Ottawa awaits N.S. on affordable heating rollout
The federal Environment and Climate Change Department is awaiting a plan from the Nova Scotia government on how it will roll out the province's $60.5-million share of a federal fund to make home heating more affordable for families.
“We’re working hard to get some of the money out the door as soon as possible to help Nova Scotians with home heating, in transitioning to more affordable, cleaner home heating, to get off oil, obviously,” said Oliver Anderson, communications director with the federal department.
“They (Nova Scotia) know all the terms but we haven’t received even just a draft proposal or an idea of how they want to roll it out,” Anderson said. “That may be understandable, they may still be working it out but if we are keen on getting something together even before this fiscal year ends we would want to get something back from them within the coming few weeks.”
The federal announcement by Minister Steven Guilbeault last month said the $250 million in funding over four years is intended to help homeowners who currently use home heating oil move to more affordable and greener home heating sources, like electric heat pumps.
Such a switch has the potential to save Canadian homeowners thousands of dollars per year in heating bills, the minister said in the announcement.
Approximately $120 million of the overall funding will go to Atlantic Canada, where using oil for home heating is much more common. Of that $120 million, more than half will go to Nova Scotia.
Premier Tim Houston said Thursday there are “a couple of hundred thousand” Nova Scotia homeowners that heat with oil.
“The price of heating oil is devastating for a number of families,” he said. “It puts a lot of pressure on a number of families and a number of households. One of the reasons we are so committed to fighting the carbon tax is that it will only make life less affordable for Nova Scotians and it’s not necessary for preserving the planet.”
Houston said the province is grateful for the federal program.
“It will help some families but in the grand scheme of things, with the number of households that we have to transition off home heating oil, it’s just a drop in the bucket,” he said. “But we’re still grateful for even a drop here and there and there will be a plan that our department will come up with.”
Anderson said when the province fills the federal department in on its rollout plan, whether that be through existing programs or another avenue, “we can agree to final terms and get a program up and running early next year so we can start doling out some of this funding to support Nova Scotians to transition to cleaner and more affordable fuels.”
Anderson said the federal department would hope the province is as eager as the federal department to collaborate on a plan for the funding.
Regarding the carbon tax, Anderson said if it is applied to Nova Scotians at the gas pump and at the door when oil is delivered, “the cheque rebates going to people, for most middle class families, they will be getting more back from climate action incentive rebate cheques than they paid to the system.”
Anderson said the commercial emissions proposal the provincial government forwarded to Ottawa 10 days ago, an output based pricing system that specifically targets large industrial emitters, notably Nova Scotia Power, “is being assessed” by the federal department, which has to approve it before it can be implemented.
“I don’t really have any update as to the acceptability of that proposal,” Anderson said.