Hydro One is going back to the drawing board on executive pay and severance after Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford threatened to have the company’s $6.2 million-a-year CEO fired if the PCs are elected June 7.

The announcement from Hydro One came Monday, noting Ontario’s Liberal government served notice over the weekend that it would vote against Hydro One’s executive pay resolution at the company’s annual meeting May 15.

Ontario owns 47 per cent of Hydro One and is the largest single stockholder in the company, which recently decided to make it easier for chief executive Mayo Schmidt and his executive team to get lucrative severance packages if they’re fired without cause.

“These changes were unjustifiably generous,” Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault said in a statement.

Thibeault was forced to defend the changes after they came to light last week, maintaining the government is not a “micro manager.” His comments came after Ford charged Hydro One executives “only care about their pockets and feathering their own nest...on the way out the door.”

The ministry’s notice to the former Crown utility followed just days later.

“Given this information, Hydro One has decided to conduct supplementary shareholder engagement and obtain additional independent advice,” chairman David Denison said in a statement released after stock markets closed Monday.

“Alignment of our compensation practices with the interests of our shareholders is a primary goal for the board of Hydro One.”

Ford said Monday he wasn’t impressed by the government’s intervention with Hydro One.

“This is a weak response from (Premier) Kathleen Wynne, and only coming now because she and her millionaires’ club have been exposed just before the election. If the government truly had any respect for taxpayers, Kathleen Wynne would fire the $6-million dollar man and the entire board at Hydro One, just like she said she had the authority to do.”

Ford said almost two weeks ago he would replace the board and get new directors to fire Schmidt. Replacing the board would constitute a change in control at Hydro One, entitling Schmidt to a $10.7 million severance if he were to be fired without cause.

“While Doug Ford would take an erratic and reckless approach and fire Hydro One’s board — which would do absolutely nothing to reduce customer rates but would almost certainly risk the market value of Hydro One upon which so many people rely,” Thibeault added in his statement.

“We believe in a stable solution that exercises our authority as the largest shareholder.”

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Under the latest changes interpreted as a way to discourage government intervention at Hydro One, any moves by an Ontario government to change a majority of the board of directors during a two-year period would constitute a change of control, triggering Schmidt’s $10.7 million severance in a dismissal without cause.

Previously, only a wholesale firing of the board would constitute a change in control. Schmidt is entitled to a $5.04 million severance if fired without cause absent a change in control.

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