesting, we actually pulled customers about 2000 Customers two years ago, we asked them a whole series of questions about the changes going forward. And customers do have different perspectives about who should be paying for some of this energy transition. So when we asked them about who should be paying for electric vehicle, charging infrastructure, and they said, Oh, electricity, customers should pay for that, because that's something that everyone's going to benefit from. When we ask them about, you know, who should be paying for the electricity grid, to address climate change and hit Net Zero targets, they actually the majority, 58% said, the taxpayer should be paying for that. So I think that's just a very interesting data point. But it's something that, you know, we've been active on in terms of having those conversations with the federal government, saying that, you know, you have offered different subsidies to attract different companies to invest in Ontario, based on our clean grid, but we need to have the whole grid support it. So, you know, we're pursuing federal government support, we also are looking at increased maybe private equity engagement in in our sector. So right now, we have a couple of private members, but there's not a lot of private equity money in the sector, most of our members are municipally owned, and municipalities can't invest in their utility, probably even if they wanted to, because they're in short supply of funds as well, they have their own taxpayer that they have to deal with. So one of the solutions we are putting forward to government is to increase the private equity threshold, so it doesn't trigger additional taxes, right now, it's only 10% ownership. But we're saying that maybe a tool in the toolbox should be up to 49% ownership. So it would allow private equity to come the patient capital, they're not maybe looking to seek a return right away. So there's some you know, flexibility there as well. Another thing we're looking at is to revisit the debt equity ratios of utilities to manage the costs over the long term. So you'd be effectively amortizing on some of those grid investments as well. So these are some of the ideas that we have around how we can basically fund the energy transition going forward. You know, and some people say, Well, if you could get customers to think about their energy usage holistically, so if they're going to be, you know, moving away from a, you know, a combustion engine car, and they're going to be using heat pumps, instead of, you know, natural gas heating in their home, if you could get people to think holistically what they're saving on the kind of, you know, GHG side of things, versus what they are going to be spending on electricity, they may actually be spending less if they look at it holistically, but I don't really know, to be honest with you, so that I'd rather focus on the things that we could ask government for, as opposed to asking customers to be, you know, thinking more holistically at their entire energy usage, which is just not how they think. And I think, to change that behavior, would be quite a monumental task going forward. But those are some of the things that we think about, because we are very concerned about the affordability going forward, because it is such a massive change that we're all experiencing.   Trevor Freeman  43:50   Yeah, I think this is another example of there is no single solution here. There is no you know, silver bullet that's going to help us pay for all of this, we need all the tools on the table here, we need to look at all different options. And I think you outlined a couple of them, you know, in what you said about our customers impression of some of this change and who should pay for it. Last episode, I talked to David Coletto, from Abacus data, and he was saying on the whole Canadians really believe that a an electrified energy system, we know once we make that transition, we will be more secure, it will be more affordable. And I think those customers who have made some transition in their lives can see the benefit of that. But sometimes the initial hurdle is pretty hard to get over that upfront capital cost. And so looking for ways, both at the customer level as well as at the utility level, the LDC level I think is going to be important to help get over that initial capital outlay that's required, so that we can realize those benefits that we all know where they are that we know we'll see. So . Yeah, great filling some of those out. So I know I mentioned that I will get back to this. But I do want to talk to you about the advocacy role that the EDA plays. So you mentioned, you know, talking to governments and Ontario, the provincial governments across Canada, the provincial government has jurisdiction over most energy matters. So advocacy to the government is a key role that you play. I'm curious, what are you asking the government to do or to provide to help some of these changes that we're talking about happen? What is the advocacy that you're pushing for with the government.   Teresa Sarkesian  45:32    So I'm going to try to keep it really simple and just sort of, you know, tie it back to our vision paper for now, because at any given time, I'm working on 20 or 30 l policy issues, primarily with the Ontario government. But this past year, we have expanded our work to also include the federal government, because they have investment tax credits that we are interested in for our members to see if they could be eligible for those. We're interested in them changing things to the Canada Infrastructure Bank, also to provide new sources of equity there. And we're also pursuing grants, as well, for grid modernization. So provincially, a whole whack of issues. But I'm going to go back to our paper just to give your audience a little bit of a sneak peek on some of the things that we're going to be asking for. So one of the first things we're going to be asking for is to get a common understanding and definition of grid modernization, and electrification. And this is not really new of an idea, we kind of have copied it from the US, there's a lot of jurisdictions, there where very clear objectives that have been set out in order to justify grid modernization, investments. So we think that it'd be beneficial for Ontario to do that, because then once you have those objectives in place, it is going to make it a lot easier to be able to prioritize grid modernization capabilities, functionalities, and investments in line with those objectives. You know, and then from there, you know, we're looking at creating a series of foundational investments. So going forward, some of the things that we think are foundational, are things like the distributed energy resource management systems and the advanced metering infrastructure, which is sort of like smart meters 2.0, for lack of a better term, and also the advanced distribution management systems. So we see those are going to be foundational pieces that all utilities are going to need to be able to help customers interact with the grid, and they're going to be necessary grid investments. So how what we see for those is we would like it to be similar policy direction, like we had for smart meters and green button, where you have government mandated activities. And then those are given, you know, a kind of lower standard of evidence with the Ontario Energy Board to support that capital infrastructure, they're deemed as priorities and ties back to that initial plan, where you set objectives, as long as those objectives can be that then those should get a pass through.   Trevor Freeman  48:12   If I could jump in right there just for our listeners. So what Teresa is describing here is, at the moment when there are unique things that are not part of government mandate, yet every LDC and Ontario, of which there are many 60, something I don't even have the number in front of me but every LDC when it comes time to enact that project has to go through a whole exercise of justifying it proving why it's necessary, saying this is why we want to do it. If there was some commonality across LDCs in the province, we wouldn't have to put as much effort into, you know, the report writing side of it, we could just get down to business and make these changes that we all know across the province are important. So I think it's helpful for us to understand how that process works.    Teresa Sarkesian  49:00   Yeah, and thank you for interjecting on that, Trevor, because if government wants us to move fast, we can, but we need that certainty. So you know, we're no different than any even though we're regulated monopolies. We're really no different than any other business that wants to do business in Ontario, you're always looking for certainty and clarity, from legislation from policy from regulation, because the uncertainty is what slows things down. Another recommendation that I'm moving forward with is that we need to move beyond pilot projects. I had a conversation with a consultant who is working with Enercan on this and they want to move beyond I love their term, death by demonstration. We've got a couple of dozen pilot projects currently in the sector, whether they're funded provincially through the IESO or they're funded federally through Natural Resources Canada, and you know, there's some very exciting results that are coming out of those. But some of those pilot projects have been going on for all almost four years, in one case, almost five. And at some point you need to pull off the band aid said, Yes, this is a success, all LDCs would be eligible for funding in this. So we need to be able to scale it up. Or we just say no, that's not going to work. But being in this constant state of the pilot projects, while it's informative, at some point, someone has to have the courage to say we're moving forward, this is going to be scalable. Another recommendation we have is to create an action plan to develop a comprehensive human resource strategy to address quantity quality, and partnership aspects of the labor force going forward. There's some great work that electricity, Human Resources Canada has done. And, you know, DC 28,000, replacement and new jobs in our sector, by 2050 and that's, the electricity sector at large across Canada. And I did some, I think back of the envelope calculations to try to figure out, okay, some assumptions about distribution. And we're looking at close to 10,000 new positions in the sector, over the next 25 years. Every sector is having challenges, filling current jobs, never mind jobs, that we're not even sure what they are quite yet. So we don't necessarily have the right programs at the universities and colleges or private training institutions to start getting the right people and talent into our organization. And, you know, so we need help for that. And, you know, I am encouraged, I saw a little announcement out of the province yesterday to have more electricians down on the Chatham Kent area, because that's the whole greenhouse industry. And so I said, Okay, that's exciting. So people are starting to pay attention, but we need it more than just in one local community, it needs to be province wide. And, you know, like I mentioned before, we need to have more conversations about what the funding models are going to be to fund the energy transition. So these are some of the issues and recommendations that we're taking forward from our vision paper. But day to day, I guess that's the other thing, I want to mention in terms, the change I've seen, I've never seen us work on so many issues, prepare so many submissions, invest so many staff at various tables and working groups. And we love doing all that work. We love representing our members at every table of discussion possible, but I've never seen so many. And they're not just oh, you're there for a month, and you're done. Some of these they are multi year. So they have longer legs, because they are far more complex. But you know, we're working every day, you know, for members that way. Very, very proud to represent our sector think it's a fantastic sector. And the fact that they're going to play such a pivotal role in the future makes us only want to work harder to make sure we get the best of everything for our membership.    Trevor Freeman  52:54   Yeah, I know, we echo that at our level, we can certainly see a lot more stakeholdering and engagement happening with all players in the sector, but especially the government as they figure out this energy transition to right, let's not, you know, let's not forget that the government needs to figure out where policy needs to go to lead it, and it's a great role that you're playing to kind of bring the voice of the distributors to the government. Because again, as we've talked about a couple of times, we're really on the front lines, and we're hearing from our customers, and we're seeing what needs to change right at that customer level, in order to enable some of this stuff that's happening so that that conversation between the LDCs and the government I think is really important. So you know, we don't work in a vacuum, I just mentioned a number of stakeholders in our sector. And I highlighted the interconnected nature of our grid at the beginning of our conversation. There are a lot of different players working together to really, at the end goal is bring power to the customer. How do you see the existing model changing or expanding in terms of, you know, the kinds of partnerships that LDCs have moving forward? So you know, you mentioned private equity is being a potential upcoming role. There are things like technology companies that are developing innovative solutions, who, you know, we maybe were a bit more arm's length with in the past. There's a changing nature of our relationship with the customers, you brought up the idea of going from one way power flow to kind of two way back and forth. arrangement. How do you see that partnership evolving in the future?   Teresa Sarkesian  54:30   Well, I think the good news is, there's a very strong foundation knowledge to build on. So I'm going to talk about three different areas. I'm going to talk about sort of shared services across utilities, and I'll talk about a partnerships with the private industry. And I'd like to talk about the engagement with customers as well. So firstly, there's lots of shared services going around in the industry already. There's all kinds of partnerships that members are trying to reduce costs for customers and find the best solution. So instead of saying, having 60 utilities run, seek out the best solution, you know, you get everyone working collaboratively to find a solution at the best price for customers. So we've seen a lot, just in my 15 years I've been there you've got in the past, there was, you know, common delivery of conservation programs, members work together on common engineering standards, lots of mutual aid assistance agreements across among utilities, for Storm Recovery. I've seen shared billing services, bulk purchasing products, and shared control room practices and services. And I've seen private sector play a much bigger role in utilities, as well. I've had the privilege to attend some openings, and launches of micro grids, where you have maybe a solar company and an energy storage, battery company, that are part of that group with utility, creating a micro grid for their community to provide maybe warming and cooling charging services when there's a major outage, for example. And I've seen now, some smart grids, you know, one that's already been implemented up in the north that has a significant private sector partner. And I've seen it also there's a new one, that's another one in the north, that's going to be developed with a private sector partner. And I've seen, not just Ontario businesses, I've seen what businesses come in one of our members is doing a distribution system operator pilot model with a partner in from Norway. So I'm really encouraged, I think the foundation is already there to kind of build on all those successes we already have, and do more, you know, and we talked about the customers going forward as well, that they're going to be to help playing a role, or we hope they're going to be playing a role. Because there's a lot of energy, battery storage and solar generation, sort of behind the meter, whether it's a farm, or it's a residential customer, or it's a big industrial customer. And so we want to be able to optimize all of those resources into the system to be of benefit to all customers to reduce costs. But we'd have to give an incentive to those customers to participate, no one is going to let you know a utility access their, you know, solar panel generation or their battery storage, unless they're going to be getting paid to do so. And I think that's going to be really important going forward, because we don't want to over build the grid, I mean, the grid is going to be so big, going forward. And we have to find ways to avoid over building it. Because we don't want to be in a situation where you know, customers are having to pay too much for a grid that's not properly optimized. So trying to find solutions behind the meter, that will maybe either avoid or delay bigger generation investments or transmission investments, or even actually distribution investments, we want to optimize that. But right now, there's not really a lot of permission to do that. So we need to get that legislative and regulatory permission to do that, to turn those, you know, more passive customers into prosumers, that they're basically your their proactive customers by selling their energy storage back to the grid. So I'm really optimistic. I think we've got a great foundation work to do on the customer peace, letting them participate as prosumers and the system, but I'm pretty optimistic that that we can get that job done.   Trevor Freeman  58:27   Yeah, I think it really highlights, there's a lot to be excited about when it comes to the change, that's going to happen. There's a lot of opportunity out there both for the LDCs, for the other stakeholders for our customers, that this energy transition, this change is going to bring about, you know, there's some challenges to I know, he talked about the challenges. I wonder, though, what do you see, as you know, one of the single biggest are a series of risks to achieving the vision that you've outlined in the paper, how could this go off the rails and not happen the way we need it to happen?   Teresa Sarkesian  59:03   Well, I always like to be glass half full as opposed to half empty, but you're taking me down that road? Trevor? So I'm going to answer that question.    Trevor Freeman  59:11   It's my job.    Teresa Sarkesian  59:11   So you know, obviously, our vision for the future role is big, but it's practical. The energy transition is upon us now. It's not something to contemplate for the future. So we think that the biggest risk is effectively inaction or kind of, you know, kicking the issue down the road, 510 years. We're seeing this right, nearby jurisdictions in the US are taking action. There's been significant funding out of the Biden administration, for all kinds of initiatives from you know, cybersecurity, to grid modernization down there. They're doing they're very competitive. They want to attract businesses, to the US. And so, you know, that's a major competition for Ontario. So if we don't seize the opportunities to kind of start working on these important issues now, we could lose economic development opportunities, we could lose jobs, we could lose investment, we could lose our talent as well, that may want to move to another jurisdiction. So to mitigate that risk, the LDCs, and policymakers have to work together on developing a shared vision around electrification and grid modernization, develop a plan of action and create a realistic timeline to turn that vision into reality.   Trevor Freeman  1:00:26   Yeah, it's a it's a great point. And I think it's important for people to understand that change is happening, the change is going to happen, whether we want it to or not. And, you know, often sometimes people say, Are we are we really going to see this change? I think we're already seeing it, we're already seeing customers want to change the way they interact with energy. The risk here is if we don't react quick enough or properly enough, the costs of that change becomes higher the reliability of the grid that we're working with, goes down, that general customer experience is not where it needs to be. And then you've highlighted some other ones, you know, we can really struggle with talent if we're not offering them the kind of cool innovative roles that they're looking for. But the neighboring jurisdiction is, so it's not so much that the change may or may not happen, it's how do we react to it in a way that really serves all of our stakeholder the best. So, Teresa, this has been a really great conversation. And I really appreciate you taking the time to join us and chat with us today. I think there's a number of things that we talked about today that really set up future conversations I'm going to have nicely. So thanks for the half for teeing that up. And this is your second time on the show. No doubt, there'll be a third time because I think there's a lot more that down the road, we can we can pick apart. So thanks for that. We typically end our interviews here with some common questions to all our guests. So to start off, what is a book that you've read that you think everybody should read?   Teresa Sarkesian  1:01:56   So one I recently enjoyed it's by a friend too. By Darrell Bricker, he wrote Empty Planet, and that is very, very good talks about actually declining global population. And what that means from everything from, you know, businesses to climate

