On March 26, 2026, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) held their fourth and potentially last engagement session regarding their much anticipated long lead time request for proposals (the LLT RFP). The webinar follows the release by the IESO of their draft RFP document and draft LLT contract (the LLT Contract) for both the energy streams and the capacity streams (long duration storage) on February 27, 2026.

Welcome to the March edition of the Political Law Playbook. This month’s federal coverage highlights a former congressman’s high-profile FARA trial, record-breaking Super PAC spending at this point in the 2026 midterm elections, and a former lobbyist’s guilty plea to embezzling $1 million from a trade association PAC.

On March 19, 2026, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued an order (the “Order”) in Flowers Title Companies, LLC v. Bessent, et al., vacating the Federal Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) Residential Real Estate Rule (the “Rule”).

Canada: The recent decision in United States v. Heppner offers an early judicial warning for litigants using public generative AI tools in active matters: a litigant’s conversations about litigation with a publicly available generative AI tool may not be protected by privilege. In what the court described as a new legal issue, the Southern District of New York held that a criminal defendant’s exchanges with Anthropic’s Claude were protected by neither attorney-client privilege nor the work product doctrine.

Global law firm Dentons has advised the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on a loan facility of up to €100 million to entities owned by American businessman and philanthropist Dell Loy Hansen and supported by the Hansen Ukrainian Mission (HUM) to develop a scalable affordable housing platform in Ukraine.

Vietnam: Vietnam has officially created its first International Financial Centre (the “Centre”), split between Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, under a “one Centre, two locations” model. The goal is to attract international capital, talent, and new types of financial and commodities trading into Vietnam through a more flexible, business‑friendly framework than the rest of the country by way a number of measures including strong tax incentives, simplified market entry and operations, a favourable HR and immigration regime and flexible foreign exchange and capital flows.

Dentons advised PNE Group, a leading German renewables developer and wind power producer, on the sale of a wind farm project located in southwest Poland to a major global energy player.

France: Using Easter as a pretext to call colleagues cloches (“bells,” but also, colloquially, “idiots”) is unfortunately more common than one might think. In 2019, the Orléans Court of Appeal referred to a bailiff’s report establishing that an employee accused of moral harassment had sent the following text message to a colleague on Easter Sunday, together with a drawing of a chocolate rabbit: “If you want Easter eggs, don’t forget to send an email to one or more cloches… For me, job done!!!”

United Kingdom: The decarbonisation of public sector buildings has been on the UK government's agenda for a number of years, with the built environment representing a substantial portion of the UK's carbon footprint and the reduction of that portion being key to meeting net zero and other environmental targets.