Struggling St. Albert residents need much more than the additional $150 the province announced last week to manage surging electricity prices, says the head of St. Albert’s food bank.
Associate Minister of Natural Gas and Electricity Dale Nally announced July 6 the province will extend its $50-a-month electricity rebate until the end of the year.
The rebate was first announced June 22 to address rising utility prices. Originally, some 1.9 million homes, farms, and small businesses were to get a $50 credit on their July, August, and September power bills, resulting in $150 in rebates at a cost of $300 million. The rebate will now last until December, resulting in $300 in rebates at a cost of $600 million. The rebate will apply to anyone who received a power bill (i.e. not those who paid for power through condo fees or lived in sub-metered apartments) and did not use more than 250 megawatt hours of power a year.
St. Albert NDP MLA Marie Renaud criticized the province for extending this rebate before it had even started.
“Fifty dollars a month is certainly not going to put a dent in some of the problems we’re hearing about,” she said, noting some St. Albert residents have seen 40-per-cent hikes in their power bills in recent months.
Renaud said high power bills are the result of a “perfect storm” of high inflation and years of decisions by the UCP government which raised the cost of living. The province paused indexation of income tax brackets in 2019, for example, which a recent University of Calgary study found added about $148 to the average Albertan’s tax bill last year. She called on the province to re-index income taxes and cap car insurance rates to help reduce the cost of living.
Morinville-area farmer Ward Middleton said this rebate will help his family a little bit, as $50 is about a sixth of his $300-a-month power bill.
“We’ve made every effort to be as efficient as possible,” he said, and every bit of support helped.
Anything is better than nothing, but $50 a month won’t help some St. Albert residents out of the dire straits they are in now, said St. Albert Food Bank director Suzan Krecsy.
“Some of our folks have [utility] bills that are $1,100,” she said, with others saying their power bills have doubled compared to last year.
Krecsy said rising rents and utility bills have led to a sharp spike in clients at the food bank, with a record 415 hampers distributed to 1,254 people in June — way up from the 240 hampers and 686 clients they had in June 2021. Some 57 per cent of in June’s clients spent more than half their income on housing and are at risk of becoming homeless.
“Our folks are really struggling, and the increased level of stress is palpable,” Krecsy said.
Middleton said he put excellent insulation, solar panels, and geothermal heat into his home to keep his energy costs low, and also signed up for a fixed-rate electricity contract. He suggests using a portable power meter to figure out which appliances use the most power in your home (The St. Albert Public Library’s HEAT Kit includes such a meter).
Dhanvir Singh of Empower Me (a social enterprise group that runs free energy efficiency workshops in Alberta) said there are many low- to no-cost ways for homeowners to trim their utility bills, including weather-stripping doors and switching power providers. This $50 rebate could help people save energy if it is invested in items such as LED lights, low-flow showerheads, or smart thermostats.
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