For this week's podcast, we're taking it on the road! There are two big protests of a sort happening in Guelph right now, one is technically a strike, and the other is an encampment on campus. Both are local stories with implications beyond the city limits, both are examples of renewed interest in direct action, and both started at around the same time. So how are things going out there, and are these actions having an impact? On May 27, nearly 1,000 workers at the Cargill plant on Dunlop Drive went on strike after 82 per cent of the members represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 175 rejected a deal with management. The primary issue, unsurprisingly, is the cost of living. Striking workers at Cargill Dunlop are angry, they're fighting for a small increase to their take home pay when just last year the company saw record profits. Their frustration is palpable. Meanwhile, down at the University of Guelph, there are others experiencing frustration. The day after Victoria Day, a group of student activists set up an encampment to demand that the U of G divest from any company that does business with Israel, and work to end discrimination on campus. These demands have not been well received by the university who have spend more time trying various ways to get rid of the encampment as opposed to negotiating with the campers. First, we will talk to Ashland Kearns and Melissa Bortolon, workers at the Cargill Dunlop facility and members of striking UFCW Local 175, who will tell us about how the strike is going in week three, what they're on the picket lines for, and the pandemic impacts of working at the plant. Then, on campus, "Lavender", one of the encampment organizers, will tell us the reasons why the University of Guelph group started an encampment, the lack of engagement with the U of G admin, and the effort to get the full picture of the university's investments. So let's go on a field trip on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast! You can follow the progress of the strike at the local's website. And you can also stay up-to-date with what's happening at the People's Plaza on Instagram at UoGforPalestine. There will be a special convocation vigil on Friday June 14 at 3 pm. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify. Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

The 1881 Steamboat Victoria disaster in London, Ontario, Canada, remains one of the most tragic maritime accidents in Canadian history. On May 24, 1881, the Victoria, a paddlewheel steamboat, was packed with passengers enjoying a holiday excursion on the Thames River. However, tragedy struck when the boat became unstable, and its boiler came loose from its mountings. The boiler crashed through the support stanchions, causing the upper deck to collapse on those below, and the boat to sink. Over 180 passengers perished. For images and sources related to this episode, please visit https://shipwrecksandseadogs.com/blog/?p=1444. For ad-free listening to Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs and many other fantastic history podcasts, subscribe to Into History, at IntoHistory.com/shipwreckspod. You can support the podcast in multiple ways! Make a one-time donation at Buy Me a Coffee Subscribe to Into History Buy some Merch! Follow on Social Media @shipwreckspod Tell a friend! Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs is written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. Original theme music by Sean Sigfried.

On Episode 385 of our show, we explore a social media phenomenon called 'The Great Rewiring' that appears to be affecting, in particular, men under the age of 50; telling them, on a daily basis, who to hate.Also, we talk about:* A Helicopter Crash* CPC MP Ron Liepert Leaves Politics* Pushing the Abortion Debate* UCP Youth Dance* Premier Kinew Attends the Manito Ahbee Pow Wow* Canada Day* A Measels Death* Making Assumption and Ascribing Intent* Gas Tax* Teacher Trudeau Explains Capital Gains* Inflation and Interest Rate SpeculationThe Daily Beaver Morning Show is broadcast LIVE (most of the time), weekdays at 7-ish a.m. Eastern. Our take on the news is the purrr-fect thing for The Best #DAMFAM in all podcasting™, Canadians on-the-go who want to stay engaged.Until next time, be kind to — and gentle with — yourselves,Your Eager Beaver and Mr. Grizzly______________​​​__________________________________We welcome retweets, shares, gentle corrections, constructive criticism, compliments, show guest recommendations, and photos of what you are cooking. Send them to us via our show's Facebook blog page [https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063635884012], our Xitter feed @TrueEager, or our e-mail at truenortheagerbeaver@gmail.com.If you like to smash with buttons, subscribe to our Podpage [podpage.com/the-true-north-eager-beaver/], sponsored by The Rae Girl, or YouTube [youtube.com/@truenortheagerbeavermedia] Since our content is free, you may now support our efforts via SuperChat on YouTube page, or, buy us a cup of coffee [https://ko-fi.com/eagerbeaver] Until next time, be kind to — and gentle with — yourselves,Your Eager Beaver and Mr. Grizzly______________​​​__________________________________Not everyone can do everything. But everyone can do something. Because #DemocracyIsSomethingYouDo...Finally, support your fellow Canadians by donating to the Red Cross Wildfire Response.______________​​​__________________________________Thank you to our podcast's founding sponsors: * The Peppermaster* The Miss Vee Mysteries from Corvid Moon Publishing* Canadian Tarot Dot Com Artwork credit: Peter JarvisOpening and Closing Music Sequence credits: Cranky Canuck [cranky@crankycartoons.com]Paul Joseph Something [pauljosephsomething@gmail.com] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The chaos from a fireworks fight moving up and down Bloor Street West on Victoria Day could be seen and smelt from blocks away; nearly 12,000 TTC workers are one step closer to potential job action, with a strike being made possible as early as June 7; and, a Toronto pair was shocked a whole trip to Sweden to watch Taylor Swift's Eras Tour was cheaper than a scalped ticket to see her at home in November.

Thanks to Victoria Day, it's already Mid-Week Wednesday! Today, Eddie and Reader continue to welcome everyone to the brand-new Cruz FM. As well, Eddie takes on a bottle of soya sauce, a Texas city comes up short in their quest to set a world record, Reader continues to get in shape for the road race, and the Riders are back on the field!

On this episode of the CPL Newsroom presented by Volkswagen, Charlie O'Connor-Clarke and Mitchell Tierney break down all of the action from a thrilling Victoria Day long weekend! Ottawa beat Pacific to stay undefeated on the season, Vancouver won away to Forge FC for the first time, Cavalry and York each took home a point after an action-packed draw at ATCO Field, and Valour beat Halifax for their first victory of 2024. Producer Benedict Rhodes joins at the end of the show for Stoppage Time, and a quick rapid fire round. Send in any questions or comments you have for our listener mailbag and we'll get to them every week! Some footage used is courtesy of OneSoccer, home of all Canadian Premier League matches.

Your host Steve Milton provides an update on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' training camp as the team resumes two-a-day practices after a break on Victoria Day. Quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell's impressive recovery from a leg injury and strong performance in the Black and Gold game are highlighted, with Coach Scott Milanovich expressing satisfaction with Mitchell's progress. The episode also covers key players like running back James Butler, who is recovering from a minor injury, and wide receiver Papi White, noted for his speed and agility.Special attention is given to Lawrence Woods, who improved his punt return skills through offseason plyometric training, and Kiondré Smith, who is eager to contribute more to special teams. Veteran Richard Leonard's defensive skills are also showcased. Coach Milanovich discusses the strategy for the upcoming exhibition games against Ottawa and Toronto, with a focus on player health and readiness for the regular season opener in Calgary. TakeawaysThe Tiger-Cats resumed intense training sessions after a break on Victoria Day.Bo Levi Mitchell's strong performance in the Black and Gold game alleviated concerns about his leg injury.Mitchell's recovery was successful, and he continues to improve daily.Some players, including running back James Butler, missed practice due to minor injuries.Rookie Greg Bell received significant playing time, compensating for Butler's absence.Receiver Papi White's speed and performance were notable in practice and the Black and Gold game.Lawrence Woods displayed enhanced speed and athleticism, particularly in punt returns.Kiondré Smith expressed a preference for playing special teams, especially as a punt returner.Richard Leonard's strong defensive plays, including an interception, highlighted his experience and skill.Coach Milanovich plans to play starters more in the first exhibition game and less in the second due to the short rest period before the season opener.The Ticats' first preseason game is against Ottawa at Tim Hortons Field, with another game against Toronto before final roster cuts.Chapters 00:20 - Training Camp Resumes01:40 - Bo's Trajectory02:30 - More Player Updates05:30 - Kiondré Smith07:10 - Preseason Game StrategyHead to the Ticats' YouTube Page to keep up to date during Training CampThe Ticats Audio Network provides Hamilton Tiger-Cats fans with the most comprehensive, entertaining and informative news and information about their favourite football team. Featuring Steve Milton, RJ Broadhead, Luke Tasker, Mike Daly, Bubba O'Neil, Courtney Stephen, Simoni Lawrence, Mike Morreale, Rob Hitchcock, Brian Simmons, Louie Butko, Ticats players, coaches and front office personnel, other Canadian Football League experts and many more. Regular shows include Ticats Today, Ticats This Week, Tiger-Cats Game Day, Tiger-Cats Pregame, Tiger-Cats At The Half, Tiger-Cats Postgame, Speaking With The Enemy, Morreale & Hitch, CFL This Week, and so much more. Ticats Audio Network content can be found on the Tiger-Cats YouTube channel, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, at listen.ticats.ca and anywhere else you find podcasts. Please follow, like, leave a review wherever you find our content, and follow the Hamilton Tiger-Cats social media channels to keep up to date with all Ticats Audio Network content.Twitter: @TicatsInsta: @hamiltontigercatsTikTok: @hamiltonticatsFacebook: cfltigercatsYouTube: ticatstvchannel

On today's Monday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show, Ian and Laz discuss Victoria Day, tonight's “one anthem” Game 7 between the Oilers and Canucks, including Brock Boeser's absence, who should be favored in the Rangers-Panthers Eastern Conference Final, Rod Brind'Amour's 5-year extension with the Hurricanes, if Sheldon Keefe is destined to coach the Devils, and more.Plus, DGB debates Laz on the abolition of the NHL's suspect replay review system and weighs in on the Leafs hiring Craig Berube as the team's new head coach, and The Athletic's own Jesse Granger talks Igor vs. Bob in the ECF, if goaltending is BS or not, Arturs Silovs and Thatcher Demko, updated Stanley Cup odds, and quite possibly the solution to the replay review dilemma. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's Monday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show, Ian and Laz discuss Victoria Day, tonight's “one anthem” Game 7 between the Oilers and Canucks, including Brock Boeser's absence, who should be favored in the Rangers-Panthers Eastern Conference Final, Rod Brind'Amour's 5-year extension with the Hurricanes, if Sheldon Keefe is destined to coach the Devils, and more. Plus, DGB debates Laz on the abolition of the NHL's suspect replay review system and weighs in on the Leafs hiring Craig Berube as the team's new head coach, and The Athletic's own Jesse Granger talks Igor vs. Bob in the ECF, if goaltending is BS or not, Arturs Silovs and Thatcher Demko, updated Stanley Cup odds, and quite possibly the solution to the replay review dilemma. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeff Blair and Kevin Barker break down the Blue Jays' 9-3 win over the White Sox to kick off the series at Rogers Centre on Victoria Day! They take your calls and texts, and get right to Danny Jansen getting the call to bat second in the lineup - he turned in five RBI, including a two-run bomb. Does the new-look lineup need to stick? They discuss the six innings of three-run ball from José Berríos, Daulton Varsho slamming another home run, and get to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette - with their production trending upwards, does the team still need more power from them both? The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Sports & Media or any affiliates.

It's the cottage and summer classic, and possibly Canada's greatest contribution to world cuisine. Nik Manojlovich explains his quest for the perfect butter tart and host David Common takes on the raisin haters.

