Public Utilities Act, Bill 187 - 2nd reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Madam Speaker, I'll be pleased to rise and speak to Bill No. 187. I will start by saying that there is nothing in this bill that we disagree with. We feel like it's obviously important for consumers to be protected from price increases. It is obviously egregious that Nova Scotia Power wants an earnings-per-share mechanism that would allow them to pocket over half of all overearnings instead of passing that back to customers. As with many of the things that we have seen in the general rate application, it just doesn't pass the sniff test. You ask anybody, does this make sense? Does it make sense that when you're losing power all the time, when you're paying ever-increasing energy rates, that shareholders should be enriched? The answer would obviously be no.

We also agree that it's a hard pill to swallow that rates that help keep many Nova Scotians in poverty are contributing directly to sizeable executive salaries. It makes sense to curb that practice. We can applaud - I think applaud might be strong, but we can recognize the Liberals for proposing that all executive remuneration be paid by the shareholders.

Lastly, to this bill, keeping rate increases to no more than 2 per cent a year is absolutely reasonable.

If we're opening up the Public Utilities Act, if we're actually talking about what we do with this Act, what we do with our energy system at a time when people are struggling to pay their bills, I also want to point out three measures - and we have discussed these before - that no one in this Chamber has tackled yet, and which would have a tangible impact on energy poverty, which is just a fancy way of saying the ability for people to keep the lights on, to keep their homes warm, and increasingly, they have access to a heat pump or an air conditioner in our changing climate to keep their homes cool.

First of all, I find it disappointing that the other members of this House continue to ignore the clause in the Public Utilities Act that, if changed, would allow the NSUARB or the government to direct Nova Scotia Power to create a universal service program. A universal service program would ensure that no one pays more than 6 per cent of their household income on home energy, that power cannot be disconnected for a failure to pay in those situations, and that efficiency upgrades are targeted directly to these low-income homes.

This is an idea that has been around for a long time. When we proposed it at the Law Amendments Committee, with the support of many experts and community activists who have been working on this for a very long time, the then-Liberal government expressed some interest in looking into it.

Second, in the absence of a universal service program, a quick change that the government could make today is to bring forward legislation prohibiting Nova Scotia Power from disconnecting people's power. Currently, there is a provision where the utility can't disconnect people when it's too cold, but this could be expanded immediately to prohibit disconnections right now, when we are in an unprecedented - in our generation - inflationary crisis. Truly, we know that people are making the decision every month of whether to put gas in their car and food in their fridge or pay the bills. This is a bill that is a necessity. People shouldn't have to make that choice. People are under enormous financial strain, and they should not be threatened with losing electricity to their homes.

Last, I would point out that this bill doesn't address Nova Scotia Power's proposal in the general rate application to double the fixed customer charge. Synapse Energy Economics, an environmental consulting company that regularly consults with the NSUARB, addresses these changes in their submission to the NSUARB on the rate application and strongly recommends against raising these fees. They have done work over the years showing that increasing fixed charges on bills has a disproportionate effect on low-income people, the people who struggle the most to pay those bills. Unlike rates, which are tied to consumption, the fixed customer charge is the same for everyone, and raising that charge creates greater inequality and puts a greater burden on low-income people.

These are the things which I would like to see in this bill which we believe would directly impact people's ability to quite literally keep the lights on.

With a few remaining minutes, I want to make a couple of points about the long-term changes to power regulation that we need in this province. I know that this is a conversation that will continue. The general rate application hearing before the Utility and Review Board is this Fall. We will be back in this Chamber before too long. We will continue to have this conversation.

On the occasion of this bill and to set the table, I want to be clear that what we need is an overhaul of the way in which we regulate energy in this province. Over the last two terms the Liberal government concentrated on keeping power rates low. That's important. It's important the people can afford to pay their power bill. But the past Liberals and the present Liberals continue to avoid the elephant in the room, which is that when you supress rates for a number of years, of course the utility is going to come forward with a request for large increases.

The uncomfortable fact for all of us in this House is that we need to stop politicizing power rates for short-term political gain while ignoring what our regulatory system needs to look like in the long term. This is why we have been talking about performance-based regulation. Nova Scotia Power should get paid for what it does. That is not the way it works right now; that's not the way it will work on the other side of this general rate application unless something dramatic happens. This is something that can happen only through legislative action from the government.

We have proposed legislation and argued over the last year that we need to make a switch to a regulatory system that says: Here is what we want and need from this utility, here are the specific measurable targets that we want the utility to meet. That is not the way it works.

We have suggested that beyond a base amount, the utility only makes a profit when they are meeting or exceeding the targets set forth in regulation. Again, this is what would pass the sniff test. If you ask 10 people on the street, is this how we should be regulating our utility, I suspect that at least nine of them would say yes.

These targets we could set could include transitioning to green energy, decentralizing power generation, increasing reliability, eliminating energy poverty, scaling up efficiency savings, and ensuring a just transition for energy workers.

We can continue to tinker around the edges of cost-of-service regulation, or the government can take the opportunity, to change the game entirely. To be clear, I think that right now we need both: We need immediate action to ensure that people can afford to pay their power bills and we need to change the regulatory structure. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can protect Nova Scotians today through measures like the one in this bill while also building the regulatory system of the future.