October 19, 2021 –
Stewardship Ontario has completed its review of the July 6, 2021, announcement of the proposed sale of the assets of Canadian Stewardship Services Alliance (CSSA) to Resource Recovery Alliance (RRA), a wholly owned subsidiary of GFL Environmental Inc. (the Proposed Acquisition).
In response to the Proposed Acquisition, Stewardship Ontario commissioned a Confidentiality Diagnostic Assessment to confirm CSSA has met its wide-ranging obligations to Stewardship Ontario regarding the protection and use of Stewardship Ontario’s confidential data. The Assessment concluded that CSSA has met its obligations in this regard.
Accordingly, Stewardship Ontario, has obtained agreement from RPRA, the provincial regulator responsible for overseeing Stewardship Ontario and the implementation of the Blue Box Transition Plan, to transfer its services agreement to the new entity, subject to certain conditions. In addition, the review prompted staff to take a close look at Stewardship Ontario’s business processes, which revealed an opportunity for Stewardship Ontario to reduce its operational and transition costs and mitigate steward regulatory compliance costs by developing a new method for setting fees.
Stewardship Ontario has therefore decided to propose a change to the way it sets fees for the period between 2023 and 2025 and eliminate the need for stewards to report supply-to-market data to Stewardship Ontario in future. Fees would instead be based on each stewards’ recent share of total costs. This will not impact fees for the coming year, which will be calculated in the normal manner.
Further details will be provided in a second communication to appear shortly.