Bill No. 212 - Public Utilities Act - 3rd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : I want to rise briefly on this bill and say a few words. I think most has been said, but I was struck by the minister's introduction of this bill. In the introduction to the bill, the minister noted that he wanted to stop the vicious cycle that we're in. The vicious cycle is that we're paying more and more for power, but the nature of a cycle is that it needs a systemic intervention to break it.

This bill is exactly the opposite. It's an eleventh hour reactive band-aid that will provide some measure of relief for Nova Scotians. I want to be clear that that's really important because that's what we have talked about all session. That's what we spend all of our days doing, looking for some measure of relief for Nova Scotians because they certainly need it. The change in this bill is not the change that is required. It is maybe necessary. It is not at all sufficient.

Mr. Speaker, we have been putting forward solutions for months and months and months and months, since this government took office, of how this government could in fact stop this vicious cycle. They have fallen on deaf ears. It's not just us - in the Law Amendments Committee, in editorials, yesterday at the pub where Sue and I had lunch - experts have presented information to us that is really germane to this about different models of regulation.

These are things that are pretty boring to 99 per cent of people but that are really, really important for our government to pay attention to: energy regulation, rate design, efficiency, the systemic interventions we need to make so that Nova Scotians know that they can afford their power bills. As we discussed earlier in Question Period, there are a lot of Nova Scotians right now who do not know whether their homes will be warm this Winter. That is a terrifying thing to contemplate.

Mr. Speaker, the other note that I want to make based on the way in which this bill was presented - I want to refute the idea that this government respects the role of the UARB. We're at the end of a hearing of an independent body. The government said themselves, we are going to intervene. I was there when the government intervened. They didn't say much. So they intervened.

They stood up here day after day after day and said we need the independent process to go forward, we need to understand what the regulators are going to do, Nova Scotians need to have their say - and then they cut the legs right out from under it. It is likely that, given the parameters that they had to make a decision, that the decision that the UARB made on the rate increase would have been unsatisfactory. It would have been a rate increase that Nova Scotians could not afford. There may have been action required at that point if it hadn't been taken already.

I reluctantly need to say again that while this reduction is something, it won't be enough for many. People's power bills are still going to skyrocket because of the cost of fuel. We still haven't seen an indexing of the heating assistance rebate programs that would allow people to accommodate this increase. We haven't seen the introduction of a low-income power program which would allow people to afford power regardless of their income.

This bill may be too little, too late. It may provide some measure of comfort to some people, but it's not enough and it's not the right kind of intervention we need to break the cycle.