Mark Kolesar, Acting Chair

Mark Kolesar became acting chair of the Alberta Utilities Commission on May 1, 2018, following six years as vice-chair. He has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master of business administration degree in managerial economics and finance, both from the University of Ottawa. He has also been an instructor at both the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary on strategy development, financial management, management accounting and business planning and policy. Mr. Kolesar has been a Commission member since July 2008.

Mr. Kolesar’s experience in utility corporate costing and rate making spans more than three decades, and he brought extensive public utility financial technical skills and experience to the AUC. He has also had an extensive background working in the utility industry, in strategy development, project planning and execution, organizational transformation and utility regulatory change at both the provincial and national level.

Mr. Kolesar’s appointment to the AUC followed a career that included senior analytical, managerial and executive roles, focused on regulatory and public policy, with the Public Utilities Board of Alberta (the predecessor organization to the AUC), and in the telecommunication industry. Mr. Kolesar has also been an adviser to the government of Canada on regulatory matters and appeared before legislative committees of the Parliament of Canada examining the Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act.

Since joining the AUC, Mr. Kolesar has been involved in a number of important AUC regulatory decisions, including several generic cost of capital decisions, the 2009 decisions on ENMAX formula-based rate making and the first generation performance-based regulation regimes, as well as substantial general tariff applications.

Tracee Collins, Commission member
Tracee Collins is a graduate of the University of California with a bachelor of arts degree in economics, and of the Fontainebleau, France-based INSEAD global business program with a master's degree in business administration. Ms. Collins is also accredited as a project management professional, and has been a United Kingdom-licensed securities and derivatives representative.

Ms. Collins has strong leadership, project management and community organization skills underpinned by significant experience in power, natural gas, finance, investment banking and audit management. She has built a diverse career including serving as president and chair of the board of a successful Calgary community association, a commercial director of a large independent power producer, a finance expert in a global energy company, and a manager of risk audit teams for a European investment bank.

Ms. Collins is professionally familiar with commercial contracts for gas and power, financial and economic modelling, utility market design, transfer pricing and has represented commercial interests in discussions with independent market operators. She is also an active contributor to community organizations that include the Calgary Homeless Foundation, the Calgary Stampede, and the Palliser, Bay View and Pump Hill (PBP) Community Association. Most recently Ms. Collins was appointed to the board of governors of Mount Royal University, for a three-year term.

Ms. Collins led the PBP Community Association through a financial and organizational renewal, after senior roles in finance, project management and generation portfolio management at independent power producer Calpine Energy. That followed project financing, project modelling, and risk mitigation with an international energy firm, audit-focused investment banking experience with Credit Suisse and a role as an international bank examiner with the U.S. Federal Reserve. She joined the AUC in March 2017.

Carolyn Hutniak, Commission member
Carolyn Hutniak is a graduate of the University of Alberta with both bachelor of arts and bachelor of laws degrees. A lawyer and member of the Law Society of Alberta since 1989, her early legal career was as a litigator, practising primarily in the areas of labour, employment and administrative law. Representing clients, she appeared before numerous Alberta boards and tribunals as well as all levels of the Alberta Courts.

Ms. Hutniak has extensive evidence-based adjudicative tribunal experience built on a professional development, adjudicative quality control and administrative law background. She has served as a public member of hearing tribunals under Alberta's Health Professions Act, which examined and determined complaints against health professionals regulated under that legislation.

Immediately prior to joining the AUC, Ms. Hutniak served as an appeals commissioner and hearing chair with the Appeals Commission for Alberta Workers' Compensation for more than 12 years. This role included proceeding preparation, management and oversight, legislative and regulation interpretation, and decision writing across hundreds of written decisions. Ms. Hutniak's Appeals Commission experience also includes developing and delivering skill development and professional programs for both tribunal members and for tribunal staff as well as a two-year stint as the commission's performance management project co-ordinator. In that role, she developed and implemented a comprehensive quality control program for adjudicators, developed training and orientation programs, as well as a commissioner's handbook for tribunal members, all with a goal of ensuring timely, principled and fair decisions.

Prior to her tenure with the Appeals Commission for Alberta Workers' Compensation, Ms. Hutniak practised exclusively as a non-partisan administrative law and tribunal management consultant to a diverse range of disciplinary, regulatory and rights based tribunals throughout Alberta. In that role, her activities included providing advice on matters of legislative interpretation, drafting reasons and decisions at the direction of tribunal panels as well as developing and delivering educational seminars for judicial, legal, industry and lay audiences on a variety of administrative law topics.

Neil Jamieson, Commission member
Neil Jamieson is a graduate of the civil engineering program, and the senior executive fellows program, of the University of Alberta. Mr. Jamieson is also a certified local government manager.

Mr. Jamieson has worked as a senior-level professional engineer and manager, with a focus on infrastructure, public works, the environment and public utilities, for nearly 30 years.