Eitan Cohen, 13, is determined to head back to class after the Victoria Day long weekend—despite months of being bullied, taunted, threatened and assaulted by a few fellow students in his school in Toronto, in the wake of Oct. 7. It came to a head on May 17, when hundreds of neighbours and friends came to walk Eitan to Faywood Arts-Based Curriculum School. It was a show of solidarity for the boy and his family. His parents—two Israeli doctors who came to Canada for specialized training—say they initially tried to enrol their four children in private Jewish schools while they were in Canada, but eventually decided to send them to public school so the kids could to learn about Canadian diversity. But after Oct. 7, they say they have been complaining in vain to Toronto school officials—and also to Toronto police—about the atmosphere of Jew-hatred impacting both Eitan and his younger brother Hillel, who also attended the same school. Toronto's police confirm the hate crime unit is now actively investigating one incident from last week, alongside two other investigations that remain open. The Cohens are already making plans to return to Israel and Eitan could have switched to a Jewish religious school until the end of June. But he won't quit: if he leaves now, he says, it will mean open season for bullies to ramp up antisemitic attacks on other Jewish students who attend public schools in Toronto. On today's episode of The CJN Daily, Ellin Bessner sits down at the home of Eitan and his parents, Moshe Cohen and Adi Halberthal Cohen, to find out what safety plans are in place for this week—and why they went public with their struggles. What we talked about: Learn more about the Toronto Jewish community accompanying the Cohen family to school on Friday May 17, 2024, in The CJN. Read the Fredericton police news release about an arrest being made in the beating of an Israeli teenager on April 30. Read the back story on the Fredericton family's antisemitism problems at their daughter Shaked's school, in The CJN. Credits: The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here. Hear why The CJN is important to me.

Episode #1039 New music, an appealing upcoming show, a Victoria Day visit with Dave, oral hygiene with Ron, classic Canadiana, and a 4:00 feature looking at the career of our dear friend and supporter, Stephen Stanley! playlist: https://wp.me/p1lizT-fDN

 ZOOMER SQUAD: CANADIAN HOSPITALS CONTINUE SEEING LONG WAITING LINES IN EMERGENCY WARDS Libby Znaimer is joined by Anthony Quinn, Chief Community Officer of CARP,  Rudy Buttignol, President of CARP, and John Wright, Executive Vice President, Maru Public Opinion. Libby today discusses the wait times skyrocketing in emergency wards partially due to shortage of family doctors. Anthony shares his personal experience as a caregiver to his dad. And finally, Loblaws is ready to sign on to the government's grocery code of conduct. HELICOPTER CRASH KILLED IRANIAN PRESIDENT EBRAHIM RAISI AND FOREIGN MINISTER Libby Znaimer is joined by Larry Haas, a former White House communications strategist and  Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the American Foreign Policy Council. Continuing the coverage, Libby talks about the future of Iran after President Embrahim Raisi dies in a helicopter crash. According to Iran's constitution, an election must take place within 50 days. Meanwhile the little-known vice president has become the interim president. CANADA CELEBRATES VICTORIA DAY Libby Znaimer is joined by Alison Eastwood, Editor-in-Chief at HELLO! Canada and Anthony Wilson-Smith, President and CEO, Historica Canada. Libby and guests talk about the history behind Victoria Day and Queen Victoria as the “Mother of Confederation.” Guests discuss the mystique about the royal family that keeps people intrigued about their personal lives. CAFETO PROGRAM & CANADA SEEING A TREND OF PEOPLE EATING DINNER AT 5 P.M. Libby Znaimer is joined by Derek Valleau, Co-Owner of Pukka and Corey Mintz, Food Reporter, and the author of THE NEXT SUPPER: The End of Restaurants as We Knew Them, And What Comes After. Libby talks about how important it is for restaurants to partake in the patio season, how reservation apps like OpenTable work and how Corey found that a lot of people all over the country were eating dinner around 5 p.m. Listen live, weekdays from noon to 1, on Zoomer Radio!

''Let's axe the gas tax during the summer.'' Given with what Canadians are going through, let's axe the gas tax from Victoria Day long weekend and all the way up to Labour Day weekend. Host Alex Pierson speaks with Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Opposition Party of Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Canucks have a 3-2 series lead over the Edmonton Oilers after winning Game 5 in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Eric Savics, Latvian honourary consul to B.C., shares how Latvians are celebrating Canuck goalie Arturs Solivs, and fans share where they were for J.T. Millers' game-winning goal, and their predictions for Game 6 on Saturday. Heading into the Victoria Day long weekend, many people across B.C. plan to head outdoors. Our guests Shaun Stephens-Whale, elite runner and tower climber, and, Kate Lee, Coordinator All Bodies Community Exercise and Fitness, discuss motivation and tips for staying active.

Avid gardeners will be flocking to nursery centers over the Victoria Day long weekend. Susan Kerney shares her advice to transplant your plant babies to their new garden beds smoothly. Android users' favourite feature comes to iOS. Tech Expert John Biehler gives us the details on the versatile circle search function on our weekly App Update. A San Antonio theme park is boasting of more than 25 ultra-accessible rides for thrill seekers with every type of access need. Laura Bain has the details on The Buzz. Paralympic hopeful Reid Maxwell shattered his own 400-meter freestyle record in front of the packed Pan Am Centre on Wednesday. Sports Reporter Brock Richardson tells us how hosting the Olympic and Paralympic trials together could mean more attention for the Paralympics this year. Community Reporter Julie Marten brings us the latest news and events from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, including a First Aid and CPR courses available from the local CNIB. We cap off our Friday show by revisiting a few highlight conversations from the past week including the burden of a bad bra, the real cost of an accessible taxi fleet, and a call for greater inclusion of the facial differences community.

Avid gardeners will be flocking to nursery centers over the Victoria Day long weekend. Susan Kerney shares her advice to transplant your plant babies to their new garden beds smoothly.

Hey, Hey my friend!   On today's episode, we're diving into a fantastic weekly meal plan that'll not only save your sanity but also please those tough little food critics we call family. Plus, I've thrown in a bonus BBQ menu for the upcoming long weekend. Victoria Day is all about fireworks and grilling, right? So, let's make it delicious without the stress! So let's give you your weekly meal plan to set you up for success…pop in your earbuds and Let's go!   Want to receive the recipes from this weekly meal plan, to save even more time and make these delicious meals?  Become an insider!  Plus receive exclusive resources and trainings you won't get in the show…   Become an Insider here.

Since it's almost Victoria Day (or as Canadians call it, "May Long Eh"), we're talking British Christmas music again -- specificially a few popular tunes that never crossed the threshold into Christmas #1s in the UK. "Christmas Lights" by Coldplay is, you know, fine. It's fine! And "You're Christmas to Me" by Sam Ryder? It's FINE. WHATEVER, OK? IT'S FINE. The ranking music in this episode is "Best Friends Squad" by Strong Bad, for reasons that should become obvious.

