NDP calls for ownership and regulatory review of Nova Scotia Power

NDP Leader Claudia Chender is calling on the premier — who recently appointed himself energy minister — to launch an ownership and regulatory review of Nova Scotia Power.

Claudia Chender made the request in a letter to Premier Tim Houston on Monday.

“We have a utility that is not performing in any of the ways we measure performance,” she said in an interview.

“And now we have a premier who has appointed himself the energy minister and has promptly taken himself on the road. What we need is an energy minister who’s going to prioritize power affordability for Nova Scotians.”

Houston has recently made trips to Alberta, the United States and Europe, all to promote energy generation opportunities in the province, including onshore and offshore wind and natural gas, as a means of spurring economic development.

But Chender said those promotional efforts are happening at the same time as Nova Scotia Power customers are seeing their bills increase and the utility continues to deal with the fallout of a massive data breach this year that resulted in the theft of personal information of hundreds of thousands of people.

Her letter to Houston says Nova Scotians are paying on average $400 a year more for their electricity since the PCs formed government in 2021.

“What we need to do is understand how that could be better. I think that’s government’s job, is to figure out how we can deliver these services in the best way possible.”

Chender’s party has advocated for a low-income power rate and a one-time rebate of 10 per cent for all customers as ways to help soften the blow of increased costs.

Adam Fremeth, the E.J. Kernaghan Chair in Energy Policy at Western University’s Ivey Business School, said governments across the country have moved away from utility ownership.

“It tends to go in the other direction, that there’s efforts to bring private capital into the investment of these types of utilities to allow them to have more flexibility and have a bit more discipline,” he said in an interview.

“Private directors and those with know-how in these areas tend to bring a lot more discipline to management and how these organizations are run.”

Putting aside the massive cost that would go into making Nova Scotia Power a public utility again, Fremeth said there are other aspects that would make it a complicated transaction.

He said studies have shown that governments tend not to be as efficient when it comes to running electric utilities and they tend only to step in if the private market is unable to resolve or fix problems.