October 24, 2001

The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) uses the term “deregulation” in reference to electricity reform, for instance, on the FAQ portion of its web site. But there are many reasons why in its specific denotation, the term is inaccurate.

Of course, in popular usage by people who don’t know better, the term “deregulation” is often applied to Ontario’s electricity restructuring but I urge the OEB to achieve a higher standard of language accuracy in its public communication. I note that in his speech to the Canadian Competitive Energy 2001 Summit on September 26, 2001, Jim Wilson, Ontario’s Minister of Energy, Science, and Technology, stated, “It’s interesting that our restructuring effort has been called ‘deregulation’ by many people. But we’re not actually ‘deregulating’ anything as we still have a regulatory agency – the Ontario Energy Board.”