Nancy Southern is the CEO of widely reviled infrastructure/utility/modular housing conglomerate ATCO. She inherited the company from her father Ron Southern, who started it in 1947. She is a billionaire because of the company she inherited. And with all that lived experience, Nancy is calling on the feds and the province to take care of who’s really struggling: multinational resource–extraction corporations.
Southern shared her great insights on the Arc Energy Ideas podcast with Peter Tertzakian and Jackie Forrest of the Arc Energy Research Institute.
Nancy Southern isn’t your average podcast crank—she and her family own billions worth of our province. So I listened to the podcast and while I can’t blame you for not tuning in yourself, here’s a summary of what one of Alberta’s most influential oligarchs has to say.
Southern starts the show with her version of the history of ATCO, which got started in 1947. The Southerns didn’t make their initial fortune from oil but from providing housing, camper trailers, and later modular homes, to the workers flocking to Alberta for the oil boom.
Nancy Southern. Photo via ATCO.
Southern boasted of ATCO’s largest temporary housing project, for 20,000 workers at Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates.
“It was a whole village,” says Southern.
Human Rights Watch reports from 2015 and 2009 found systematic human rights violations against migrant workers on Saadiyat Island. Employers withheld wages and benefits from workers, confiscated worker passports, housed workers in substandard accommodation and deported Saadiyat workers who went on strike to protest their low pay.
ATCO didn’t just stay in trailers though. On the pod, Southern walks us through some of the corporation’s other interests. Canadian Utilities is a publicly traded company that her family controls which has electricity generation, transmission and distribution assets as well as ATCO Gas and ATCO Pipelines. Aside from electricity generation you’ll notice that all of these business lines are highly regulated and offer a guaranteed rate of return by the state simply for maintaining them. ATCO is also in Australia with some gas fired power plants and a gas distribution network.
Host Jackie Forrest asked about how it felt to follow in her father’s footsteps and take control of ATCO.
“I honed my skills early on. I worked as an executive assistant in the early days of ATCO International. And then at Spruce Meadows, which became my Mom and Dad’s way of giving back to the community, I actually developed the media services business from nothing and it taught me a lot about selling, developing a good product, having the right people and managing people so I was pretty confident when I was moved into the role [of CEO], I know nobody else was,” said Southern.
Spruce Meadows is a complex on the edge of Calgary that hosts international show jumping and dressage events. Picture the world’s elite having their fancy horses doing choreographed dances or jump over obstacles. Giving back is an interesting way of framing Spruce Meadows; it’s a private business, not a charity, and access to the facilities is not free. The official sponsor of the time on Spruce Meadows’ website is Rolex.
The International Ring at Spruce Meadows the morning of July 6, 2008. Taken with a Canon f3.5 24mm tilt-shift lens. Photo by Duncan Kinney.
Dual class shares allow the Southerns to retain control of ATCO. Unsurprisingly, this Southern argues that keeping ATCO in the hands of the Southerns is a good thing.
“Without those dual class shares I’m not sure that ATCO would have survived as it is today, it would have survived, but in a very different fashion. Part of our family values is the responsibility to the people who have helped build ATCO and there is opportunity and prosperity for generations to come,” said Southern.
“You and your family's sense of community is so amazing,” beams Tertzakian. “You have Spruce Meadows and that whole operation which is such a family oriented but yet international gathering place for people who love equestrian sports.”
Southern went on to gush about Spruce Meadows and how they’re very proud of how it’s never received any government funding. It’s not clear why a private horse jumping facility built by and for the ultrarich would need government cash but Southern is still very proud of that fact. The facility is run by Southern’s sister—Linda Southern-Heathcott.
Forrest went on to talk about all the corporate headquarters in Alberta that have been lost and about the lost opportunities for Albertans who will never become CEOs and expressed her admiration for Southern keeping the company in Alberta.
“It saddens me actually that our governments do a lot of things but they have not been champions of Canadian business,” says Southern. “What about us that are really struggling? We come from a relatively small pond in Canada and to be an international corporation is tough because those are big competitors out there,” said Southern, a literal billionaire.
She complained that she couldn’t get billions in financing from the federal government to acquire an Australian gas distribution network. She couldn’t get federal help to buy it for environmental reasons because it was for a natural gas network.
The hosts and Southern are all quite bullish on hydrogen, specifically on how Canada should provide hydrogen/ammonia to Japan and Korea.
“But the wonderful thing about the whole nascent hydrogen industry is to bring our First Peoples of Canada along as part of the development of this industry,” said Southern, referring to sovereign nations living on their traditional territory, who are not hers, Alberta’s, or Canada’s.
Southern was very excited about the Atlas Hub carbon capture project, which ATCO is partnering on with Shell. While there has been an announcement for the project precious few details, including how much government support it will be receiving, have been announced.
Southern also spoke loudly against the draft Clean Energy Regulations being pushed forward by the federal government. According to her, the feds’ modeling is all wrong and doesn’t take into account future significant weather events. Then she revealed that during an extended cold snap in January of 2024, “we only had 24 hours of natural gas left in the utility systems to keep people warm and plants on,” said Southern. It’s not very comforting that our utilities botched an extended cold snap so badly that thousands of Albertans nearly froze to death. And it’s not clear why that’s the federal government’s problem either.
The podcast closed with Southern talking about how ATCO is developing a bit of renewable energy but is making significant investments in ports and housing manufacturing.
“We have 18 ports through North America and South America, with our partner. We’ve just acquired 12 new manufacturing facilities for housing and so the essential services that ATCO has provided for many years are going to play as a physical hedge for us,” says Southern.
“ATCO is feeling very good, I’m feeling very good about our investments around the world in what are essential services in the long term.”
Feeling very good, but at the same time the ones who are really struggling. The Southern dynasty and their corporations own housing, factories, ports, and a good chunk of Alberta’s electricity system. Let’s hope that the working class can someday help these poor billionaires out and take it all off their hands.