I wonder how our fearless Utilities Board will justify it when they slap this one on our bills. Maybe they won't. Customers might finally get a win this round. Maybe they've worked things out so that Emera takes a hit on this decision. At least a small one, which they can try to share with the union. After all, there are more important decisions for them to win in the near future, and even they must realize that they shouldn't be seen as having things go their way every single time.
I wonder what our Premier thinks. Think he might stand up in the Legislature to endorse the customers' position for a change? If he does, is that a good or a bad sign?
I wonder how we are any better off with this utility in private hands. We still own the problems, even if we don't own the assets. We just don't see the dividend cheque.

Either stupid or naive because I can't understand why we should be expected to pay even 1 thin dime toward these pensions. This is a private company, not a government branch or crown corporation. Pensions are a standard cost of doing business, if you offer one. Our power bills shouldn't be your money tree. As we hear of more and more proposed increases I wonder just what the conservatives really gave away when they sold NSPC! Did they give them a blank cheque so that they never have to pay for any of the costs of owning and running a company? All the more reason to open up the creation and distribution of power to anyone who wants to come here to do it! If it ever comes to pass, I'll be moving to ANY other company who can provide my power needs!

Want to save money and reduce costs?
Simple, import electricity from Québec.
They have a large surplus of electricity, according to French CBC yesterday, they are selling as low as 4 to 5 cents per kilowatt. Its green electricity, we could shut down all our coal or oil fired plants which according to each request for a raise by NSP, are expensive to operate. Wind energy is 10 cents or more per kilowatt to produce.
This initiative would also permit Nova Scotia to meet its green house emission reduction target.
The savings would permit NSP to pay for the transportation line from Quebec and down the road, not have to continue raise rates expotentially like they are doing all the time.
Also, we would not need to invest billions into the Muskrat power project.
The worry with this idea is that it makes complete sense and we well know how corporations react to common sense for the benefit of a clientele that is at their mercy.
Mr. Premier, your cabinet should look into this. See, NSP has the monopoly because they produce the electricity. If the electricity was delivered at our door step, then they would loose the production monopoly and would have to negotiate for distribution rights. If negotiation fail, then we only have to buy back the distribution system from them or build our own. Bye bye EMERA...

"NSPI says it has tried to reduce these costs, but its unions would resist contributing more and likely demand offsetting concessions anyway"

gives me the impression that NSP has not even consulted with their unions on this issue!They merely bellied up to the URB trough and expected the incresaes that comrade Dexter has been handing out so freely over his diasterous time in office. Regardless, this is an issue for NSP's management and union to work out through increased contributions by both parties. They should not expect the public to subsidize their pensions / obligations. You can be darn sure that if their was a surplus in their plan, they would not be rebating it to the public in return for gouging everyone on their power bills!

will cry about pensions for employees but rationalize away huge salaries and benefits and parties for the big boys. The rich get richer - gotta love private industry. Thank you Donald Cameron.

As a former NewPage employee with 30 years experience, who will be definately leaving NS permanently for Alberta, we've been told by Darrel Dexter that the Province will not do anything for our pension plans which are underfunded by $140 million dollars (approximately 40% under-funded). In his words, the Province is not responsible for private pension plans. Well then, I thought NSP has been privatized for a number of years. So, why would NSP now expect electricity paying customers to pay extra to help fund the pension plan, and in fact why has the URB been allowing this to happen ever since NSP was privatized. It seems that NSP wants the best of both worlds.

And when I was employed with Newpage, we had a defined benefit pension plan up until the last year or year and a half when the HR manager took it upon himself, as part of his 10 year policy of raping and pillaging of employee benefits, to notify us that the DB pension plans were a thing of the past and that the industry standard was now defined contribution pension plans, and that everyone without exception (well most liley not the senior management) would have to switch over to defined contribution pension plan...and if we didn't like it, we were welcome to seek emplyment elsewhere. This being the case, why doesn't NSP do the same thing to their employee pension plans and tell their employees the very same thing...you're welcome to leave if you don't like it.

