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Nova Scotia Power execs throw a party after raising rates

Last Tuesday, Nova Scotia Power made the controversial and widely unpopular request to raise rates by six per cent over the next two years, the seventh increase in 11 years.

The next day, its parent company, Emera, threw a party at a restaurant on the Halifax waterfront.

While the company insists shareholders paid for the event and not Nova Scotia Power customers — the party's price tag is undisclosed, but CBC News reports it featured "Cape Breton comedian Maynard Morrison, the Halifax Titanic Orchestra, and the Mellotones, a popular band in Halifax" — all three of the province's political parties are unimpressed with the event, claiming the Emera executives are out of touch.

"It's insensitive, it's insulting to Nova Scotians, and it just shows exactly what's wrong at Nova Scotia Power," said Andrew Younger, the Liberal energy critic. "They're asking people to sacrifice, yet they're out there partying at a level that most rate payers in Nova Scotia could never possibly afford."

On Thursday, the day after the party, more criticism surfaced as Nova Scotia Power revealed that its top executive are getting huge raises.

"Hydro Quebec, a comparator to Nova Scotia Power, is ten times the size and yet their CEO makes half of what the CEO of Nova Scotia Power makes and he makes one-sixths of what the CEO of Emera makes," Progressive Conservative Leader Jamie Baillie said.

"Like all Nova Scotians, I find it extremely frustrating that at a time when power rates are skyrocketing, that so are the executive salaries at Nova Scotia Power," Baillie told The Chronicle Herald.

Nova Scotia Power has a power-providing monopoly in the province.