Bill No. 145 - Electricity Act - 3rd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to stand and speak briefly to this bill one last time. This bill is good news for solar and it's good news for Nova Scotia in terms of our path to net zero and so we're very pleased to see this swift action on solar.

As I said on second reading, I think ideally this could have been done in a slightly less panic-inducing way so that the industry didn't first feel like it was going to have its legs knocked out from under it. I think the result is really positive. Of course, we'll be watching to see how the changes to net metering impact the whole energy ecosystem over time.

I would be remiss if I didn't remind the House that this was one of the bills that was presented as a response to the general rate application from Nova Scotia Power. So while it does address the solar issue - which is no longer, as we understand it, in that general rate application, which is great - once again, it does not address rates, and it does not address bills. It does not have any impact on the price that Nova Scotians pay for their power, which is steadily rising, and there's a plan that it will rise another 10 per cent in the next couple of years.

We did attempt to amend this bill. It was a simple amendment, not dissimilar from a couple of others we've seen even tonight, which was to ask that the regulatory powers in this bill - which are quite broad and once rested with the UARB but now have come into the fold of government and of the department - be subject to consultation. I think that's really important. I think that in this case the net effect of taking those powers in-house, as it were, is positive because it protects the solar industry. It's also now subject to politics in a way that ideally it might not have been under the purview of the UARB.

While we accept the decision to do that, and we support it, we think that a good counterbalance to putting that once-independent set of things into the government's basket as opposed to the regulator's is to have consultation so that there is an understanding of the impact of these regulations when they're made. That amendment was defeated. We hope that the minister and the department will continue to consider the importance of public consultation and expert input, frankly, on provisions such as this. With those caveats we are in support.