By Steve Mertl, The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER, B.C. - The president of BC Hydro is being shifted out of the job because the Crown-owned utility is headed in a different direction, Hydro chairman Dan Doyle said Wednesday.

Chief executive Bob Elton will be replaced by Jan. 1 after a six-year stint, Doyle announced. An executive-search firm has been hired to find candidates inside and outside Hydro, he said.

Elton will be "transitioning" to a new role as special adviser to Hydro's board of directors - with a seat on the board, Doyle said - and executive chairman of Powertech Labs Inc., a subsidiary that does technology consulting.

In an interview, Doyle said Elton's departure has nothing to do with recent controversies over Hydro's role in the government's electric-power agenda.

"It was my idea," said Doyle, a highly regarded career bureaucrat appointed Hydro chairman last July.

Doyle said Elton was helpful to him settling in as chairman and knows the power business, which is why he'll stay on as an adviser.

"And yet I could see that we would be moving in a slightly different direction and would need different leadership," said Doyle.

"I think the direction that I want to move in is more about economic development in the province and making sure we take full advantage of that."

Under Elton, he said, Hydro is well positioned to fulfil the government's policy goals of electrical self-sufficiency by 2016, with reliance on clean sources such as run-of-river hydro and wind power.

Last summer, the B.C. Utilities Commission rejected Hydro's proposed future plans, which were based on the Liberal government's policy of leaning more on buying electricity from independent power producers that now have several projects in the works.

The commission said Hydro had over-estimated future B.C. power demands and that its plans should include continued use of the gas-fired Burrard Thermal plant near Vancouver.

The government last week directed Hydro and the commission not to include Burrard Thermal, except as an emergency source of power.

Doyle played down the stumble, saying Hydro got 90 per cent of what it asked the commission for, and the government had resolved the Burrard Thermal question with its directive.

"That was not part of my decision-making process," in replacing Elton, he said.

Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom said he played no part in shifting Elton, though he was consulted.

"I think as BC Hydro looks to the future they have found a need for Mr. Elton and his expertise," Lekstrom said.

"At the same time they obviously made a decision that (after) six years at the helm they wanted to move forward and look for a new CEO at this point."

But NDP energy critic John Horgan said he believes Elton was forced out of the top job for arguing the government's agenda to change the regulatory regime governing Hydro and create a new power export policy was not achievable in a two-month time frame.

"And they said, well, we'll find someone else to do it and that's why they're moving him out," he said.

Premier Gordon Campbell announced Monday he's creating a new cabinet committee on clean energy and climate change, with four task forces to deliver advice by the end of January on reforming the legislation governing Hydro, export policy, carbon pricing and trading and project development.

Horgan also questioned why Elton to go simply because Hydro was changing its focus.

"Hydro always has been an economic-development driver," he said.

"To suggest that Mr. Elton was unfamiliar with that and needed to be removed to find someone who understood that is a stretch.

"My sense is the new direction that Dan Doyle's talking about is a new political direction, not a new direction for the corporation per se."