CAMPUT 2019
Chair Louis Legault is Director, Legal Services, Régie de l’énergie (of Québec).
In chilly Calgary, in May, CAMPUT had its annual conference. CAMPUT was the acronym for the Canadian Association of Members of Public Utility Tribunals. But nobody wanted to say that long name anymore. And the word Tribunals is kinda old-fashioned. So they changed the name of Canada's NARUC to Canada's Energy and Utility Regulators but loyally stuck with the original acronym.
Two of us from the PUF team were there for the regulatory rodeo. Check out interviews with western and northern Canadian regulators.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: What's your job with the Commission Régie de l'énergie?
Louis Legault: I'm general counsel with the Energy Board. I've been with the board for eleven years. Before joining the board, I spent nearly twenty years as an in-house attorney with Hydro-Québec. They are the largest utility in Québec, if not the only electricity utility in Québec.
It's a Crown corporation. I was a litigation lawyer doing mostly litigation work. For a hundred years, we've been trade partners in the energy sector, and Hydro was selling power across the states. But in the nineties, when the markets were open, FERC made a new ruling. FERC said, if you want to access our markets you have to give reciprocity. American generators must be able to transmit on your network as well as you.