Ontario's electricity sector is evolving, as the province navigates the transition to cleaner energy amidst rising demand. In thinkenergy episode 135, we explore the grid's structure and key players, highlighting the crucial role of distributors (Local Distribution Companies or LDCs) in facilitating this transition. Guest Teresa Sarkesian, President and CEO of the Electricity Distributors Association (EDA), sheds light on LDCs' frontline efforts and pivotal contributions shaping the energy landscape. Related links   Teresa Sarkesian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresa-sarkesian-53898613/   Electricity Distributors Association: https://www.eda-on.ca/  Green Button information: https://www.oeb.ca/consumer-information-and-protection/green-button  Electrification and energy transition panel report: https://www.ontario.ca/document/ontarios-clean-energy-opportunity-report-electrification-and-energy-transition-panel  Ontario Electricity Support Program: https://ontarioelectricitysupport.ca/  Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en     To subscribe using Apple Podcasts:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod     ...   Transcript: Trevor Freeman  0:07  Hi, welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast-changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the frontlines of the energy transition. Join me Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and even up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you've got thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics that we should cover, we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to us, at think energy at hydro ottawa.com Hi, everyone, welcome back. Now it's no secret that Ontario's electricity sector is transforming rapidly as it moves to both decarbonize the grid itself, you know, we have a very clean grid in Ontario, but it's not totally carbon free. And to support the growing demand for electricity as our customers across the province, take steps to electrify and change how they use energy. The show is all about exploring those changes, among other things, and today is no different. But before we dive into our conversation today, I think it would be helpful for me to spend just a few quick minutes on some basics about how our electricity grid is structured in Ontario, and who some of the key players are. Now I know some of our listeners will know this already, but it can be hard to keep track of all those key players. And Ontario's structure is a little different than some of the neighboring jurisdictions no two jurisdictions are exactly alike. So, a refresher is never a bad thing. Now the most basic description is that electricity is largely generated at central generation facilities. So, think nuclear power plants are your electric generating stations, some gas fired generating stations and large-scale wind and solar installations. We call these entities generators simple as that. That electricity is then transmitted across the province in an interconnected grid of high voltage transmission lines, which also connect to other jurisdictions such as neighboring provinces and states, and Ontario, Hydro One runs the transmission network. Now you've probably seen this transmission network. These would be the large metal towers that you see out in the middle of a field when you're driving along the highway or in rural areas that have electricity wires strung way up high in the air. The last stage before it gets to the end user is called distribution. So, this is where electricity is taken from those high voltage lines stepped down to a usable voltage for residential and commercial customers via transformers and substations, and then distributed over a network of overhead and underground wires, then these would be the wires that you would see at the top of those wooden or composite poles that are along the side of the road in your neighborhood. The entities that run this distribution part are called distributors, again, simple as that. So, there's a few other key players that are worth mentioning here. Energy Policy is primarily the jurisdiction of the provincial government, who sets the general direction and associated rules and regulations accordingly. The Ontario Energy Board or OEB is the regulatory body who governs what all those other players do and enacts the government mandate. And finally, at least for today's purposes, we have the system operator. It's called The Independent Electricity System Operator in Ontario, or IESO, who runs the system. So, if you're in Windsor, Ontario, or Ottawa, or North Bay, and you want to turn on your air conditioner, or plug your EV in to charge, the IESO is responsible for making sure there's enough power on the grid to handle that load. So, I hope everyone is still with me and feel free to pause and do some jumping jacks if that was a lot to take in. Our conversation today is going to be focused on the role of the distributor. So, for full disclosure, as you know, I work for hydro Ottawa who is one of those distributors, we serve most electricity customers in the City of Ottawa, and the neighboring village of Casselman and in Ontario, you will often hear distributors referred to as local distribution companies or LDCs. So, forgive me if I slip into that acronym throughout the conversation today, that's really just the sort of common name that we refer to those distributors as. But I'll try to mix it up and make sure that, that I'm explaining that acronym throughout as well. So, the distributor is really the front line, the customer facing entity of the entire electricity system. If you are an electricity customer, and you think about the electricity system, you are probably thinking about your distributor. Chances are you get your bill from a distributor, even though for most customers, most of what you pay on that bill doesn't actually go to the LDC. Some of it stays with your local distribution company, but most of it goes to the transmitter to the generator, to the IESO etc. When the power goes out, it's probably your LDC that you call and it's your LDC that will give you a restoration time. Sometimes outages are caused by issues up the line, so to speak in the transmission portion of the grid. But often the issue is a localized one. And it's your LDC that is identifying the problem and fixing it, whether that means rolling a truck to string new cable, or performing switching to work around the problem. And finally, it's your LDC that is really on the frontlines of the energy transition. While all parts of the grid must then have started to change, the LDCs are really working hand in hand with our customers to identify where and how fast and new demand is needed to bridge that gap between customers and policymakers to enable more and more renewable generation. And also to determine what new technologies or programs we need to pilot and scale up. And it's really the LDCs that are driving change in the way that electricity is managed at the individual customer level moving forward. So, to help us make some sense of this, I'm happy to have Teresa Sarkesian on the show today. Teresa is the president and CEO of the electricity Distributors Association, which is a role that she's held since 2016. This is actually Teresa second time on the show the first being back in December 2021. So we're happy to have Teresa back, Teresa, welcome back to the show.   Teresa Sarkesian  6:23  Thanks so much, Trevor. I'm really delighted to be back.   Trevor Freeman  6:27  Yeah, we're glad to have you. So, like I said, you were back on our show in 2021. I don't know if it's because of how COVID has changed our lives or if this is just the way things go. But sometimes, you know, weeks seem like years. So, 2021 is a long time ago. Let's start by refreshing our listeners on the role and mandate of the electricity Distributors Association.   Teresa Sarkesian  6:49  Sure, thing so the electricity Distributors Association, or the EDA our little acronym represents Ontario's public and private electric utilities that distribute electricity to 5.4 million homes, businesses and institutional customers across the province. And I should note that those 5.4 million customers really refers to build accounts so you have families that are behind a build account. So effectively the millions and millions of Ontarians and businesses that operate and live here are customers of our utilities. And as you know our members are on the front lines of power, and have developed a strong trust with their customers by providing safe, reliable and affordable service for over 100 years. The EDA itself provides analysis and networking and advocacy for our members to ensure that the energy policy direction and framework in Ontario is fair and balanced, supporting the financial viability of utilities to deliver service and ensuring affordability for customers. And long term, we are looking to ensure that our local distribution company members can become the premier energy solution providers to their customers, and that they're able to provide the value-added services that customers are already expecting from them but are going to grow with the energy transformation and electrification in the future.   Trevor Freeman  8:09  Yeah, it's kind of like I said, when people think about the electricity sector, they're probably thinking about their distributor. And the EDA is kind of that common voice for those distribution companies. So, you first joined the EDA back in 2009, and have been the president and CEO since 2016. So, we'll look ahead and talk about the future in a minute. But before we do that, tell us about how things have changed so far during your tenure. How are things different from 2009 When you first joined the organization?   Teresa Sarkesian  8:40  Yeah, and you know, this is almost like perfect timing, Trevor, because I've been at the association now for 15 years, I'm just marking my 15-year anniversary. So, feels really apropos to kind of reflect and look back. So, I want to break down my answer into two parts. So, I'm going to talk to you about some, I guess, just my own personal observations about the electricity system at large. And then I'm going to talk more about the changes in distribution. But some of the changes that I thought were really quite significant and profound, sort of when I joined the industry in 2009, I joined at a time when there was the Green Energy Act, and the province was looking to connect all kinds of renewable energy generation to the electricity grid. So that was fairly significant. Another thing that was happening with the province is that they closed down coal fired generation. That was pretty massive. In fact, I think, at the time, it was the largest kind of carbon reduction initiative in North America. And I think even to this date today, I think it still is something that Ontario really has to be proud of. Another thing that you know, at the time, I think that was you know, fairly significant in 2015 is just the expectation of what the demand would be. What was interesting, sort of like the past for 15 years, the demand from customers for electricity was actually flat or declining. And that's all changed. Now. 15 years later, we're, we're now forecasting, massive increases in in demand of energy, which could potentially be doubling in the future. And the other point I'd like to make is just the nuclear renaissance that we're having. I think when I joined the sector in 2009, I'll tell you, I think the public opinion of nuclear was actually quite low. And that's been completely turned around lots of geopolitical events around the world, I think, have driven that. And now that nuclear is having a huge Renaissance. And you're seeing, you know, lots of new investments in nuclear. And we're not talking about shutting down reactors anymore. We're talking about refurbishing and expanding. So those are some of the things that I've observed over the last 15 years that have really changed. And for local distribution companies, I think what I have seen is a growing expectation by both government and the regulators for electric utilities to do more to both support the grid reliability and meet growing expectation from customers. So, I started in the sector in 2009, it was right on the brink of implementation of smart meters, and time of use. And what was interesting is that was mandated, there were very few jurisdictions in the world that actually had mandated smart meters and time of use pricing. So again, Ontario is was one of the first. And so that was a big change for LDCs. To move from, you know, smart meters and having to bring in that technology and also support the technology of time of use. I did mention the Green Energy Act at the time, we suddenly had to connect 1000s and 1000s, of new solar and wind generation, as well. And that was all new. There were no protocols, there were no standards for that. So that was fairly significant as well. And when I kind of fast forward to I guess, more recently, there have been a lot of changes from government, I think they've really supported our industry, they understand the trust that we have, with our customers. And they've implemented, you know, a number of new changes in terms of rate structures, they've asked us to implement ultra low-rate pricing that can support overnight electric vehicle charging. And they've also asked us to introduce a green button digital platform that allows customers to download their energy data and share with third parties for you know, different assessments and tools for lowering energy costs. But it's all not, you know, unicorns and kittens, there's challenges to for our sector, grid resilience was, you know, not really, people talked about it in 2009, but not like they're talking about it now, because of climate change. And we are seeing more frequent storms, causing, you know, obviously, outages for the customer, and also significant damage to the distribution grid. And I know that hydro Ottawa has faced more than its fair share of very destructive storms over the past few years, we have Yes, I can't remember which Victoria Day weekend where we had, I didn't ever know how to say it the derecho or the derecho. So there, we weren't getting storms we've never even heard of before. And unfortunately, I think that is our new normal. So, grid resilience is something that we are very concerned about, and we need to make sure we've got the appropriate investments for that. So those are just a few of the highlights that, you know, when I came into the sector sort of things that were kind of ramping up, and then what's happening now, but I guess what I could say, the commonality is there's constant change in the sector. And what I'm seeing going forward is that change is going to be accelerated.   Trevor Freeman  13:40  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's fascinating to listen to you lay it all out like that. Thinking back to 15 years ago, it's hard to even remember, you know, not having smart meters, having meters that really just ticked forward and measured your consumption over the course of a month, and someone would come and read that. And, you know, having declining or even flat demand profiles that aren't increasing is so different from the world that we are in today. But I think what you said there at the end is really important. We are in our industry, an organization that knows about change, we're constantly changing, which helps us as we look forward into your point, we're going to see that level of change and the pace of change accelerate. So, I think that sets us up pretty well. So, let's start to look forward, then I know that the EDA is about to launch a new vision paper. So, we're going to dive into some of the details. But maybe let's start by kind of a high-level summary of what is the vision that you are trying to lay out with this paper?   Teresa Sarkesian  14:42  Okay, and no problem. So, I think what I want to start just give a little bit of background as to why we did this. We've done a couple of vision papers and implementation plans in the past. But you know, they were like seven, eight years ago and things have changed a lot even in Seven or eight years. So, what we've been seeing, obviously, I think the big change over the last few years has been the big focus on meeting Net Zero targets in 2050, that we are going to get to net zero in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions. Not only in Canada, but this is actually a bit of a global commitment, you know, for countries that have signed on to that objective. So, what happens when you set up, you know, those big audacious goals? You have all kinds of organizations and entities looking at how are we going to get there, how much it's going to cost? What do we need to do to get there? And so, when we started reviewing some of these publications, both in Ontario, Canada, and actually in other jurisdictions, they were very good. They talked about what supply mix that we need the investment in transmission, but almost 100% of the papers, Trevor, if you can believe this, just neglected distribution, no one talked about distribution, they didn't talk about how distribution is going to have to change what the investments would be. And then we'll so we said it's going to be critical for us to identify the electric utility role and the energy transition, and how the sector will need to be grid ready to support electrification, economic development, grid resilience, and customer preferences. So, we view that LDCs are going to be pivotal in enabling Ontario's low carbon economy, navigating the challenges posed by climate policies, electrification trends, and these evolving customer demands. And with Ontario's growing economy and the demands for housing intensify, LDCs must innovate to effectively meet these accelerating electricity needs and changing preferences. And right now, we've seen the ISO is predicting significant consumption growth from 144 terawatt hours in 2023, to 240 terawatt hours and 2050 not quite double, but it's getting close. And so, this rapid growth demands urgent attention to adopt new strategies and to ensure that the local distribution companies can make the necessary investments in grid enhancements to expand the capacity and capability of the distribution system. So, while reliability and affordability remain Paramount customers do expect additional value from their utility service. And, you know, we are seeing all sorts of things that are happening, you know, such as the need for swift electric vehicle charging installation, and other upgrades that will increase the electrical load. We see that LDCs are more frequently interacting with businesses that seek utility partners to achieve their energy management, sustainability and ESG goals. And in parallel, the LDC must prepare to respond to increase climate change induced extreme weather events. So, recognizing the essential role of LDCs in the energy transition, we've worked in collaboration with industry experts to outline a vision of the role of utilities, so they can enable economic development, housing growth and electrification. And the report identifies urgent and practical steps that LDCs in partnership with the government, and its agencies must take in the near term to achieve the benefits of this transition. So, what you'll see in the paper is recommendations related to the need for clear policy direction on regulatory frameworks to support LDCs in becoming grid ready, and with a continued focus on affordability and enabling a customer choice and opportunity. And we also discuss issues like workforce needs. And we also emphasize the role of human capital in enabling technological advancements. So that's very high level what it is, and I will get into it a bit more as we have our discussion further.   Trevor Freeman  18:41  Yeah, I think it's a good way to frame it of the entire sector is changing at all levels. But what you're really doing is laying out that vision that roadmap for the distributors, in particular, and I think that's great. Maybe like, who is the audience for this paper? Who are you kind of directing this at?   Teresa Sarkesian  18:59  Well, we're still putting the crossing the T's and dotting the I's., but I think it's about 80 pages. So, it's not going to be for everyone, obviously, you know, government decision makers, government, policymakers, people that work in their regulatory agencies and our energy board, the Independent Electricity System Operator, we did try to make it accessible. There is an executive summary that's about two or three pages, which I think will be of great interest to a lot of people to read. And I think it gives a very kind of a high-level overview of what's in the document. So that's something that we're trying to do. And, you know, obviously our LTC members are an audience as well. They've been working with us hand in glove the last few months we've had extensive member meetings we had a board committee that helped steer this paper. But you know, ultimately, the paper is really focused on our customers because its customers and businesses that are driving a lot of this change for the future, whether it's businesses that are on their own journey on environmental, social and governance ESG objectives, and they're looking for more low carbon communities to invest in its customers who are very interested in EV charging, and maybe what the opportunity for the batteries can be to sell that storage back to the grid. It's, it's really the customers that are driving this change.   Trevor Freeman  20:31  Right Yeah, and I mean, the nature of this medium is I don't know who's out there listening. But I'd encourage, you know, all of our listeners, when this comes out, take a look at it and get some insight into kind of how the distributors role is laid out there. So, let's dive into some of the details. You know, you outline obviously, some of the traditional roles and functions of the LDCs. So, from maintaining, owning and maintaining the infrastructure, the poles and wires, and doing customer metering and billing, that stuff's not going away, we're going to keep doing those things. But you also highlight some of these emerging roles that have begun to appear, or that we'll see in the next couple of years, you know, a more of a focus on distributed energy resources, like solar on roofs, for example, that LDCs are going to have to work to both enable as well as integrate into our own systems. It's going to include things like more customer programs, and rate design, etc. I'm curious, you know, how are LDCs going to balance that traditional role that we've already been doing, along with this rapidly new expanding set of roles that we need to tackle?   Teresa Sarkesian  21:38  That's a great question, Trevor. So, look, LDCs will continue, as we always have been to be responsible for safe, reliable and affordable delivery of electricity to customers, customers can count on us to do that 24/7. And even with all these anticipated grid expansions, we're not going to be shut down, if the critic dispatches so, you know, we're experts at multitasking in our sector, and we will continue to do so. And with the increases, as you mentioned, in distributed energy resources, and electrification, there are the pressures for us to adapt, modernize and change how we ensure the safety and reliability in the service to customers. And the emerging roles and responsibilities aren't something that's in the distant future. You know, as I mentioned before, changes the constant, we have been engaging in ongoing adaptation. And so, when I think about the future, and I think about what we call grid modernization, it really is part of the ongoing continuous improvement, and the pursuit of the digital utility of the future, that every utility is on that journey. So, you know, utilities have been bringing in new technologies, particularly related to information technology, communications, and digital solutions. And so, while we're in early stages, we are expecting our members to become more digitally based in the future, they're going to be introducing advanced distribution management systems to monitor the grid. And they're also going to have distributed energy resource management systems to monitor all the connections that are behind the meter. So, I think what is different now than in the past, is simply that the pace of change is being dramatically accelerated. So, for example, it took us about 100 years to get the grid to its current size, yet, we need to almost double the current grid in 25 years. So, we have to move four times as fast. And the grid is not going to be built with just simple poles and wires and one way energy flow like it has been for basically the last 100 years, it's going to be a lot more complex, we're going to see two-way energy flows, so it's not just us sending power to the customer one way, they're potentially going to be selling back their energy generation or their energy storage back onto the grid. So, we need to have that temerity, that two-way, power flow. So that's going to be a big change. And we also expect there to be a lot more customer interaction. They want to leverage their own generation and storage behind the meter. And we as utilities, want to be able to leverage that to help us with you know, reliability, Storm outage, other emergency situations. So, we see there's going to be a greater interactive relationship with customer than simply, you know, maybe sending a bill to them or offering them conservation programs, it's going to be much more dynamic than it has been in the past. And so, you know, over the last two decades, and we talked about this a bit already, the utility has been modernizing the system in response to government policy initiatives, regulatory requirements, and customer preferences. One other example, recently, utilities were required to implement something called green button. And we've been also engaging by bringing them more into the system through net metering. And a lot of our members are also involved in various pilot projects with the Independent Electricity System Operator and with Enercan to look at all kinds of new LTC models and functions. So, and you're going to see a lot of this actually, in our vision paper is that to really be effective, cost effective. To make sure this happens at the accelerated pace, we do need for there to be proactive policy and regulatory changes, to remove barriers and empower LDCs to embrace these new evolving roles in shaping the future of the energy sector. And as I mentioned before, customers are demanding it. And I want to point out a research report that came out by the International Energy Agency just late last year. And they made it very clear that in quite a number of countries around the world, the lack of the regulatory permission to provide more investments in the distribution system is now becoming a significant barrier to new renewable energy projects connecting on the system. And while we don't have that situation here in Ontario, if we don't start moving quickly, in terms of reforming the regulatory context, then we might be like some of these other countries, and we don't want to be that a barrier, you want to be able to enable what our customers want on the grid.   Trevor Freeman  26:07  Yeah, so I'm going to ask you a question about that last point in a minute. But I think your framing of the ways that the sector is going to change, and the way our customers are going to interact with us is going to change is really great. And it's something that you know, often comes up in conversation. And I often say, there is no single strategy or tool here, we can't solve the coming challenges with just more poles and wires. We can't solve it with just new innovative solutions, we need all of those things, we need more poles and wires. But we also need more programming, more innovation, more technology, we need to utilize those distributed energy resources out there on the grid. So, I think that's a great way to frame it. Okay, so let's talk about grid planning a little bit. So LDCs play a really key role in helping forecast the needs of the future, both for our own distribution systems, but also feeding up into those broader provincial needs. So, the insight that we gain from our customers, we pass up to the IESO, for example, so that they can do planning at the provincial level. Traditionally, this is a pretty consistent process. You know, in the past, we get a sense from municipalities and developers, how cities are going to expand and grow. And we've generally been able to count on the typical home using roughly the same amount of electricity as homes that are out there today. So, we account for a certain expansion of commercial customers based on the Intel that we get from those customers. And we know roughly what they're going to use. The problem is that model's kind of being turned on its head a little bit. So, we now need to account for even our existing customers increasing their load because they are electrifying or they want to add EV chargers. And new developments today are likely going to have increased demand compared to some of the historical developments, because we're going to see all electric communities or at the very least more electrified and uses. So I know you don't have a crystal ball yet that tells us exactly how this change is going to happen. But what are LDCs doing to adapt their long-term grid planning to account for this uncertainty?   Teresa Sarkesian  28:22  Yeah, you're so right, Trevor forecasting is getting more challenging. And I just want to start with a little story before I get into my answer about that. So, you know, electric vehicles are kind of the hot thing right now. And you know, although people I think are still on a waiting list for certain cars, there's lots of others that are available. And so, one of the concerns that our sector had was we didn't know where these electric vehicles were going to pop up. And we weren't getting any kind of pre advanced warning when people started making orders or, you know, advanced purchases for electric vehicles. So, we actually did a great advocacy campaign, with the province with both the Ministry of Energy of the Ministry of Transportation, to secure postal code data for utility, so they could see where people were going to be purchasing electric vehicles to help them with their own planning, in terms of, you know, making sure that their local feeders were upgraded their local transformers, and so that just got announced a year ago. But that's obviously not going to be good enough. And that just tells us about electric vehicles, you know, in the near term, but this is I think, you know, having sightlines into our customer behavior, whether we do that proactively with you know, consultations and communications with customers, or we can do it by you know, pinging the meter, or getting data such as postal codes. We are going to have to, you know, adapt and have greater visibility and sightlines into the customer. And so this is that some of that technology that I was talking about earlier, the sophisticated future grid is going to need lots of visibility and transparency, for usage and investment to be able to, you know, look at these two way power flows, look at how customers are behaving, in order to better plan the system, we also need to maximize and optimize the data that we have, you know, from our planners, it's going to be vital to protecting the grid reliability and resilience, we're going to have to have more partnerships with municipalities, in terms of their energy planning for the future and things that they want for their community. And, you know, one of the things that we're asking for on our paper is actually to, you know, rethink the distribution system plan, that the utilities have to file with the OMB every five years, and start building in a, you know, Grid Modernization plan within that broader plan. So, we can get the regulator to start looking ahead and seeing what these requests are, it'll be important to also have various performance metrics and filing guidelines for grid modification from the energy board. So, you know, these are some of the things I think that the membership is going to have to look at but it is going to be a very iterative experience, because it's just it's the pace of change is the big unknown. And so, everyone talks about these things. But you know, I saw something today, I think it was from Ford Motor Company, and they're kind of slowing down, it's taken them a while to retool their plants. So that could take an extra two years now for them to be up and running and producing electric vehicles. So, there's going to be all these other pieces of the puzzle that are constantly going to be changing a moving and evolving. It is I think, planning for the future is going to be very challenging. And I do expect the province to start talking about this higher level, maybe starting at the end of this year, they just came off a massive exercise related to the energy transition electrification panel. And I do expect to see more guidance from the province as well, in terms of how they're going to manage this planet, because it's not just planning for us. It's planning for everybody else in the system, too.   