Delayed N.B. Power rate request promoted as a government achievement by PC Party
CBC
New Brunswick's Progressive Conservative Party is applauding the possibility N.B. Power may not be able to raise electricity rates as planned on April 1 even though that may cost the utility $32.6 million in revenue it needs to reach financial targets set for it by the Progressive Conservative government.
"Who would you rather see get the $32.6M? N.B. Power? Or N.B. Families?" the PC party posted on its social media platforms Tuesday about the potential for a delayed rate increase.
N.B. Power has applied for a 9.25 per cent increase that it says it needs to begin on April 1, but a hearing by the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board into that request isn't scheduled to start until mid-May because it was submitted more than 10 weeks late.
That, N.B. Power fears, could push a decision on new rates from the EUB out until July 1, which its lawyer John Furey has said the utility cannot afford.
"Even in the most optimistic scenario in which the board is able to render a partial decision which enables the implementation of rates by July 1, 2024, N.B. Power will sustain a negative net impact of $32.636 million," Furey wrote in a submission to the EUB last week.
N.B. Power was operating under a directive from the EUB to file for new rates by Oct. 4 to allow for the submission of evidence for and against the proposal, a full hearing on that collected evidence and a decision, prior to April 1.
However, on Sept. 25, nine days before that October filing deadline, Premier Blaine Higgs signed a cabinet order extending debt targets N.B. Power has to meet by two years, from March 2027 to March 2029.
That significantly lowered the amount of money the utility would need for immediate debt reduction in the coming year and it upended five months of budgeting at N.B. Power which then had to be reconstructed.
Eventually the rate request was filed on Dec. 15, 72 days late.
"The entire GRA (general rate application) filing package, which was largely complete as of September 27, 2023, when the directive was received, must be updated and/or revised to reflect that directive," N.B. Power's chief financial officer Darren Murphy said in an affidavit explaining the delay to the board.
In its social media posts Tuesday the PC party credited Premier Blaine Higgs personally for causing the delay in N.B. Power's application and putting its April 1 increase in jeopardy.
Premier Blaine Higgs "and the PCNB Government helped save ratepayers from at least some of N.B. Power's massive planned hike," it wrote.
Prominent PC candidate in the riding of Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins Faytene Grasseschi amplified the post on her own platforms and suggested that forcing a delay in N.B. Power's application had been done by the premier and cabinet on purpose.
"The provincial (PCNB) government chose families," wrote Grasseschi.
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