Mr. Jamieson joined the AUC from the City of St. Albert, Alberta, where he was the general manager of planning and engineering. Since 1986, his oversight and expertise has been applied in three provinces and territories working largely at the municipal level - both urban and rural - and included planning and development (including land-use planning) and responsibility for drainage, water, sanitary and solid waste utilities, consultation and interaction with community and other stakeholder groups, and liaison with governments at the provincial and federal levels. Mr. Jamieson has also worked in three separate Canadian jurisdictions as a consultant project engineer centred on design, contract administration, construction inspection and surveying for civil and municipal engineering projects.

In Alberta, Mr. Jamieson has significant experience dealing with regional utility commissions and a working familiarity with provincial quasi-judicial tribunals in the fields of development and municipal government. He has had first-hand working exposure to the province’s major publicly-owned and privately-owned transmission and distribution utility providers, generation companies and the electric system operator.

Mr. Jamieson is a member, or former member, of the associations of professional engineers in Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and Ontario. He joined the AUC in February, 2011.

Bill Lyttle, Commission member
Bill Lyttle has a bachelor of science degree in biology, and a master of business administration degree in finance, both from McMaster University. He is also a graduate of the Treasury Training Program of J.P. Morgan International and the Company Directors Course of the Institute of Directors in New Zealand.

Mr. Lyttle has expertise in understanding technical aspects of equity, debt, commodity, foreign exchange and financial derivatives market trading, as well as the regulatory principles used in the oversight of these markets. He has served as an expert witness for the New Zealand Serious Fraud Office and with the business conduct committee of the New Zealand Futures and Options Exchange. That experience complements a working history that included senior trading supervisory positions with the Bank of New Zealand, the Bank of Nova Scotia and CS First Boston N.Z. Ltd.

Prior to joining the AUC, Mr. Lyttle had spent nine years in a regulatory role with New Zealand’s electricity market surveillance committee, which applied trading and participant behaviour rules in that country’s wholesale electricity market. Mr. Lyttle also helped develop, establish and apply consumer billing standards during the deregulation of residential and small business electric utility service in that country.

Mr. Lyttle joined the AUC in 2008. His professional background in regulatory supervision, including oversight of competitive electricity markets, helped the AUC shape its principles of jurisprudence in its compliance and markets mandate, a new area of regulation for Alberta’s provincial utilities regulator.

He has also been involved in the development of wholesale market rules and much of the AUC’s work around the conduct of the independent system operator and the Market Surveillance Administrator.

Anne Michaud, Commission member
Anne Michaud has a master's degree in international trade law from Universite d'Aix-en-Provence, France, along with degrees in law and arts from the University of Ottawa. Her legal and business education is supplemented with training in securities, mediation and negotiations.

Ms. Michaud has an extensive professional background in tax and civil litigation, and transfer pricing. She has appeared before the Federal Court of Canada, the Federal Court of Appeal, the Ontario courts, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal and the bi-national panel of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Before joining the AUC Ms. Michaud was an associate tax partner with Deloitte & Touche LLP's Calgary office, specializing in transfer pricing. Ms. Michaud worked with Canadian and multinational energy exploration and development companies, oil and gas service firms as well as energy marketers and traders in establishing and defending their transfer pricing models.

During most of the 1990s Ms. Michaud was a Crown counsel with the Department of Justice, working in Ottawa and Vancouver, managing litigation related to the Income Tax Act, customs and trade, dumping, federal sales tax, bankruptcy, employment and regulation. She also delivered policy and legal advice as counsel to federal negotiators in discussion of treaties with First Nations and the Province of British Columbia.

Ms. Michaud joined the AUC in 2008 and has worked on many different types of applications, including facilities applications.

Joanne Phillips, Commission member                      
Joanne Phillips is a graduate of the University of Manitoba with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering, the University of Calgary with a master's degree in civil engineering, and the University of Alberta with a doctorate in mechanical engineering specialized in engineering management. Ms. Phillips was the recipient of a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Industrial Postgraduate Scholarship and her work has been published internationally. Ms. Phillips is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, the Northwest Territories Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists and is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Ms. Phillips is a seasoned professional engineer with extensive experience in the utility industry. She has worked with, or for, such firms and organizations as TransAlta Corporation, the Alberta Research Council, the Power Pool of Alberta, Shell Canada Limited, the Alberta Electric System Operator, AltaLink Management Ltd. and Northwest Territories Power Corporation performing a range of activities. Most recently, she led the engineering design team for a government-owned utility. This team designed and commissioned capital projects related to hydroelectric, diesel, natural gas, solar and wind generation facilities as well as transmission and distribution systems.

Ms. Phillips' work and education background includes a strong environmental dimension, including a specialization in engineering for the environment in her master's degree. Her contributions to the engineering profession have included supporting the compliance department of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta. Ms. Phillips' expertise includes project management, engineering management, technology futures analysis and sustainable development. She also has experience in utility industry pricing and contracts analysis.

Henry van Egteren, Commission member
Henry van Egteren received a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Alberta and a doctorate in economics from the University of British Columbia. Prior to joining the AUC in 2012, Mr. van Egteren had been conducting research into and teaching economics, regulation, and law and economics, with links to environmental studies, for close to 25 years, first at the University of Illinois and latterly at the University of Alberta, where he was an associate professor of economics.

