AUC creates independent expert committee to help streamline rates decisions. Committee invites stakeholder submissions for report to Commission

The Alberta Utilities Commission has established an independent AUC Procedures and Processes Review Committee to focus on improving the timeliness of its large and complex rates proceedings, announced in Bulletin 2020-17 on May 8, 2020. This independent committee will make recommendations to the chair of the AUC about how process and procedure steps can be made more efficient, or eliminated.

The three committee members are well-respected experts with deep regulatory experience and include C. Kemm Yates, QC, a veteran regulatory lawyer; Queen’s University professor emeritus in administrative law) David J. Mullan; and former long-serving member of the National Energy Board (now the Canada Energy Regulator), Rowland J. Harrison, QC.

The committee will review any submissions already made to the Commission through its previously held stakeholder roundtables aimed at reducing regulatory burden, as well as stakeholder submissions made to the office of the Associate Minister of Red Tape Reduction. The committee will also conduct consultation as it considers appropriat​e, and has invited additional written submissions from stakeholders.

The committee will deliver its report to the chair of the AUC in the fall of 2020, with details of how changes should be implemented. The report will form an important part of the AUC’s next regulatory burden reduction roundtable consultation, through a smaller working group within the larger roundtable membership.

The committee’s report will provide input into the Commission’s next stakeholder engagement, which will first occur through a technical advisory subgroup of the members of the initial October 4, 2019, stakeholder AUC Roundtable on Regulatory Burden Reduction.

In addition, the AUC will redirect these efforts to focus on regulatory lag in rates proceedings based on stakeholder response to Bulletin 2020-02 soliciting input to conduct an industry impact assessment on non-adjudicative regulatory functions for the current fiscal year.