Trevor Freeman  32:02  Yeah. And for listeners out there, if you haven't had a look at that energy transition electrification panel reports, a really fascinating read. So, I'd encourage you to take a look at it. You mentioned a lot of interesting things there. So, for our listeners, and I'll probably do a future episode on this so I won't get into detail, but LDCs typically have to file five-year rate applications once every five years that really lay out their plans for those five years and how they're going to fund them. So coincidentally, hydro Ottawa was getting ready to do our next one. And like I said, I'll probably talk about that on a future episode. But one thing we did when it comes to forecasting is, we conducted a electrification study that looks at if we electrify by 2050, like our plans, say we will and you know, society wise, what does that mean for the grid? And some of the inputs we took is, you know, what are the federal plans for electrification? What are our own municipal plans for electrification? What are we hearing from our customers, and that really, is helping us modify and change how we do grid forecasting, based on some of the changes that we're seeing from our customers. So I think this is a really important piece that, like you said, we're going to need to iterate on we're not going to get it right the first time. But we're starting to think of how do we need to change the way we do things in order to keep up with what our customers are doing.   Teresa Sarkesian  33:28  I think one thing I've seen more of the last few years, because this is much more complex than it's been in the past that I've seen, like the IESO, for example, they've done more, you know, scenario setting. So, when they've had their, you know, their APO's and AER safe, they sort of had other two or three scenarios, and they're constantly updating their numbers every year. So, these are other changes that we're starting to see. And even myself, I was just looking at the provincial budget detail the other day, they also set out, you know, scenarios as well. They're just not picking Oh, it's going to be, you know, X amount of deficit. And you know in 2028 they're actually forecasting out different scenarios. So, I think that's another piece I see more in play, that people will, you know, showcase what assumptions they have, and will have maybe two or three different scenarios as well.   Trevor Freeman  34:21  Yeah, and I think it's a, it's a great way to tackle that unknown component to where we've never really been through a change like this before. We've never wholesale changed the way we use energy in our society. So, there's a degree of uncertainty, obviously, and I think, targeting out that kind of, let's call it high, medium, low scenario, or whatever the metric might be, is going to be really critical for us to make sure we're staying within the boundaries of what's possible and what's probable and refining that constantly as we move forward. So that's a great point. Something else you mentioned a little bit ago, that's, you know, could be a bit of a nebulous term is grid modernization now I've actually got a future episode, and specifically about grid modernization and what hydro Ottawa is doing, I think it might actually be our next one. So, we don't need to go into all the details on this. But let's just help our listeners understand what do we mean when we're talking about grid modernization? And why is this important? Why is it important to our customers that we do this kind of back-office improvement?   Teresa Sarkesian  35:23  So, I'm going to keep it really simple, because I know you're going to do a deep dive on it and a future episode. But essentially, Grid Modernization are improvements that LDCs will make simply to augment our capabilities, and enable us to offer new or improved services to customers. So back-office improvements might look like things like real time sensing, and monitoring systems to improve efficiency and reliability. Or we may be investing in new digital infrastructure communication systems to improve safety, cybersecurity, it can also include more visible improvements to safeguard our infrastructure against extreme weather, and climate change to reduce outages. And like one, I guess, example that some of your customers might already be recognizing, you know, we made investments in green button, which enables customers to download their data, send it to a third party if they want to save on customer use. So, it really is the whole soup to nuts, it really is not just one type of technology or solution. It is a combination of a whole series of things that the that the utility will need to do. And I think why we want to do it, I think when we look at all of the pressures on the system, from NetZero objectives to housing priorities, you know, to accelerate broadband development, and support electrification, the pressures seem to be never ending. And the only way that we can respond to all those pressures, is to be grid ready. And, you know, like I said, it's it is a form of continuous improvement. It's just that now it's the pace accelerated pace is such so extraordinary, that we need to have a more dedicated plan. But most importantly, we have to make sure we have dedicated attention by policymakers and regulatory decision makers as well. Because right now, there isn't that dedicated attention to this very important task. Yeah,   Trevor Freeman  37:28  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's great that you bring up all these pressures that we're feeling that it's I think it's time we kind of talk about that elephant in the room, our customers often ask us about affordability, or we're hearing from our customers about affordability, I was actually at a customer event not too long ago, and talking about the change that we're going to see here talking about some of this, you know, large scale transition of our energy sector. These are not small investments that we have to make. We're talking about both an increase of our infrastructure, you know, you mentioned almost doubling the capacity of the grid. We're talking about modernizing our grid systems, that's a lot of back-office work with new technology, and bringing on new programs. Like this is a big change. Energy affordability is already a kind of a challenge today for some folks. So, as we get into this new investment that we have to make as we start moving down the path of the energy transition, how do we balance affordability, especially for our vulnerable populations, with the level of investment that we know is necessary to do the things that we have to do? Yes,   Teresa Sarkesian  38:42  Yes, that's the multibillion-dollar question, Trevor. And it's something I'm going to carve out my response, because there's some things that we've put into our vision paper for the future, because affordability is absolutely critical. And as you know, this is basically a massive restructuring of the economy going forward. So, there's may be other participants who might be playing a funding role. So, you know, right now, obviously, you know, customers aren't monolithic, and you know, residential customers who are struggling to pay bills. Do you have some programs that they can, that they can access, they have the low income Energy Assistance Program, they have the Ontario electricity support program. Some of those are funded by the tax base, some are funded by other electricity customers. The province also gives a rebate to customers in Ontario, and that's a pretty big rebate. I don't think a lot of residential customers are aware of it but it is over 7 billion annually to residential small business customers. That's a lot of money. But I don't know if customers really appreciate that. So, I don't know what's going to be available going forward. These are some of the challenges that you know policy makers, you know, have to address as well. So, when we were thinking about this as part of our paper, we sort of looked at it from a number of perspectives. So, the federal government has set up all these Net Zero targets, they've set out, you know, targets for electric vehicle manufacturing, as well. And so, it might be appropriate for them to share part of the burden with this massive energy transformation. And it's interesting, we actually pulled customers about 2000 Customers two years ago, we asked them a whole series of questions about the changes going forward. And customers do have different perspectives about who should be paying for some of this energy transition. So, when we asked them about who should be paying for electric vehicle, charging infrastructure, and they said, Oh, electricity, customers should pay for that, because that's something that everyone's going to benefit from. When we ask them about, you know, who should be paying for the electricity grid, to address climate change and hit Net Zero targets, they actually the majority, 58% said, the taxpayer should be paying for that. So, I think that's just a very interesting data point. But it's something that, you know, we've been active on in terms of having those conversations with the federal government, saying that, you know, you have offered different subsidies to attract different companies to invest in Ontario, based on our clean grid, but we need to have the whole grid support it. So, you know, we're pursuing federal government support, we also are looking at increased maybe private equity engagement in in our sector. So right now, we have a couple of private members, but there's not a lot of private equity money in the sector, most of our members are municipally owned, and municipalities can't invest in their utility, probably even if they wanted to, because they're in short supply of funds as well, they have their own taxpayer that they have to deal with. So, one of the solutions we are putting forward to government is to increase the private equity threshold, so it doesn't trigger additional taxes, right now, it's only 10% ownership. But we're saying that maybe a tool in the toolbox should be up to 49% ownership. So, it would allow private equity to come the patient capital, they're not maybe looking to seek a return right away. So, there's some you know, flexibility there as well. Another thing we're looking at is to revisit the debt equity ratios of utilities to manage the costs over the long term. So, you'd be effectively amortizing on some of those grid investments as well. So, these are some of the ideas that we have around how we can basically fund the energy transition going forward. You know, and some people say, Well, if you could get customers to think about their energy usage holistically, so if they're going to be, you know, moving away from a, you know, a combustion engine car, and they're going to be using heat pumps, instead of, you know, natural gas heating in their home, if you could get people to think holistically what they're saving on the kind of, you know, GHG side of things, versus what they are going to be spending on electricity, they may actually be spending less if they look at it holistically, but I don't really know, to be honest with you, so that I'd rather focus on the things that we could ask government for, as opposed to asking customers to be, you know, thinking more holistically at their entire energy usage, which is just not how they think. And I think, to change that behavior, would be quite a monumental task going forward. But those are some of the things that we think about, because we are very concerned about the affordability going forward, because it is such a massive change that we're all experiencing.   Trevor Freeman  43:50  Yeah, I think this is another example of there is no single solution here. There is no you know, silver bullet that's going to help us pay for all of this, we need all the tools on the table here, we need to look at all different options. And I think you outlined a couple of them, you know, in what you said about our customers impression of some of this change and who should pay for it. Last episode, I talked to David Coletto, from Abacus data, and he was saying on the whole Canadians really believe that an electrified energy system, we know once we make that transition, we will be more secure, it will be more affordable. And I think those customers who have made some transition in their lives can see the benefit of that. But sometimes the initial hurdle is pretty hard to get over that upfront capital cost. And so, looking for ways, both at the customer level as well as at the utility level, the LDC level I think is going to be important to help get over that initial capital outlay that's required, so that we can realize those benefits that we all know where they are that we know we'll see. So. Yeah, great filling some of those out. So, I know I mentioned that I will get back to this. But I do want to talk to you about the advocacy role that the EDA plays. So, you mentioned, you know, talking to governments and Ontario, the provincial governments across Canada, the provincial government has jurisdiction over most energy matters. So, advocacy to the government is a key role that you play. I'm curious, what are you asking the government to do or to provide to help some of these changes that we're talking about happen? What is the advocacy that you're pushing for with the government?   Teresa Sarkesian  45:32   So, I'm going to try to keep it really simple and just sort of, you know, tie it back to our vision paper for now, because at any given time, I'm working on 20 or 30 l policy issues, primarily with the Ontario government. But this past year, we have expanded our work to also include the federal government, because they have investment tax credits that we are interested in for our members to see if they could be eligible for those. We're interested in them changing things to the Canada Infrastructure Bank, also to provide new sources of equity there. And we're also pursuing grants, as well, for grid modernization. So provincially, a whole whack of issues. But I'm going to go back to our paper just to give your audience a little bit of a sneak peek on some of the things that we're going to be asking for. So, one of the first things we're going to be asking for is to get a common understanding and definition of grid modernization, and electrification. And this is not really new of an idea, we kind of have copied it from the US, there's a lot of jurisdictions, there where very clear objectives that have been set out in order to justify grid modernization, investments. So, we think that it'd be beneficial for Ontario to do that, because then once you have those objectives in place, it is going to make it a lot easier to be able to prioritize grid modernization capabilities, functionalities, and investments in line with those objectives. You know, and then from there, you know, we're looking at creating a series of foundational investments. So going forward, some of the things that we think are foundational, are things like the distributed energy resource management systems and the advanced metering infrastructure, which is sort of like smart meters 2.0, for lack of a better term, and also the advanced distribution management systems. So, we see those are going to be foundational pieces that all utilities are going to need to be able to help customers interact with the grid, and they're going to be necessary grid investments. So how what we see for those is we would like it to be similar policy direction, like we had for smart meters and green button, where you have government mandated activities. And then those are given, you know, a kind of lower standard of evidence with the Ontario Energy Board to support that capital infrastructure, they're deemed as priorities and ties back to that initial plan, where you set objectives, as long as those objectives can be that then those should get a pass through.   Trevor Freeman  48:12  If I could jump in right there just for our listeners. So what Teresa is describing here is, at the moment when there are unique things that are not part of government mandate, yet every LDC and Ontario, of which there are many 60, something I don't even have the number in front of me but every LDC when it comes time to enact that project has to go through a whole exercise of justifying it proving why it's necessary, saying this is why we want to do it. If there was some commonality across LDCs in the province, we wouldn't have to put as much effort into, you know, the report writing side of it, we could just get down to business and make these changes that we all know across the province are important. So, I think it's helpful for us to understand how that process works.   Teresa Sarkesian  49:00  Yeah, and thank you for interjecting on that, Trevor, because if government wants us to move fast, we can, but we need that certainty. So, you know, we're no different than any even though we're regulated monopolies. We're really no different than any other business that wants to do business in Ontario, you're always looking for certainty and clarity, from legislation from policy from regulation, because the uncertainty is what slows things down. Another recommendation that I'm moving forward with is that we need to move beyond pilot projects. I had a conversation with a consultant who is working with Enercan on this and they want to move beyond I love their term, death by demonstration. We've got a couple of dozen pilot projects currently in the sector, whether they're funded provincially through the IESO or they're funded federally through Natural Resources Canada, and you know, there's some very exciting results that are coming out of those. But some of those pilot projects have been going on for all almost four years, in one case, almost five. And at some point, you need to pull off the band aid said, yes, this is a success, all LDCs would be eligible for funding in this. So, we need to be able to scale it up. Or we just say no, that's not going to work. But being in this constant state of the pilot projects, while it's informative, at some point, someone has to have the courage to say we're moving forward, this is going to be scalable. Another recommendation we have is to create an action plan to develop a comprehensive human resource strategy to address quantity quality, and partnership aspects of the labor force going forward. There's some great work that electricity, Human Resources Canada has done. And, you know, DC 28,000, replacement and new jobs in our sector, by 2050 and that's, the electricity sector at large across Canada. And I did some, I think back of the envelope calculations to try to figure out, okay, some assumptions about distribution. And we're looking at close to 10,000 new positions in the sector, over the next 25 years. Every sector is having challenges, filling current jobs, never mind jobs, that we're not even sure what they are quite yet. So we don't necessarily have the right programs at the universities and colleges or private training institutions to start getting the right people and talent into our organization. And, you know, so we need help for that. And, you know, I am encouraged, I saw a little announcement out of the province yesterday to have more electricians down on the Chatham Kent area, because that's the whole greenhouse industry. And so, I said, Okay, that's exciting. So, people are starting to pay attention, but we need it more than just in one local community, it needs to be province wide. And, you know, like I mentioned before, we need to have more conversations about what the funding models are going to be to fund the energy transition. So, these are some of the issues and recommendations that we're taking forward from our vision paper. But day to day, I guess that's the other thing, I want to mention in terms, the change I've seen, I've never seen us work on so many issues, prepare so many submissions, invest so many staff at various tables and working groups. And we love doing all that work. We love representing our members at every table of discussion possible, but I've never seen so many. And they're not just oh, you're there for a month, and you're done. Some of these they are multi year. So, they have longer legs, because they are far more complex. But you know, we're working every day, you know, for members that way. Very, very proud to represent our sector think it's a fantastic sector. And the fact that they're going to play such a pivotal role in the future makes us only want to work harder to make sure we get the best of everything for our membership.   Trevor Freeman  52:54  Yeah, I know, we echo that at our level, we can certainly see a lot more stakeholdering and engagement happening with all players in the sector, but especially the government as they figure out this energy transition to right, let's not, you know, let's not forget that the government needs to figure out where policy needs to go to lead it, and it's a great role that you're playing to kind of bring the voice of the distributors to the government. Because again, as we've talked about a couple of times, we're really on the front lines, and we're hearing from our customers, and we're seeing what needs to change right at that customer level, in order to enable some of this stuff that's happening so that that conversation between the LDCs and the government I think is really important. So you know, we don't work in a vacuum, I just mentioned a number of stakeholders in our sector. And I highlighted the interconnected nature of our grid at the beginning of our conversation. There are a lot of different players working together to really, at the end goal is bring power to the customer. How do you see the existing model changing or expanding in terms of, you know, the kinds of partnerships that LDCs have moving forward? So you know, you mentioned private equity is being a potential upcoming role. There are things like technology companies that are developing innovative solutions, who, you know, we maybe were a bit more arm's length with in the past. There's a changing nature of our relationship with the customers, you brought up the idea of going from one way power flow to kind of two way back and forth. arrangement. How do you see that partnership evolving in the future?   Teresa Sarkesian  54:30  Well, I think the good news is, there's a very strong foundation knowledge to build on. So, I'm going to talk about three different areas. I'm going to talk about sort of shared services across utilities, and I'll talk about a partnership with the private industry. And I'd like to talk about the engagement with customers as well. So firstly, there's lots of shared services going around in the industry already. There are all kinds of partnerships that members are trying to reduce costs for customers and find the best solution. So instead of saying, having 60 utilities run, seek out the best solution, you know, you get everyone working collaboratively to find a solution at the best price for customers. So, we've seen a lot, just in my 15 years I've been there you've got in the past, there was, you know, common delivery of conservation programs, members work together on common engineering standards, lots of mutual aid assistance agreements across among utilities, for Storm Recovery. I've seen shared billing services, bulk purchasing products, and shared control room practices and services. And I've seen private sector play a much bigger role in utilities, as well. I've had the privilege to attend some openings, and launches of micro grids, where you have maybe a solar company and an energy storage, battery company, that are part of that group with utility, creating a micro grid for their community to provide maybe warming and cooling charging services when there's a major outage, for example. And I've seen now, some smart grids, you know, one that's already been implemented up in the north that has a significant private sector partner. And I've seen it also there's a new one, that's another one in the north, that's going to be developed with a private sector partner. And I've seen, not just Ontario businesses, I've seen what businesses come in one of our members is doing a distribution system operator pilot model with a partner in from Norway. So, I'm really encouraged, I think the foundation is already there to kind of build on all those successes we already have, and do more, you know, and we talked about the customers going forward as well, that they're going to be to help playing a role, or we hope they're going to be playing a role. Because there's a lot of energy, battery storage and solar generation, sort of behind the meter, whether it's a farm, or it's a residential customer, or it's a big industrial customer. And so, we want to be able to optimize all of those resources into the system to be of benefit to all customers to reduce costs. But we'd have to give an incentive to those customers to participate, no one is going to let you know a utility access their, you know, solar panel generation or their battery storage, unless they're going to be getting paid to do so. And I think that's going to be really important going forward, because we don't want to over build the grid, I mean, the grid is going to be so big, going forward. And we have to find ways to avoid over building it. Because we don't want to be in a situation where you know, customers are having to pay too much for a grid that's not properly optimized. So trying to find solutions behind the meter, that will maybe either avoid or delay bigger generation investments or transmission investments, or even actually distribution investments, we want to optimize that. But right now, there's not really a lot of permission to do that. So we need to get that legislative and regulatory permission to do that, to turn those, you know, more passive customers into prosumers, that they're basically your their proactive customers by selling their energy storage back to the grid. So I'm really optimistic. I think we've got a great foundation work to do on the customer peace, letting them participate as prosumers and the system, but I'm pretty optimistic that that we can get that job done.   Trevor Freeman  58:27  Yeah, I think it really highlights, there's a lot to be excited about when it comes to the change, that's going to happen. There's a lot of opportunity out there both for the LDCs, for the other stakeholders for our customers, that this energy transition, this change is going to bring about, you know, there's some challenges to I know, he talked about the challenges. I wonder, though, what do you see, as you know, one of the single biggest are a series of risks to achieving the vision that you've outlined in the paper, how could this go off the rails and not happen the way we need it to happen?   Teresa Sarkesian  59:03  Well, I always like to be glass half full as opposed to half empty, but you're taking me down that road? Trevor? So I'm going to answer that question.   Trevor Freeman  59:11  It's my job.   Teresa Sarkesian  59:11  So you know, obviously, our vision for the future role is big, but it's practical. The energy transition is upon us now. It's not something to contemplate for the future. So we think that the biggest risk is effectively inaction or kind of, you know, kicking the issue down the road, 510 years. We're seeing this right, nearby jurisdictions in the US are taking action. There's been significant funding out of the Biden administration, for all kinds of initiatives from you know, cybersecurity, to grid modernization down there. They're doing they're very competitive. They want to attract businesses, to the US. And so, you know, that's a major competition for Ontario. So if we don't seize the opportunities to kind of start working on these important issues now, we could lose economic development opportunities, we could lose jobs, we could lose investment, we could lose our talent as well, that may want to move to another jurisdiction. So to mitigate that risk, the LDCs, and policymakers have to work together on developing a shared vision around electrification and grid modernization, develop a plan of action and create a realistic timeline to turn that vision into reality.   Trevor Freeman  1:00:26  Yeah, it's a it's a great point. And I think it's important for people to understand that change is happening, the change is going to happen, whether we want it to or not. And, you know, often sometimes people say, Are we are we really going to see this change? I think we're already seeing it, we're already seeing customers want to change the way they interact with energy. The risk here is if we don't react quick enough or properly enough, the costs of that change becomes higher the reliability of the grid that we're working with, goes down, that general customer experience is not where it needs to be. And then you've highlighted some other ones, you know, we can really struggle with talent if we're not offering them the kind of cool innovative roles that they're looking for. But the neighboring jurisdiction is, so it's not so much that the change may or may not happen, it's how do we react to it in a way that really serves all of our stakeholder the best. So, Teresa, this has been a really great conversation. And I really appreciate you taking the time to join us and chat with us today. I think there's a number of things that we talked about today that really set up future conversations I'm going to have nicely. So thanks for the half for teeing that up. And this is your second time on the show. No doubt, there'll be a third time because I think there's a lot more that down the road, we can we can pick apart. So thanks for that. We typically end our interviews here with some common questions to all our guests. So to start off, what is a book that you've read that you think everybody should read?   Teresa Sarkesian  1:01:56  So one I recently enjoyed it's by a friend too. By Darrell Bricker, he wrote Empty Planet, and that is very, very good talks about actually declining global population. And what that means from everything from, you know, businesses to climate change to pension plans. So it's a fascinating read. People have time for it.   Trevor Freeman  1:02:19  Yeah, very cool. I'll check that out. So kind of the same question. What's a movie or a show that you'd recommend to everybody?   Teresa Sarkesian  1:02:24  I watched one a few months ago was a Netflix series called the Blue Zone. And it was an investigation on people who had made it to 100 I think they called Central Jamarion's I can't remember the name. But basically, they interviewed all these people living around the world about what it takes to get to be 100. So I really enjoyed it. It was just, it was just very beautifully done. And the people they talked to, I found fascinating and so interesting. So I really enjoyed it.   Trevor Freeman  1:02:52  Yeah, I also watched that one that was really great. If somebody offered you a free round trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go

