20 May The Debate – on the environment

There are several grounds for opposing Darrell Dexter’s promise to cut the HST on home electrical bills.

• It will use taxpayers‘ dollars to give ratepayers the illusion they are protected from higher energy costs, when higher energy costs are a reality Nova Scotians must adjust to.
• It will subsidize our dirtiest form of energy, coal-fired electricity. (Seventy-five percent of our electricity comes from burning coal, the mother of all greenhouse gas sources.)
• It will go indiscriminately to all subscribers. A case can be made for subsidizing the energy costs of our poorest citizens, who have the least capacity to save on energy costs. But why is Dexter so keen on subsidizing the power bills of John Risley, John Bragg, and David Sobey? This is nuts.

More ominously, the NDP’s home electrical subsidy bespeaks a poll-driven policy formation that bodes ill for Nova Scotia. At a time when we are finally witnessing real political leadership in the US, Dexter is showing the opposite: followership. 

Dexter and his advisers are not stupid. They know full well that Nova Scotia desperately needs to get off coal—at least coal burned in conventional power plants, the only kind we are likely to have for the next decade. They even have some good policies toward that goal. They have proposed loan guarantees for wind power developers cold-cocked by the credit crunch. They speak (albeit vaguely) of money for other renewable energy sources. But why subsidize dirty coal burning?

Here’s guessing they have polls and focus groups showing the public loves the idea of getting a break on power bills.

To be fair to Dexter, when he came to the leadership in 2001, he correctly understood that the greatest obstacle to his becoming premier was fear. The notion of an NDP government scared many Nova Scotians. (It still scares some; one reason for uncertainty about the June 9 vote is the possibility that NDP-averse rural mainlanders will desert the Tories for the Liberals.)

So Dexter set out to become the province’s first non-scary leader. He stays calm as a Teddy bear. He’s not shocked and appalled by everything, as one of his predecessors was notoriously prone to be. He successfully reined in the more radical members of his caucus. And he chose his spots carefully. Instead of opposing everything, he picked a handful of issues with broad appeal to middle class voters: Issues like senior care, emergency room closures, and rising power bills.

This approach has brought him to the threshold of the premier’s office. Trouble is, it has also saddled him with crowd-pleasing policies that make no sense.

[More on the emergency room issue in a few days.]