Mesa Power Group, LLC v. Government of Canada, UNCITRAL, PCA Case No. 2012-17, Investor's Reply Memorial and Rejoinder on Jurisdiction (April 30, 2014)
PART ONE: SUMMARY
1. The production of renewable power requires significant amounts of private investment to fund the building of wind facilities and to enable their connection to the transmission grid. With such large scale investments at stake, investors need to be assured that the rule of law is followed and that Power Purchase Agreements are awarded and administered in a fair, non‐arbitrary and transparent manner. The Ontario FIT program was announced in 2009 as a rules‐based transparent competitive process.
2. Mesa Power Group participated in Ontario’s government‐led renewable power FIT program. Mesa sought access to the Ontario transmission grid to be able to qualify for a twenty year long renewable energy Feed‐in Tariff Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for each of four wind generation investment facilities that it owned in Ontario.
3. The complaints raised by the Investor address extraordinary events which include manipulation of the FIT Contract process. This was a process where transparent and relevant criteria such as compliance with the expressed FIT Rules were ignored while wholly irrelevant considerations such as political support for the current Ontario government were considered.
4. Under the NAFTA, Canada must provide Mesa with treatment equal to the best treatment provided to any other investor (or investment) from another NAFTA Party or a Non‐NAFTA Party who is in like circumstances to Mesa. The evidence produced in this arbitration demonstrates that Ontario entered into an arrangement which provided more favourable treatment to investments of Investors from Korea than the treatment provided to Mesa. Similarly, more favourable treatment was provided to investments of Investors from other NAFTA Parties than was provided to Mesa. The NAFTA requires that the best level of treatment in Ontario be provided to the investments owned by Mesa. The circumstances of this more favourable treatment are made even more egregious by the secret and non‐transparent approach taken by Ontario, which kept the exact nature of the preferential treatment secret at the time it was provided and “under wrap” and away from the public until well after this arbitration was commenced.