Questions linger over costly Grewal payout
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The former head of Manitoba Hydro was paid more than $881,000 in 2024, even though she was dismissed after working only six weeks into the year. As The Canadian Press reported yesterday, former Hydro president and chief executive officer Jay Grewal’s earnings in previous years, where she had worked a full year, ranged from $500,000 to $546,000.
Grewal’s 2024 earnings, which were released as part of Manitoba Hydro’s annual compensation disclosure report, suggests that she received a large lump-sum payment after she and the board parted ways.
In his comments to the CBC this week, Sean MacDonald with the University of Manitoba said that Grewal was paid out everything she was owed on the contract she signed with Manitoba Hydro, and suggested that high salaries are a necessary price to pay as compensation for the risk they take in assuming a job that they could lose at the government’s whim.
Jay Grewal, then president and CEO of Manitoba Hydro, speaks during a Manitoba Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Winnipeg in January 2024. Deveryn Ross writes that in February 2024, Grewal said that the province could require new energy generation as early as 2029, and must begin looking for ways to encourage Manitobans to reduce demand. (Mike Deal/Winnipeg Free Press files)
“The public really needs to understand that to attract and retain quality people, to ensure our institutions and our major organizations funded by the taxpayer are well-managed, you’re going to have to pay a lot for it,” MacDonald said, adding that hefty buyouts like the one in this situation are not scandalous.
Even so, such a payout to a single terminated Crown corporation CEO will prompt public outrage — yet the real outrage should have fallen on those who decided to let her go in the first place.
In January 2024, the former Hydro CEO told an audience of Manitoba Chambers of Commerce members that the province had decided against new hydroelectric dams, largely because the utility is already handicapped by excessive debt from previous hydro projects.
Grewal further stated that Manitoba Hydro would be issuing a call for proposals to build out its generation infrastructure — particularly more wind farms — through partnerships with independent (read private) producers.
But that statement did not sit well with the newly elected NDP government, and led to a very public rebuke just one day later by Manitoba Finance Minister Adrien Sala, who said the province would look to add capacity to the grid without external partners.
Grewal and the province also appeared to be at odds over the government’s declared aim of having Manitoba Hydro at net zero emissions by 2035.
And so, two weeks after Sala’s remarks and after five years at the helm of Manitoba Hydro, Grewal was let go from her position.
As CP reported, Manitoba Hydro is not releasing details about Grewal’s compensation, saying only that Grewal was paid out according to the terms of her contract and that no severance was issued.
After hiring Allan Danroth as the new CEO a year ago, the Kinew government announced a plan the following September to build the “next generation of affordable energy” by formalizing into government policy Indigenous-owned partnerships in wind energy projects with Manitoba First Nations.
“By building out the grid, we’ll keep rates low for everyone and put more Manitobans to work in good union jobs,” Kinew stated at the time.
This could potentially turn out to be a financially lucrative decision for First Nations, but we remain unclear how limiting new wind energy projects to “government-to-government” Indigenous-owned projects will provide enough energy to meet the growing energy needs of Manitobans in the future.
Removing a CEO because of the mere suggestion that Hydro should turn to private investment to make new projects move forward seems like a harsh judgment on what seems like a perfectly valid suggestion.
While the Kinew government and the board of Manitoba Hydro claimed that there was no connection between Grewal’s comments and her being let go, the compensation disclosure report would suggest otherwise.
If the former CEO had been let go with cause, there would be little reason to make such a payout. Instead it appears that the NDP wanted someone more in line with their ideological bent — someone not hired by the previous government of Brian Pallister.
In other words, the NDP knew exactly what this would cost when they let her go. And while it was their right to make that decision — whims of the government and all that — it was not only costly, but questionable too.