OEB To Require That Regulatory Records Be Retained For Six Years

On June 3, 2016, the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) issued a letter prescribing a Mandatory Record Retention Period to be implemented by all regulated entities effective on January 1, 2017. The Policy requires regulatory records to be maintained for a period of at least six years, calculated from the end of the last calendar year to which the record relates. This is a significant change from the current two-year requirement.

As we previously wrote, the OEB had earlier been proposing moving to a 10-year record retention policy. The OEB's January 2016 Notice on this topic provided no explanation about why 10 years of documents were needed to meet the stated goal of ensuring that the OEB has access to the specified types of documents that are "required for regulatory purposes and to discharge its statutory duties."