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New Brunswick’s government says the new consumer advocate office it will create will better represent residents and small businesses at the province’s power rate-setting body.
The Liberals on Tuesday tabled a pair of bills that would create an energy sector advocate responsible for investigating customer complaints and protecting their interests at the Energy and Utilities Board.
While the details will be worked out in regulation after the bills receive royal assent, Energy Minister René Legacy said the advocate would have the ability to escalate unresolved concerns from residents and small business owners.
“If there’s non-resolution, they can escalate … and then (the board) can order to have a corrective measure,” Legacy told reporters at the legislature.
The advocate would replace the current public intervener role, who is charged with representing the broad public interest at the energy regulator.
The legislation comes after the government mandated an independent review into the rising rates, aging infrastructure and roughly $6-billion debt of NB Power.
The new office was one of 44 recommendations from the review that the Liberal government said Monday it would immediately work to adopt. Six other proposals were pushed back for “further analysis.”
Progressive Conservative energy critic Kris Austin says the new advocate role won’t do enough to address affordability concerns for New Brunswickers. “I don’t think it’s going to be a good or a bad, I think it’s just gonna be one of these neutral things,” Austin told reporters at the legislature Tuesday.
“But people in New Brunswick don’t want neutral. They say, ‘what are you doing to stabilize rates? What are you doing to lower rates?’”
He also repeated his claim that the most effective way to provide relief on high electricity bills is to lift a long-standing moratorium on natural gas extraction.
The Liberals deferred a recommendation the government examine natural gas production, citing the need for more analysis.
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