Enough Theatre. Fix the System.

If Tim Houston believes the Nova Scotia Energy Board got it wrong, then as Premier and Energy Minister he needs to stop performing outrage and start using power.

Nova Scotians are being asked, once again, to swallow a message that has become almost insulting in its familiarity: yes, the decision is terrible; yes, the public has every right to be angry; yes, the system failed you; but no, nobody in power will actually stop it.

That is the core of the problem.

On October 21, 2025, Tim Houston took over as Nova Scotia’s Minister of Energy while remaining Premier. That is not a symbolic detail. It means the head of government is also the minister directly responsible for the energy file. He is not a bystander. He is not a commentator. He is not some unfortunate spectator watching events unfold from the cheap seats. He is the man sitting in the chair with the title, the authority, and the responsibility.

So when the Premier condemns the latest decision by the Nova Scotia Energy Board, Nova Scotians are entitled to ask a very simple question: if this is so wrong, why does the system keep producing the same result?

Because this did not happen in a vacuum.

The current Nova Scotia Energy Board came into being as part of the province’s regulatory restructuring, replacing the old Utility and Review Board on April 1, 2025. The province itself announced the appointments that filled out the new board, and the province stated plainly that the new board would have authority over energy utilities, including service reliability, energy efficiency, conservation and rates. Those appointments are for terms of up to 10 years.

And the board’s own appointment page says its members are appointed like Provincial Court judges, with the Governor in Council holding the power to declare a member’s office vacant in certain circumstances. In other words, the board is independent in its adjudicative function, but it is not some mystical institution that descended from the heavens untouched by government design. The government created the system, staffs the system, defines the statutory framework, and then acts shocked when the system behaves exactly as it was built to behave.

That is why the Premier’s outrage rings hollow.

Because the record is not one isolated rate decision. The record is a pattern.

In the major general rate decision issued in early 2023, the board approved average rate increases of 6.9 percent in 2023 and 6.9 percent again in 2024. The decision explicitly says those increases were “reasonable and appropriate.” It also approved a structure that contemplated annual fuel-adjustment riders in 2024 and 2025 to recover under-recovered fuel costs.

Then, in April 2024, the board approved Nova Scotia Power’s 2024 Fuel Adjustment Mechanism rider. The board’s decision says this added an average 1.1 percent increase on top of the previously approved average increase of 6.7 percent for 2024. It also noted that, absent the proposed approach, recovering the outstanding fuel costs in one year would have meant an average 20.9 percent increase.

Then, in February 2025, the board approved the 2025 FAM AA/BA Rider, which the decision says reflected an approximate 2.4 percent overall average increase for residential customers tied to the Maritime Link supplemental assessment.

And on March 25, 2026, Nova Scotia Power announced that the Nova Scotia Energy Board had approved its 2026–2027 general rate application with amendments, with revised rates to be confirmed in a compliance filing. Nova Scotia Power’s own filing page says the request had been for residential increases of 3.8 percent in 2026 and 4.1 percent in 2027.

So if someone asks how many times the board has allowed increases for Nova Scotia Power in recent years, the honest answer is this: at a minimum, the public can point to the major 2023–2024 general rate increases, the 2024 fuel rider increase, the 2025 fuel rider increase, and the new 2026–2027 rate application approval. And if you start counting every rider, every cost-recovery mechanism, every deferral, and every approval that ultimately feeds future charges, the number climbs further.

This is the point at which the usual defenders of the system step in and say: Well, the board has to follow the law.

Fine. Let’s talk about that.

The board itself said in the 2023 general rate decision that its regulatory power under the Public Utilities Act “is not an instrument of social policy,” and that it “cannot simply disallow NS Power’s reasonable costs to make rates more affordable.” In the same decision, the board also quoted the legal requirement that a public utility furnish service and facilities that are “reasonably safe and adequate and in all respects just and reasonable.”

That matters for two reasons.

First, it shows that the board has been operating inside a legal and regulatory framework that heavily protects cost recovery for the utility. Second, it destroys the Premier’s favourite escape hatch. Because if the law is structured in a way that keeps leading back to the same outcome, then the answer is not another performative press release. The answer is legislative and structural change.

And the government knows this.

In that same 2023 decision, the board laid out the impact of Bill 212, the Houston government’s own legislation. The law limited certain net rate increases to 1.8 percent, but excluded fuel and purchased power as well as demand-side management from that limit. The board noted those exclusions directly. In plain English, the public was sold a cap with loopholes big enough to drive a power plant through.

So no, the Premier does not get to posture as though this happened to him.

He is not some citizen posting angry comments on Facebook. He is the Premier. He is the Energy Minister. His government restructured the board. His government appoints the members. His government writes the laws. His government created the rules under which these decisions are made.

And all of this is unfolding after Nova Scotia Power’s cyber incident, which the company says involved a sophisticated foreign threat actor, theft of customer personal information, and severe disruption to key business systems. Nova Scotia Power says the attack was discovered on April 25, 2025, and that it disrupted billing experiences. The company has also acknowledged that personal information belonging to both current and former customers was taken.

That is the backdrop.

A utility that has asked customers for patience, forgiveness, and more money while those same customers have endured data exposure, billing confusion, trust collapse, and endless lectures about why every new burden is somehow necessary.

At some point, “necessary” starts sounding like a racket.

And the Energy Board has not helped itself. In the 2023 general rate decision, the board approved a storm rider allowing the recovery of “all reasonable costs” related to Level 3 and Level 4 storms. In a later 2024 decision on Hurricane Fiona operating, maintenance, and general costs, the board allowed recovery of approximately $24.6 million in Fiona-related costs, though it did refuse to let shareholders earn an equity return on that deferral and confirmed that earlier carrying costs would remain with shareholders.

That is exactly the kind of thing that enrages ordinary people. Not because Nova Scotians are unreasonable, but because they can see where the burden keeps landing. Every time there is another mechanism, another rider, another recovery tool, another financial smoothing exercise, the practical effect is the same: the public gets billed, the utility gets protected, and the government says its hands are tied.

Enough.

If Tim Houston truly believes this board is out of touch, then he needs to act like the Premier and Energy Minister, not like a man auditioning to become the province’s loudest caller to an open-line show.

He should begin by telling Nova Scotians exactly what legislative changes he will introduce to prevent this cycle from repeating. He should explain whether he intends to tighten the rules around rate recovery, storm-cost pass-throughs, and deferred balances. He should explain what accountability standard he believes should apply when a utility has suffered a major cyber incident, disrupted billing, and then returns for more from the same captive rate base. He should explain whether the province intends to revisit how board members are appointed, how affordability is weighed, and how reliability failures are measured against shareholder protection.

Because what Nova Scotians are watching right now is not leadership. It is a theatre.

The government says the board is independent. The board says the law limits what it can do. Nova Scotia Power says the costs are necessary. And the public is left holding the bill.

That is not accountability. That is a shell game.

And here is the part no one in power should miss: the anger is no longer just about one rate hike.

It is about the accumulated insult of being told, over and over again, that there is always money for cost recovery, always a rationale for another mechanism, always an excuse for another increase, and never a meaningful moment when the people paying the bills come first.

If Tim Houston wants to convince Nova Scotians he means what he says, then the next move cannot be another statement.

It has to be action.

Not vague promises about future competition. Not another round of carefully worded disappointment. Not another public performance in which the government condemns the consequences of the very system it built.

Action.

Because if the Premier and the Energy Minister are the same man, then the age of pretending somebody else is in charge should be over.