Ontario has to get tough with energy retailers

Hamilton Spectator - Thursday, April 18, 2002

Chris Stockwell positioned himself in the Conservative leadership race as the feisty, straight-speaking candidate. The one who didn't mince words or play nice just to be liked. We'd like to see Ontario's new minister of energy bring a fast dose of that to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) and the province's licensed energy retailers, some of whom seem unable to prevent their commissioned sales agents from committing fraud.

While there's not an epidemic, there is growing concern about forged signatures on electricity contracts. As The Spectator's Joan Walters reported yesterday, fraud squad officers in several police forces have met with the OEB to talk about cracking down on prohibited marketing practices.

There has been a host of complaints about the rush to sign consumers up before the electricity market opens May 1, including homeowners being intimidated or misled, or the price of electricity contracts being misrepresented. The police concern is criminal fraud, in which some unscrupulous sales agents have forged customers' signatures.

Jim Wilson, Stockwell's predecessor in the energy portfolio, tried to get tough in February, telling retailers: "Enough is enough. You have been warned." Being threatened by Wilson appears to have all the drastic consequences of being mauled by a sheep.

A week later, OEB head Floyd Laughren blithely said it was a buyer-beware situation, "like buying a used car" -- you're never really sure what you're getting.

Well, doesn't that inspire consumer and voter confidence?

At that time, the beginning of March, not one electricity retailer had been fined for improper practices, let alone had its licence lifted. In fact, Laughren was dismissive of his board's regulatory power to do that. "How do you cancel a licence when they've got 200,000 or 300,000 customers?" he asked, obviously in a rhetorical tone. That's not showing your teeth -- that's rolling over and playing dead.

The government created this situation by opening the market. The OEB turned it into a mess by not giving homeowners sufficient information from the beginning to be knowledgeable about what they were signing, by not adequately overseeing the marketers, and by not being tough enough on violators. Firing individual agents is meaningless; they would probably start working for a competitor the next day.

The OEB needs to show its teeth. It must be aggressive with retailers and order a province-wide cooling-off period during which customers, regardless of when they signed, can cancel.

And we remain convinced that a standard contract is worth re-examining; if clear information inhibits competition -- which is the Tories' fear -- the competition is bogus to begin with.

The government can't always protect people from their own naiveté or lack of knowledge. But this is a mess on the government's own doorstep: It's up to Minister Stockwell to insist that the OEB clean it up.

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