At the University of Alberta Mr. van Egteren’s research specialization was in mechanism design in environmental economics, regulation, and law and economics, and his teaching focus was in welfare economics, public finance, the economic analysis of law, natural resources and environmental economics. His works have been published in the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization; the European Journal of Law and Economics; the European Economic Review; Environmental and Resource Economics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, among other periodicals.

Mr. van Egteren has an extensive background in regulation, law and economics - including environmental economics - with significant exposure to utility deregulation theory and application that encompasses market auction design, Alberta Power Pool arrangements and pricing, and market power in the Alberta wholesale electricity market. He has also been active in the business, public administration and government spheres, with consultations or contributions to the auditor general of British Columbia, the University of Alberta Faculty of Business, the Alberta Treasury Department and the Alberta Department of Energy.

Since joining the AUC in December 2012, Mr. van Egteren has been involved in many market-related decisions and in the exploration and development of economic principles to help guide the AUC in producing efficient regulatory outcomes. Along with his academic, research and consulting achievements, he has real-world practical experience as a cement finisher, pipe layer and home builder.

Acting Commission members, listed alphabetically by last name:

Kate Coolidge, Acting Commission member

Kate Coolidge holds a bachelor of laws degree and a bachelor of science degree, both from the University of Calgary and has been a professional member of the Alberta Law Society, the Licensing Executive Society, the Canadian Bar Association and the Association of Woman Lawyers.

Ms. Coolidge has also completed separate programs in each of administrative law, understanding patents, research management, leadership and principles of assessment. She has a strong background in intellectual property law and administrative law, and considerable experience on quasi-judicial administrative tribunals in Alberta. This is complemented by extensive work as a negotiator, mediator and advisor. She became an acting member of the AUC in December 2012.

Ms. Coolidge has been a panel member and chair of the Calgary Assessment Review Board, the chair of the appeal panel of Alberta Children and Youth Services, and a panel member of the City of Calgary Licensing and Community Standards Appeal Board. She has also been chair of the Extrajudicial Sanctions Program Panel of the Alberta Department of the Solicitor General. Before becoming active on tribunal panels, Ms. Coolidge worked in the technology transfer office of the University of Lethbridge and prior to that in the intellectual property department of SemBioSys Genetics Inc., an agricultural biotechnology firm.

As a volunteer, Ms. Coolidge has been a member of the youth justice committee of the Calgary Youth Justice Society, a community representative to the planning subcommittee of the admissions committee of the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine and a member of the board of directors of the United Way of Lethbridge and South Western Alberta.

Bohdan (Don) Romaniuk. Acting Commission member

Bohdan (Don) Romaniuk has a bachelor’s degree with honours in economics from the University of Alberta, a degree in law from the University of Toronto and a master’s degree in economics from Queen’s University. He has built expertise and experience in the fields of law, economics, regulation, corporate finance and commercial enterprise during three decades of work as a lawyer, corporate executive and builder of start-up companies.

Mr. Romaniuk is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Canadian Bar Association. He joined the AUC as an acting Commission member in October 2012.

Mr. Romaniuk has had significant exposure to and involvement with quasi-judicial regulatory bodies at the provincial and federal level focused on telecommunications and which operated in deregulating or deregulated policy environments. This included senior regulatory affairs oversight roles with Canada’s top-tier telecommunications firms, and with both public and private firms. His initial legal practice was centred on telecommunications, competition and administrative law. Since then, Mr. Romaniuk has served in senior executive, officer or board roles in telecommunications, advertising, marketing and promotion, wireless location, high-performance computing, and oil and gas. He has also published scholarly articles on competition law and telecommunications regulation, and has a strong interest in the interplay of and among central banking, international finance and global debt and equity markets.

Mr. Romaniuk is active as a volunteer in the community, in professional associations and in the not-for-profit sector. He has served on the investment advisory committee of a federally-chartered charitable foundation, the board of directors of the Calgary Opera Association and on the board of directors of the International Telecommunications Society, the latter of which he continues to serve as secretariat. Mr. Romaniuk is the president of the Calgary Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association and in his leisure time enjoys fly-fishing and amateur astronomy.

Moin A. Yahya, Acting Commission member

Moin Yahya is a former full-time Commission member and came to the AUC from the University of Alberta, where he is a professor in the faculty of law. Mr. Yahya has also served as acting dean of the faculty.

Mr. Yahya received his law degree with great distinction from George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia in 2003. Earlier he received a doctorate in economics from the University of Toronto, and, from the University of Alberta both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics. His doctoral thesis examined the capital structure of regulated utilities.

Before attending law school, Mr. Yahya was employed with Industry Canada’s Competition Bureau in Ottawa, where he worked on various merger and civil non-merger issues. He is also familiar with the work of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the United States. He has published articles on various topics, including antitrust, corporate and regulatory law.

Mr. Yahya was appointed an acting Commission member in October 2012, after having served as a full-time member since September 2009. Mr. Yahya has been active in the AUC’s market’s related decisions and in rate-related applications.