If the province owns the utility, will rates go down?

There’s a narrative in both PEI and Nova Scotia that if the respective province owned the electric utility, rates would go down. But ownership is not what drives customer bills.

Rates are rising everywhere because billions in new or upgraded infrastructure are needed for reliability, resilience, and clean energy. Whether financed by government debt or private capital markets, those costs still have to be repaid, with funders expecting a return.

The recent Grant Thornton report in PEI makes the trade-off clear: acquiring Maritime Electric would cost $840–$900 million, including a substantial acquisition premium. That’s nearly a billion dollars spent just to change ownership, with no new poles, lines, or generation in place.

Meanwhile, what is more urgently needed is investment in grid modernization, generation, efficiency programs and storm resilience. That is where capital should go. Buying the utility won’t lower costs, it only diverts scarce resources away from the infrastructure upgrades customers actually need.

The bottom line is that utility ownership is not the cost driver. It is better to focus on how we can support low-income customers and improve energy efficiency.