Nova Scotia Power wants us to pay for its failures

That’s because the private utility’s more-than-well-compensated executives prioritize shareholders over customers, profits over service. So, Nova Scotia Power Inc. wants its customers — which is to say, us — to foot the remaining $26.4 million “restoration costs” from September 2022’s “unprecedented weather event,” otherwise known as Hurricane Fiona. First, it’s worth noting that we’re already […]

Nova Scotia Power: it’s time to make shareholders pay for utility’s failures

A Nova Scotia Power truck parked on Woodlawn Road in Dartmouth after Fiona, on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. Let’s start with this news item from October 31, 2023: Nova Scotia Power asked regulators for permission to collect $24.6 million in Fiona-related operating costs — like meals, travel and overtime — from ratepayers over an unspecified period of […]

Nova Scotia Power: the Houston government says ‘no option is off the table’

The best option would be to make the private utility public again. But don’t bet that will be on the table. Blame Donnie Cameron. During the early 1990s, Donald William Cameron was an unelected, less than one-term premier of Nova Scotia. In 1991, Cameron replaced disgraced Progressive Conservative Premier John Buchanan, who abruptly quit in […]

Nova Scotia Power: changing standards to match declining performance

Our power company hasn’t met regulator-required customer service and reliability standards for the past four years. Instead of improving its performance, NSP wants to change the standards by which it is judged. Nova Scotia Power has failed to meet regulator mandated customer service and reliability standards for four years in a row. One. After. The. […]

Nova Scotia Power is reporting its first outage of the morning… and other tales we shouldn’t hear

I woke up one recent morning and flipped on the radio. “Nova Scotia Power is reporting its first outage of the morning,” the newscaster began. It was not a storm day. Or the day after. Or even the day after that. We were in the middle of a brief winter storm interregnum. Skies were clear. […]

Don’t trust Nova Scotia Power to fix what ails it

So there were these trees, see. And, it being July, these trees had leaves. Leafy leaves. And, this being Nova Scotia, there was a storm. Which meant rain that made the leaves wet. And wind that blew the wet leaves, so some of those trees fell down. around So — this still being Nova Scotia […]

Nova Scotia Power, Arthur and the review: the unasked questions

Last week, the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board laid out the parameters of the first phase of its planned review of Nova Scotia Power’s “state of preparedness and response” to hurricane-turned-post-tropical storm Arthur. While the review is welcome, it is also clear the scope of at least this phase of the review, its tight […]

It’s time to write -30- and thank you for the privilege

Our columnist says he’s had a great run, and some days he wants to continue doing this forever. But it’s time. For more years than I care to count, I have been professionally — and often personally — “shocked and appalled” on a regular basis about the goings on going on in our world. Luckily, […]

Nicole Gnazdowsky’s search for answers continues

Nicole Gnazdowsky is frustrated. She has every reason to be. Three years after the fact, she is still waiting for answers about why her brother died in a workplace accident. Despite her best, exhaustive, exhausting efforts — which finally did lead to the courtroom this fall — she’s still not sure she’ll ever get the […]

Premier on power rate hikes… the sounds of silence

For me, it was the silence that spoke most loudly last week. On Thursday, the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board “approved significant rate increases for customers of the province’s monopoly power company, in apparent defiance of the provincial government,” as Globe and Mail reporter Matthew McClearn put it. Defiance… You will remember — how […]