The premier and opposition leaders battled for time on the floor of the legislature Thursday on a topic that’s become a political lightning rod: energy. 

Premier Tim Houston, in his capacity as energy minister, appeared at a committee that exists for dissecting the details of departmental spending as part of the budget process.

In the NDP’s first designated hour for asking questions, NDP Leader Claudia Chender accused the Progressive Conservatives of not taking seriously the issue of high power bills.

In response, Houston spoke for 54 minutes about the history of the energy file going back more than 15 years, enumerating the failures, according to him, of past NDP and Liberal governments.

Among his criticisms were Maritime Link costs, reliance on imported fossil fuels with volatile prices, the fracking ban – which he said eliminated a potential domestic energy source – and not moving fast enough on wind and solar energy development.

“They wouldn’t do the hard work, we’re doing it now. I don’t say this to throw mud, I just think it’s important to understand how we got here,” he said.

Houston said power rates would be higher without interventions from his government, including capping rate increases associated with fuel costs, taking on $117 million in unrecovered fuel costs from Nova Scotia Power and helping secure a federal bailout for the utility. 

He also highlighted recent advancements of a direct-to-consumer renewable energy company that stands to break Nova Scotia Power’s monopoly.

Houston ran out the clock on the NDP’s first round. 

He said later in an interview that when he has talked to people about the province’s energy system and power rates, they have “generally seemed calmed” when he’s told them “what has happened to get us here.” 

He said he took the opportunity at the committee, known as budget estimates, to spread that message more broadly.

“It’s important to Nova Scotians and I look forward to hearing from many of them over the next few days as to what they thought,” he said.

Opposition leaders said Houston was simply filibustering.

“We got a biased history lesson on how we got here,” Chender said in an interview. “But we didn’t really get answers on what his government is doing today to address the cost of energy for Nova Scotians.”

Interim Liberal Leader Iain Rankin said Houston’s approach set the tone for the rest of the committee, which ran for three hours.

When it was his turn to ask questions, Rankin spoke for forty minutes, first responding to some of Houston’s critiques of past Liberal governments and then piling together multiple questions about offshore wind.

“I felt it was required because the record had to be corrected,” Rankin said in an interview.

In the House he highlighted that the program that enabled a renewable energy alternative to Nova Scotia Power was established by the McNeil Liberal government and Houston voted against it.

“I thought it was important that, if I was going to get any answers, that I package my questions into one round. If I asked one question he would have filibustered the rest of the hour.”

Rankin elicited some information from Houston about the premier’s offshore wind energy proposal, Wind West. Houston said he expects any transmission infrastructure that’s built will focus first on interconnections within Canada, before turning to the United States.

He said the first connection will likely be with Quebec.

In Chender’s second round she tabled a package of questions the NDP collected from Nova Scotians and Houston said staff from the department would answer them.

“I assumed that the minister would filibuster,” she said.

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