AUC creates independent expert committee to help streamline rates decisions. Committee invites stakeholder submissions for report to Commission
May 8, 2020
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 appropriate, 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.