In this episode, I speak with Victoria Day, MD at Ogilvy.Join us whilst we discuss how we as leaders need to stop accepting bad behaviour fromtalented people and the importance of always treating the junior team members with respect and kindness.We also delve into the topic of vulnerability and how showing vulnerability as a leader creates a safe place for other people to be vulnerable and truly bring their whole selves and all of their ideas into the workplace.Key takeaways include:The importance of vulnerability in an industry that rewards people that are “bullet-proof”The role of mothers in leadership and the feeling that you can't speak about your children or you'll be seen differently or as incapable of doing your jobTaking action that will make a difference to the people you want to helpVictoria leads the Advertising, Brand & Content business at Ogilvy UK as Managing Director. She has over 20 years' experience partnering with clients to drive impact and is zealous about the power of creativity to drive growth.Follow Joanna Howes and The Change Creators:website: https://www.thechangecreators.comlinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannahowes/For Leadership and team coaching and training, you can message me at joanna.howes@thechangecreators.com and we can book a call. website: https://www.thechangecreators.com linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannahowes/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2kZ-x8fDHKEVb222qpQ_NQ

During Canada's Victoria Day long weekend in 2014, 20-month-old Ryker Michaud-DaPonte was scalded over 25% of his body by a hot cup of instant coffee. Over the next three days, Ryker's mother, Amanda Dumont, and her boyfriend, Scott Bakker, carried on with their lives as if nothing was wrong. They not only refused to take Ryker for medical treatment, but they went so far as to lie to Amanda's family members, telling them they had taken Ryker to a doctor for his severe burns. Only when they found Ryker dead in his crib on May 21, 2014 did the full extent of their lies – and Ryker's injuries – come to light.This is the story of a happy little boy whose three older sisters adored and doted on him and whose family called him “Ryker Roo.” It's also the story of the two adults who were responsible for baby Ryker's care but were too self-absorbed, lazy, and likely drug-addled to bother taking him for medical treatment that had a 95% chance of saving his life. This is part one of the maddening story of Ryker Michaud-DaPonte.This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/STLC, and get on your way to being your best self.Photos related to today's episode can be viewed on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sufferthelittlechildrenpodYou can also follow the podcast on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sufferthelittlechildrenpod Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/STLCpodTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@STLCpod My Linktree is available here: https://linktr.ee/stlcpod Visit the podcast's web page at https://www.sufferthelittlechildrenpod.com. Please help make the show my full-time gig to keep the weekly episodes coming! By supporting me on Patreon, you'll also access rewards, including a shout-out by name on the podcast and exclusive gifts. Pledges of $5 or more per month access ad-free versions of my regular Wednesday episodes (starting with episode #88). Pledges of $5 per month can listen to my weekly episodes ad free, while $10 or more per month access a small but growing collection of Patreon-exclusive bonus minisodes! Visit www.patreon.com/STLCpod. You can also support the podcast on www.Ko-Fi.com/STLCpod. Merch is available at www.sufferthelittlechildrenpod.com/shop. This podcast is researched, written, hosted, edited, and produced by Laine.For more stories like this one, visit https://sufferthelittlechildrenblog.com.Music for this episode is licensed from https://audiojungle.net. Subscribe to Suffer the Little Children:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suffer-the-little-children/id1499010711Google Podcasts: https://playmusic.app.goo.gl/?ibi=com.google.PlayMusic&isi=691797987&ius=googleplaymusic&apn=com.google.android.music&link=https://play.google.com/music/m/I5mx3lacxpdkhssmk2n22csf32u?t%3DSuffer_the_Little_Children%26pcampaignid%3DMKT-na-all-co-pr-mu-pod-16Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/suffer-the-little-childrenSpreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/suffer-the-little-children Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/podcast/suffer-the-little-children/PC:61848?part=PC:61848&corr=podcast_organic_external_site&TID=Brand:POC:PC61848:podcast_organic_external_siteSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0w98Tpd3710BZ0u036T1KEiHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/77891101/ ...or on your favorite podcast listening platform.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4232884/advertisement