If the URB and Darrel Dexter allow the proposed 3-4% electricity price hikes for the next 2 years to help top up the NSP pension plan, then I expect the provincial government to top up all private pension plans in the province including my pension plan at NewPage. What's the difference between the government and URB allowing rate hikes to top up the private pnsion plan for NSP and the government topping up private pension plans for NewPage and all other private companies in NS....there is absolutely no difference...nothing!

Some excellent comments here:

"I wonder just what the conservatives really gave away when they sold NSPC! Did they give them a blank cheque so that they never have to pay for any of the costs of owning and running a company?"

"You can be darn sure that if [there] was a surplus in their plan, they would not be rebating it to the public in return for gouging everyone on their power bills!"

One can only hope that the URB and the provincial government are hearing the groundswell of opposition to ongoing power increases.

First off, don't let NSPI get its way. This is a Utility and Review Board hearing, not an NSPI hearing. Somebody has to be in control, so let it be the host.
Now, don't limit the talks to proposed rate hikes, go back and take a look at past hikes.
NSPI raises its rates and their yearly profits increase. Big surprise! They take that to be a sign that management is doing a good job and reward them with a bonus, which obviously comes out of those increased profits. The UARB must know there is something wrong with that rob-and-reward system (the larger the spoils the larger the shares) and should do something about it.
NSPI raises its rates to cover storm damage costs. A delivery truck driver doesn't charge more because his truck needed new tires and a carpenter doesn't raise his rates because his old saw had to be sharpened, so let NSPI cover their own business expenses. Or, at the very least, make them buy (out of their own profits) storm damage insurance.
And finally, don't freely accept as truth anything offered by Emera related to bonuses. With 57% of Emera's profits coming from NSPI, 57% of their bonuses are coming from that same fund and that fund is supplied only by the ratepayers.
WE pay the UARB to watch out for OUR interests. I don't think it's unreasonable for us to expect them to do just that.

How did all the top brass deserve their fat bonus cheques for the last several years, this shortfall did not happen yesterday. I guess for that kind of money, they are are really up on everything. Or it's just as easy to ask for an increase that they will probably get...

The reason NSP's pension fund has a shortfall is because they axed too many positions to save money to stuff into the executives' pockets. They cut back on essential personnel so far that a lot less was being made in pension fund contributions than was being paid out. They chose to call people back that retired and took the early retirement. These people did not make contributions because they were drawing the pension. As far as I'm concerned, they can go after the executive to pay back some of the money that they were overpaid by a monopoly that was financially well guarded by the government(s). Now they are going to tax us for it? Disgusting.

If you have a defined benefit plan you have to pay through the nose for it and the investments are very conservative.

This is a red flag. Overly generous management packages, workplace reductions, things like that are other warning flags.

Right now NSP is asking the URB to let them milk customers to cover their bad investments or anticipated loss from what should be a very conservative plan. This type of thing always seems to end with the taxpayer being asked to assume the pension liability left by the now vanished employer.

Perhaps that was the game plan all along. Borrow the cow, milk her, sell while the selling is good, walk away.

NSP also funnels their profits to Emera so that Emera can invest in companies outside of Nova Scotia. In fact, within the last 2 months, the Emera and NSP fat-cats were throwing a lavish party to celebrate record 1st quarter profits. Perhaps some of those profits should have been used to address their employee pension plan shortfall instead of their usual policy of raping electricity paying customers with annual and bi-annual rate increases to cover pnsion plan short-falls.

Aren't we fortunate, to get all the expenses of NSPI, but none of the benefits. Take the telephone route. Competition sure lowered the phone rates. Switch to buying most/all power from QUEBEC HYDRO. Have competition come in and handle the lines. KICK OUT NSPI, COMPLETELY. Their rate requests will continue forever. That is their game plan, and why not, considering that the URB, doesn't know how to say NO to them.

Wait a minute here...where did the shortfall originate from....the shareholders hauled their coin out of here every year....the salaries employess must have made their contribution...somebody goofed countin the beans....why must the ratepayer make sure th ereturn is stable and we will pick up and repair the deficit...I mean come on...I am paying for power generation and delivery ..not to mend a pension in a private industry...

contributions moratorium/decrease during the market bubble of 2000-2008 in place? Was the union and company assured by their money managers that the growth of the existing pool of contributions was adequate to ensure future payouts without the burden of additional employee contributions?

