Bill 150 explained in plain English
Energy Referendum Act, 2015
Ontario legislature bill summary, status, timeline, sponsor, votes, and official sources.
At a glance
Official Legislative Assembly of Ontario snapshot for 41st Parliament, 1st Session. Representative vote breakdowns appear when the Assembly publishes an Ayes and Nays page for the bill.
Our plain-language take, written for civic education.
Source: By PoliticalData.ca
Bill 150, the Energy Referendum Act, 2015, would enable local municipalities in Ontario to hold referendums regarding the acceptance of large-scale renewable energy projects.
This bill proposes to amend the Electricity Act, 1998, to allow local municipalities to hold referendums on whether they are willing to permit large-scale renewable energy projects within their boundaries. If a municipality holds such a referendum, the outcome will determine whether new projects can proceed.
- Allows the council of a local municipality to hold a referendum at any time to decide if it is willing to permit large-scale renewable energy projects within its boundaries.
- Requires a local municipality to hold a referendum before considering a large-scale renewable energy project if one has not already been held.
- States that if a referendum result indicates the municipality is willing to permit these projects, future projects can proceed as usual.
- States that if a referendum result indicates the municipality is not willing to permit these projects, future projects cannot be accepted and no work or development related to them can take place.
- Allows a local municipality that has held a referendum to hold subsequent referendums at any time to change the previous result.
- Empowers the Lieutenant Governor in Council to make regulations governing these referendums.
- Local municipalities in Ontario
- Councils of local municipalities
- Developers of large-scale renewable energy projects
- Residents of local municipalities
- Local municipalities have the right to hold referendums on large-scale renewable energy projects.
- Local municipalities have an obligation to hold a referendum before considering a project if none has been held.
- The Lieutenant Governor in Council has the power to make regulations regarding referendums.
- The Act comes into force on a day named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor.
- If a municipality indicates it is not willing to permit large-scale renewable energy projects, it 'shall not permit any work or development on any such project to take place in the local municipality'.
- The specific details of how the referendums will be conducted are not provided in the bill text and will be governed by regulations.
- The definition of 'large-scale renewable energy project' is based on projects permitted under the feed-in tariff program developed by the IESO, excluding the microFIT Program.
- The bill does not specify the minimum size or type of renewable energy projects that would be considered 'large-scale'.
Adds a new section (25.35.1) to allow local municipalities to hold referendums on large-scale renewable energy projects.
Source: Section 1
Defines 'local municipality' by referring to its definition in this Act.
Source: Section 25.35.1 (1)
Generated using AI from official bill text. Not legal advice. It is written by PoliticalData.ca for civic education, automatically checked and spot-reviewed before publishing.
Official textProcess Snapshot
Vote Summary
This bill is still active. We only show vote counts after the legislature publishes a recorded division.
No published representative vote breakdown
This bill is still moving through the process. When a recorded division is published, representative positions can be listed here.
Official sources
Status, sponsor, votes, and timeline on this page are drawn from these official legislative sources and public records. Each summary above is attributed to its own source.
How this data is sourced