Recently, the Ontario Government introduced the second reading
of Bill 27, which is titled Burden Reduction Act, 2016 (Bill 27). This is "omnibus
legislation" that proposes changes to a large number of
statutes with the objective "to reduce the regulatory burden
on business and achieve a cost savings for government." Among
other things, Bill 27 proposes to amend the Ontario
Energy Board Act, 1998 (OEB Act) in a number of ways related to
customer disconnections, deferral and variance account review and
oversight and review of transactions between electricity generators
and transmitters/distributors.
Potentially the most significant aspect of Bill 27 is the inclusion of new provisions of
the OEB Act that would permit the OEB to make Rules
about times of year when gas and electricity distributors cannot
disconnect low-volume consumers. Presumably, this would permit the
OEB to prevent disconnections during the winter heating season,
even where a customer is in arrears.
