J.D. Timothy Pinos

The Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation brought a motion to vary an order of a single judge that dismissed its motion to stay a portion of certain Superior Court orders pending its application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion, finding no reviewable error in the single judge's application of the three-part test for a stay, including her conclusion that there was little likelihood of leave being granted and that irreparable harm was not established.

The Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation (OEFC) brought a motion to stay portions of judgments requiring it to pay approximately $160 million in retroactive payments to several non-utility generators, pending its application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion, finding that OEFC failed to establish a serious issue to be adjudicated, as the proposed appeal issues were highly fact-specific and lacked precedential value.

Furthermore, OEFC failed to demonstrate that it would suffer irreparable harm if the stay was not granted.

The appellant, Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation, appealed a decision regarding the calculation of amounts payable to the respondent non-utility generators under long-term power purchase agreements.

The dispute centered on whether a new government regulation reallocating the Global Adjustment Mechanism (GA) altered the calculation of Total Market Costs (TMC) under the agreements.

The application judge found that the new GA calculation was inconsistent with the definition of TMC, which required costs to be allocated pro rata to consumption.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the application judge did not decide the case on an unargued issue, made no palpable and overriding factual errors, and properly interpreted the agreements without improperly implying a term.