If so, the chickens have now come home to roost. So while senior management has no doubt ensured a very soft, feathered nest for the rulers of the flock, the fox is in the henhouse for the rest of the proles in the company.

Will we be told that the price of eggs must rise to build a fence around the coop, while the grower prices a new Lexus for the rooster? Here's a suggestion, drive last year's car and pay for your own damn fence.

The Mafia would not have conspired to design a business model like NSP's - they'd never believe they could get away with it.

How can they be allowed to make us pay for their pensions after the money they made? Emera should be topping it up, not us. A lot of people have lost their jobs because of businesses closing and such and some can't even afford to pay their power bills now. Some have had their power cut off and some of these people just making enough money to feed their kids, or seniors who don't have these big pensions.

I know one family who are living on 900.00 a month. What will they do when winter comes? There is no jobs for some of these people. The head of this family has put in about 15 resumes all over Nova Scotia but no job yet. Everyone can't move to Alberta. It cost a lot of money to move for one thing and housing there is terribly high. I worry for these people financially and mentally. The person who has put in all these resumes has four years of college to work for the mentally challenged, but I think she should go and work for our government because they are all mentally challended themselves. She would have a full time job there. They were told when they took this education that there would be plenty work in Nova Scotia for this training, but so far nothing. In fact they had let the people go in some institutions and hospitals and made the RNs work there who by the way are not trained for this and most don't want to work in this line of work. The trained people who were fired from their jobs ar now out there looking for work along with all the new ones coming out of college to get jobs in this line of work. Young people who are not married with kids or do not have kids and are not a single parent can move easy to other provinces but not so easy for others that do have family. This government sure knows how to screw things up. I say give them the idiots reward for it.

Here you have it, one of the advantages of NSP being a private concern. Provincial taxpayers have no responsibility to their pension funds.
But the other thing is the way the supposed shortfall has been calculated, assuming the editor has the correct wording "calculated by discounting future liabilities to today’s values and comparing them with the market value of assets" So what about the future contributions and earnings(interest and dividends), which would go into the fund, if they are not put on the plus side of the ledger then you show a substantially worse condition than what will actually happen. On top of that the markets hve recovered substantially from their lows.
This fund may not be in any trouble at all.

Ante up for the downtrodden N.S.P.I. pension fund, ante up for the poor slobs at Efficiency N.S. upwards of $140,000.00 per annum for some I am told, just add it to my power bill, no problem, the problems start when I can't pay the sucker, but then again no one ever thinks of that-do they?

NSP customers should pay absolutely nothing. People are sacrificing quality of life items to pay their power bills. The NS Utility Review Board should step in and say enough is enough. NSP, your not gouging your customers anymore. The Utilities Review Board is a waste of the tax payer money. NSP always asks for more than they want, then the Utilities Review Board agrees on what NSP is really after. And they can't see that! Maybe there actually working for NSP, their certainly not working on behalf of the consumer...

Seriously, this liability can be removed, surgically if necessary, from their market capitalization. It's a liability exactly as any other debt, and *should* be reflected in the stock price. But only if the NS URB has the fortitude to tell them 'No.'.

Their market capitalization has skyrocketed in recent years because of overly generous rate hikes at NSP and 4% per year corporate dividends just can't keep up with their stupidly generou 9.6% profit.. There's plenty of room to insert a wee little bit of bad news for the stock holders.

Other companies I'm familiar with have the same pension problems. They've imposed strict wage freezes FOR YEARS and have cut back everything to the point of pain. Due to the legal requirement for pension top up payments, it's a real struggle. Not the time to build a new headquarters and take home vast compensation packages.

agree with you here dave...but gosh darn I went in the house and put my glasses on and geez...I still couldn't see CO2!!! Seems it's invisable and doesn't smell either!! So I wouldn't trust your glasses!!!...good news is ,,,you don't need a test ...yah flunked that science one.

give them DC, 5%, thats better then most ratepayers get.