On May 24, 1881, London, Ontario was bustling. The locals were excited to finally have a day off to enjoy Victoria Day with their friends and families. Hundreds of people utilized the various steamboats in the area to take the ride down the Thames River to picnic and celebrate at Springbank Park.   No one could have predicted the devastating tragedy that would unfold that evening. A tragedy that happened so quickly, it left people reeling with thoughts and questions, like how did this happen and who is responsible?    Join Brianna and Steph as they break down that fateful day in history and discuss The Victoria Day Disaster - one of the worst maritime disasters in Canada, and a tragedy so sad and compelling that it made headlines around the world.   Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you're listening! ♥ Buy Us A Coffee ♥ Buy A Patch ♥ Follow And Message Us On Instagram ♥ Email Us Some Dark Love

For many in Western Canada, making it through the Victoria Day long weekend often means we are in the clear from Jack Frost. We also know with every anecdotal rule comes an exception. Part of the central Prairies did see low to freezing temps late this season and that’s prompted several questions about if there’s... Read More

Welcome back to another episode of Storybeast, where Courtney Shack and Ghabiba Weston discuss the transformative power of story with Summer Beast, Nadine Flint. In this episode: none of us know what Victoria Day is the plural of synopsis comes into question we tackle multiple timeline, dual POV synopses we discuss how to reframe your stories to hook an agent we highlight overlapping tools for both query letters and synopses Courtney encourages leaning into feelings and stakes when building tension we look at the power of the jacket copy for focusing on big story elements in comes the sharpie fear teacher Nadine gives out gold stars You can find us on our website and on Instagram at @storybeastpodcast.  For more storytelling content to your inbox, subscribe here.  Feel free to reach out if you want to talk story or snacks!  A warm thank you to Deore for our musical number. You can find more of her creative work on Spotify.  As ever, thank you for listening, Beasties! Please consider leaving a review to support this podcast.  Be brave, stay beastly! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/storybeastpodcast/message

The Monday crew is here on a Tuesday as Ian and Julian defend Victoria Day following vicious attacks from the Tuesday Boyz and discuss Paul Maurice's optimistic outlook on Sasha Barkov's injury status, a resurfaced, strange audio clip of new Calgary Flames GM Craig Conroy during the 2004 playoffs, if Alex Tanguay could be the next Flames head coach, Kyle Dubas' first statement since his firing as Toronto Maple Leafs GM, what the holdup in the Ottawa Senators ownership process might mean, how Buffalo Sabres fans will feel about Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart both potentially playing for the Stanley Cup, and the guys wrap things up with a round of Multiple Choice Madness and by handing out this week's Conn Smythe Winner of the Week award.Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowGet a 1-year subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshowSign up for a Chime Checking Account today to link your paycheck. It only takes two minutes and doesn't affect your credit score. Get started at http://chime.com/nhlshow. That's http://chime.com/nhlshow.Download the Dave app from the App store right now or go to http://dave.com/nhlshow Sign up for an Extra Cash account and get up to 500 dollars instantly. For terms and conditions go to dave dot com slash legal. Instant transfer fees apply. Banking services provided by Evolve bank and trust. Member FDIC.Head to http://FACTORMEALS.com/nhlshow50 and use code nhlshow50 to get 50% off your first box. That's code nhlshow50 at http://FACTORMEALS.com/nhlshow50 to get 50% off your first box.The right tone can move any project forward when you get it just right with Grammarly. Go to http://grammarly.com/tone to download and learn more about Grammarly Premium's advanced tone suggestions. That's http://grammarly.com/tone.Check out all of the delicious options at http://nuts.com/hockey23. You'll receive a free gift and free shipping when you spend $29 or more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Monday crew is here on a Tuesday as Ian and Julian defend Victoria Day following vicious attacks from the Tuesday Boyz and discuss Paul Maurice's optimistic outlook on Sasha Barkov's injury status, a resurfaced, strange audio clip of new Calgary Flames GM Craig Conroy during the 2004 playoffs, if Alex Tanguay could be the next Flames head coach, Kyle Dubas' first statement since his firing as Toronto Maple Leafs GM, what the holdup in the Ottawa Senators ownership process might mean, how Buffalo Sabres fans will feel about Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart both potentially playing for the Stanley Cup, and the guys wrap things up with a round of Multiple Choice Madness and by handing out this week's Conn Smythe Winner of the Week award. Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshow Get a 1-year subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Sign up for a Chime Checking Account today to link your paycheck. It only takes two minutes and doesn't affect your credit score. Get started at http://chime.com/nhlshow. That's http://chime.com/nhlshow. Download the Dave app from the App store right now or go to http://dave.com/nhlshow Sign up for an Extra Cash account and get up to 500 dollars instantly. For terms and conditions go to dave dot com slash legal. Instant transfer fees apply. Banking services provided by Evolve bank and trust. Member FDIC. Head to http://FACTORMEALS.com/nhlshow50 and use code nhlshow50 to get 50% off your first box. That's code nhlshow50 at http://FACTORMEALS.com/nhlshow50 to get 50% off your first box. The right tone can move any project forward when you get it just right with Grammarly. Go to http://grammarly.com/tone to download and learn more about Grammarly Premium's advanced tone suggestions. That's http://grammarly.com/tone. Check out all of the delicious options at http://nuts.com/hockey23. You'll receive a free gift and free shipping when you spend $29 or more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sugarland Space Cowboys Play-by-Play Broadcaster Gerald Sanchez joins us to discuss the week!

One man has life-threatening injuries following a daylight shooting in Toronto's Eglinton West neighbourhood.; A 15-year-old was arrested and charged with assault after being caught on video shooting fireworks at Halton police on Victoria Day;, A Scarborough woman was scammed $12K after a buyer sent her a faulty payment link on Kijiji; and, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said the updated program at some Canadian airports would help speed up NEXUS and trusted-traveller lines.

The Tuesday boyzzz spread their magic on a Monday, as America's finest celebrate Canada's Victoria Day in style. Craig and Sean stick tap the effort from Jack Eichel as he has seemingly put the Vegas Golden Knights on his back, with Vegas leading the Western Final over Dallas Stars, 2 games to none. The boys discuss the full court press that Fenway Sports Group will be putting forward to lure Kyle Dubas to the Pittsburgh Penguins and the dysfunctional fallout in Toronto, after Dubas's breakup with Brendan Shanahan and the Maple Leafs.Dallas Eakins, the former head coach of the Anaheim Ducks joins Craig and Sean to look back on his years with the Ducks, gives his honest impressions on Trevor Zegras and John Gibson and praises the work done by Paul Maurice and the buy in from Matthew Tkachuk, Brandon Montour and the rest of the Panthers, with Florida leading the Eastern final 2 games to none over the Carolina Hurricanes.Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowGet a 1-year subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshowSo sign up for a Chime Checking Account today to link your paycheck. It only takes two minutes and doesn't affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/nhlshow. That's chime.com/nhlshow.Download the Dave app from the App store right now or go to dave.com/nhlshow Sign up for an Extra Cash account and get up to 500 dollars instantly. For terms and conditions go to dave dot com slash legal. Instant transfer fees apply. Banking services provided by Evolve bank and trust. Member FDIC.Head to FACTOR MEALS dot com slash nhlshow50 and use code nhlshow50 to get 50% off your first box. That's code nhlshow50 at FACTOR MEALS dot com slash nhlshow50 to get 50% off your first box.The right tone can move any project forward when you get it just right with Grammarly. Go to grammarly.com/tone to download and learn more about Grammarly Premium's advanced tone suggestions. That's G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y DOT COM SLASH TONE.check out all of the delicious options at Nuts.com/hockey23. You'll receive a free gift and free shipping when you spend $29 or more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Tuesday boyzzz spread their magic on a Monday, as America's finest celebrate Canada's Victoria Day in style. Craig and Sean stick tap the effort from Jack Eichel as he has seemingly put the Vegas Golden Knights on his back, with Vegas leading the Western Final over Dallas Stars, 2 games to none. The boys discuss the full court press that Fenway Sports Group will be putting forward to lure Kyle Dubas to the Pittsburgh Penguins and the dysfunctional fallout in Toronto, after Dubas's breakup with Brendan Shanahan and the Maple Leafs. Dallas Eakins, the former head coach of the Anaheim Ducks joins Craig and Sean to look back on his years with the Ducks, gives his honest impressions on Trevor Zegras and John Gibson and praises the work done by Paul Maurice and the buy in from Matthew Tkachuk, Brandon Montour and the rest of the Panthers, with Florida leading the Eastern final 2 games to none over the Carolina Hurricanes. Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshow Get a 1-year subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow So sign up for a Chime Checking Account today to link your paycheck. It only takes two minutes and doesn't affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/nhlshow. That's chime.com/nhlshow. Download the Dave app from the App store right now or go to dave.com/nhlshow Sign up for an Extra Cash account and get up to 500 dollars instantly. For terms and conditions go to dave dot com slash legal. Instant transfer fees apply. Banking services provided by Evolve bank and trust. Member FDIC. Head to FACTOR MEALS dot com slash nhlshow50 and use code nhlshow50 to get 50% off your first box. That's code nhlshow50 at FACTOR MEALS dot com slash nhlshow50 to get 50% off your first box. The right tone can move any project forward when you get it just right with Grammarly. Go to grammarly.com/tone to download and learn more about Grammarly Premium's advanced tone suggestions. That's G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y DOT COM SLASH TONE. check out all of the delicious options at Nuts.com/hockey23. You'll receive a free gift and free shipping when you spend $29 or more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who's a good boy?! Well, the miracle dog who licks his gunshot wound back to health is the Morgan family's very-good boy. Black sharecroppers in 1930s Louisiana had it tough enough, but they finally got their own movie in the early '70s and then had to play second fiddle to...the dog?! But, okay, they don't. Young Kevin Hooks is actually the main character, although Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson got the accolades and the Oscar nominations for playing his parents. Martin Ritt was an underrated director who was always good on social issues. His Sounder isn't all that political, but Ryan DID get a little political about idiotic racism in this one-man show, So as you enjoy Victoria Day, settle in for a 30-minute monologue about a hardworking family (and their dog) in this 513th edition of Have You Ever Seen. Sparkplug Coffee is our sponsor. They'll give a 20% discount to those who use the "hyes" promo code. Go to "sparkplug.coffee/hyes". You can certainly write to us. We're emailable (haveyoueverseenpodcast@gmail.com) and tweetable (@moviefiend and @bevellisellis). This podcast and all of what we've done in 2023 is on YouTube. Type @hyesellis into your browser to discover our growing library. And for the next few weeks, you can also hear Ryan talk with Chris Di Gregorio about sports pictures on "Scoring At The Movies".

A special S&P Presents for the Victoria Day holiday: Vancouver Media Legends. The third-part in an ongoing series with Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason and former 1040 host Dave Pratt. Mason provides rare insight into Canucks ownership and the Aquilini family, telling us that family patriarch Luigi is no longer involved and the two big regrets of chairman Francesco. Gary also shares his thoughts on how the Canucks should build from here. With Pratt, the guys mark the passing of poker legend Doyle Brunson, and his legendary on-air fight with Don Taylor back in 2009. Pratt also shares his forecast on the future of the Canucks and Lions.Presented by Go Goat Sports.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Victoria Day at the Matinee! Federal Stonecipher brings us Sonic Society #662, Summerstock Replay #13.3B, and DreamRealm Showcase #203! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seg 1: Today is Victoria Day! It's a celebration of Queen Victoria, but when was the last time you stopped and asked yourself what exactly it is you're celebrating, and why? Guest: Scott Shantz, Contributor for Mornings with Simi Seg 2: Is gardening more effective than opioids when treating chronic pain? Guest: Dr. Andrea Furlan, Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto Seg 3: Is it time to start taxing the rich? Guest: Dr. Tom Malleson, Associate Professor of Social Justice & Peace Studies at Western University Seg 4: Why is Kraft Dinner a Canadian staple? Guest: Dr. Shelley Boyd, Dean of Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Author of Canadian Literary Fare Seg 5: Why BC should address the root cause of its radiation therapy backlog Guest: Sarah Erdelyi, Provincial Manager of the Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technicians in BC Seg 6: What are the benefits of hiring people in treatment? Guest: Sheila Malcomson, Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today is Victoria Day! It's a celebration of Queen Victoria, but when was the last time you stopped and asked yourself what exactly it is you're celebrating, and why? Guest: Scott Shantz, Contributor for Mornings with Simi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sue Montgomery, former journalist and former mayor of CDN-NDG & Lionel Perez, Former city councilor and leader of the Official Opposition at Montreal City Hall join David Heurtel to discuss: Two proposals by Bloc Québécois activists being put to a vote at the national political party convention this weekend The Globe and Mail revealed the content of Canadian intelligence documents reporting on the "Chinese strategy" to influence the 2021 federal election What's open and closed in Montreal on Victoria Day/Patriots' Day Industrial promoters who have submitted requests to Hydro-Québec for large blocks of electrical power A funeral complex in Montérégie to offer its customers to rent its showroom to receive medical aid in dying

The May long weekend is the unofficial start of summer. And for those of you with home gardens or access to community space, this is the weekend to dust off your gardening tools and visit the garden centre for the growing season ahead.As we approach the start of gardening season, it's good time to ask some questions about its origins.Whether you plan to get marigolds, plant a vegetable garden or create a pollinator patch — all gardens have complicated roots.In fact, the practice of gardening is deeply tied to colonialism — from the formation of botany as a science, to the spread of seeds, species and knowledge.Coveted tulipsSome of the most recognizable plants today, such as tulips, are the result of early colonial conquests. Originally found growing wild in the valleys where current China and Tibet meet Afghanistan and Russia, tulips were first cultivated in Istanbul as early as 1055.Later, after they were hybridized and commodified by the Dutch, they became highly coveted status symbols because of their gorgeous, but fleeting, blooms. Exploratory botanical voyages by colonial European powers were integral to the expansion of empire. These trips fueled the big business of collecting global plant samples and also led to the emergence of botany as a scientific discipline.Botanical gardens served as labsBotanical gardens played a key role, serving as the laboratories where plant specimens were organized, ordered and named. “Scientific objectivity” asserted a Eurocentric point of view, disrupting and displacing Indigenous Knowledge and ecological practices.The movement and transfer of plants around the world went hand in hand with the transportation of people to provide a labour force, through slavery and indentured servitude.The plantation system cleared out local ecosystems and replaced traditional farming methods with growing cash crops — like sugar-cane, tea and cotton. These were products meant for European curiosities, markets and profit and not for the local populations.Plant and racial hierarchiesThis colonial system of organizing agriculture laid the groundwork for categorizing people in a similar way, establishing a social hierarchy which dehumanized non-Europeans, helping justify slavery and Indigenous genocide, and eventually leading to racial categories.This history has shaped our current relationships to the land, and our gardens. It also informs beliefs about land ownership and access; who has a right to enjoy the land, versus who is expected to be working on it. Who has the literal and figurative space and freedom to garden?Shifting attitudesBut the soil is shifting. There is a growing shift away from the colonial status symbol of the lawn and manicured gardens, in favour of pollinator-friendly native plants.There is also a growing understanding that centuries-old Indigenous land-based knowledge and practices — like controlled burns — can help manage wildfires, and foster a more resilient landscape.With concerns about our climate crisis growing, one of the possible avenues for creating more sustainable cities may very well lie in our gardens.Could we have an impact simply by thinking a little differently about the seeds we sow and the "weeds" we pull?

Our guest on this episode, recorded live at the Toronto SIAL food innovation conference, is Vince Sgabellone, Foodservice Industry Analyst at Circana.  Vince emphasizes the resilience and adaptability of the industry during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting how quickly businesses reinvented themselves by offering off-premises services and embracing digital engagement. We also discuss the challenges restaurants face in dealing with higher costs and labour shortages and the need for automation and streamlined operations. Looking to the future, they highlight the importance of engaging with the younger generation, who are digitally savvy and have diverse culinary preferences. The guest concludes by mentioning the growing interest of retail companies in the food service industry, given its significant share of consumer spending.In food industry-related news, we discuss "Cold War II" and food geopolitics, focusing on China and Canadian agriculture. Next, we talk about the story behind Tyson Foods' financial loss in the last quarter, with $13.1 billion worth of sales resulting in a loss of $0.28 per share. As the Victoria Day weekend approaches, the podcast dives into the start of BBQ season, what to expect, and what the significant trends are on the grill. The episode concludes by congratulating Kelly Higginson on her new and improved gig as the new President and CEO of Restaurants Canada. Having previously served as the organization's Chief Operating Officer, Higginson's appointment brings anticipation for success and stability, aiming for a longer tenure than her predecessors.Tune in to The Food Professor podcast to explore the world of food innovation, industry news, and expert interviews. Lobster trap Photo by John McArthur on UnsplashAbout VinceFood has always been in my blood. My passion for food started in my Mom's Italian kitchen where she shared with me her love of cooking. All of our family photos from my childhood seemed to have food in them, so I guess we were instagramming long before that was a thing. To this day, I still enjoy cooking alongside my Mom and I'm still learning. But I still haven't figured out how to master her infamous meatball recipe. Fast forward to the start of my food career where I found myself supplying professional kitchens, learning the business side of food from some of the finest chefs and restaurateurs in Ottawa. As my career progressed, I was able to expand my horizons beyond my Italian roots to include an understanding of cuisines from around the world. My passion for the business was a valuable asset as I worked hard to help my clients achieve their goals. Today, as a Director, Client Development and Foodservice Industry Analyst at The NPD Group, I use data and consumer behaviour analytics to help some of the industry's best known global food brands solve problems and identify growth opportunities. I take pride knowing that my passion for food, combined with my experience, allow me to deliver insights that will help you to make better business decisions. I am available to serve as a media source on topics of food and beverage consumption, and their impact on the foodservice industry. My comments and analysis have appeared in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, The CBC, and other national media outlets. I also appear as a featured speaker at industry events and corporate conferences.  About UsDr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph's Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre's Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa. About MichaelMichael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.   Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2023 for the third year in a row. Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trade podcasts, including Remarkable Retail , with best-selling author Steve Dennis, now ranked one of the top retail podcasts in the world. Based in San Francisco, Global eCommerce Leaders podcast explores global cross-border issues and opportunities for eCommerce brands and retailers. Last but not least, Michael is the producer and host of the "Last Request Barbeque" channel on YouTube, where he cooks meals to die for - and collaborates with top brands as a food and product influencer across North America

Happy Victoria Day folks! AKA May 2-4 and the official start of the summer season here in Canada! Don't get us wrong, there's a very good chance of frost or snow if history is any indication! But, that will not slow down the party! For this very special royal episode, we decided to invite a very special, royal friend of ours…..that's right, the hilarious, the talented, the irrepressible Matt Goodman! AKA, half of the amazing band the Brothers Good! Hooray! In this royal English face-off, the Crew, alongside Matt, try some Queen Victoria themed drinks. There is red wine, scotch whiskey, cognac, sweet vermouth and blue curaçao! It will be an interesting adventure! Tune in for some laughs, stories, fun, drinking and rating! And go ahead and smash that subscribe button! Like, share, comment! Cheers!

Yesterday, the Haliburton Highlands Health Services presented their official plan to shut down the Minden Hills ER to Haliburton Council. The Mayor of Minden Hills joined us to unpack what is promised and what's still missing in his opinion. A new piece of legislation could make it harder for some repeat offenders to get bail. While many leaders in the GTA have been calling for the changes put forward in the proposed bill, there are some who are critical of it. Relaxing on the beach or swimming in the lake ..sounds like a good way to spend this Victoria Day long weekend. If that plan involves Sauble Beach, you will want to listen, as Saugeen First Nation Chief Conrad Rithchie shared an update on the beach ownership dispute. A young adult novel about class divides, addiction, and mental health in Kingston. Leanne Lieberman, the author of Cleaning Up joined us this morning. For the first time since the pandemic, the Muskoka Queer Film Festival will kick off today, in person. The festival coordinator joined us to share the highlights and diverse storytelling in film. Four months after her golden retriever went missing, a Huntsville woman hasn't given up hope. She's offering a two-thousand dollar reward for anyone who might know where Timber could be.

Join us in the salon this week with special guests Anthony Singleton and Victoria Day!  We talk about everything from J.K. Rowling to the gays in mainstream Hollywood movies, to safe spaces for everyone.  Join the conversation!  www.thequeercentric.com  

On today's Victoria Day edition, Matt Marchese welcomes in Elliotte Friedman to discuss how the Oilers' turned the Battle of Alberta in their favour, the effectiveness of loading up the top line, Connor McDavid's unworldly stretch of play and Evander Kane's resurgence with Edmonton (00:35). The pair then revisit Milan Lucic's collision with Mike Smith that led to a game misconduct, and shift their attention South as Tampa closed to within one game from the conference finals with Corey Perry still playing his brand of hockey (11:20). To wrap up, Matt and Elliotte look back on Rick Bowness' tenure with the Stars and ask what's next, before sharing their thoughts on Brian Rust & Mark Giordano's new deals (21:34).   The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Sports & Media or any affiliates.

Craig and Sean celebrate Victoria Day with a special edition of the Tuesday boyzzz TAHS on a Monday! The guys discuss the antics of Max Domi in the dying seconds in game three between the Rangers and Hurricanes, and Gerard Gallant's harsh words directed towards the Canes post game. Bryan Rust signs a 5 year extension with Pittsburgh and we ask, what does that mean for Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang moving forward with the Penguins? The guys also take a look at what of the six vacant NHL coaching positions, from Vegas, to Chicago, Dallas, Winnipeg, Detroit and Philadelphia is most appealing for coaches looking for work next season. Jeremy Rutherford joins the boys to breakdown the first three games of the St. Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche series, the collision between Nazem Kadri and Jordan Binnington, Ville Husso stepping back in between the pipes and the Selke Trophy performance from Ryan O'Reilly as he continues to shutdown Nathan MacKinnon. Plus we stick tap JR for his recently renovated 'hockey basement' in the suburbs of St. Louis ahead of another edition of the Tuesday boyzzz comment section. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Craig and Sean celebrate Victoria Day with a special edition of the Tuesday boyzzz TAHS on a Monday!The guys discuss the antics of Max Domi in the dying seconds in game three between the Rangers and Hurricanes, and Gerard Gallant's harsh words directed towards the Canes post game. Bryan Rust signs a 5 year extension with Pittsburgh and we ask, what does that mean for Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang moving forward with the Penguins? The guys also take a look at what of the six vacant NHL coaching positions, from Vegas, to Chicago, Dallas, Winnipeg, Detroit and Philadelphia is most appealing for coaches looking for work next season.Jeremy Rutherford joins the boys to breakdown the first three games of the St. Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche series, the collision between Nazem Kadri and Jordan Binnington, Ville Husso stepping back in between the pipes and the Selke Trophy performance from Ryan O'Reilly as he continues to shutdown Nathan MacKinnon. Plus we stick tap JR for his recently renovated 'hockey basement' in the suburbs of St. Louis ahead of another edition of the Tuesday boyzzz comment section. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Doug and Gator try to figure out what Victoria Day is.