An ‘unwarranted cash-grab’

Some people are reluctant to get vaccinated because they don’t believe the scientific research that shows immunization is safe.

Others bristle at government directives.

And there are some who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.

But for those who can get the jab and simply refuse to, perhaps words of advice from someone with lived experience will make a difference.

Recently in St. John’s, N.L., a retired nurse said she was so fed up with hearing misinformation about vaccinations that she had to speak up.

Eighty-six-year-old Olive Dwyer spent her career fighting diseases with vaccines — from measles to tuberculosis to whooping cough.

“Generations of people are alive today because of vaccines,” she says. “This COVID vaccine is one of many and I don’t think our society should fear having a vaccine.”

People of Dwyer’s generation faced many hardships on the heels of the Second World War, a conflict that saw people deprived of rights far more basic than the choice of whether or not to get a vaccine.

Dwyer is among those mystified by the vaccine hesitant, and Canadians are increasingly expressing their frustrations at the thousands who refuse to follow public health guidelines, particularly when many parents of youngsters under five would give anything to have their children immunized against COVID-19.

There’s a growing sense of pandemic fatigue across the country that is fraying tempers and testing patience.

A Nanos Research survey recently commissioned by CTV found that 60 per cent of respondents either support or somewhat support the idea of financially penalizing those who refuse to be vaccinated — and the support is strongest among Canadians over 55.

Vaccines — as Olive Dwyer points out from years of first-hand experience — save lives and have been proven safe.

If you haven’t already, and you can, it’s time to step up for everyone’s health. Take the shot.

Dear Mr. Lohr,

I am writing as a constituent of your electoral district, a proud Nova Scotian, and as someone who firmly believes in the bright future of our province. I am horrified by the recent submission by Nova Scotia Power to the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (UARB), in particular the retrogressive and foolish application for a “system access charge” of $8 per month per kW on net-metered installations.

If passed, this spurious “access charge” – in reality a thoroughly lazy and unwarranted cash-grab by the utility – will, at a stroke, freeze the provincial residential solar-power infrastructure as consumers will be forced to cover an entirely new set of outlays to Nova Scotia Power, for the privilege of generating electricity which is also sold by Nova Scotia Power. I would suggest that this is the classic case of “having your cake and eating it too.”

To be clear: the effects of this submission, if approved by the UARB, will be felt across the province, and will dramatically hamper our government’s greenhouse-gas emissions reduction efforts. We will go from being one of the most vibrant adopters of green energy in North America to being one of the worst, because there will be little financial incentive for consumers to participate in the transition. In terms of public policy, to accept the submission by Nova Scotia Power will be disastrous because it will undermine the ability of citizens to contribute directly to the green energy infrastructure of the province.

In terms of environmental policy, it will cripple our efforts to transition effectively to a post-carbon world.

And it will take out of the hands of hard-working Nova Scotians the opportunity to participate in that transition as active, engaged citizens whose actions demonstrate their concern for the future of our province and, indeed, the planet.

As I tell my students at Acadia, a utility like Nova Scotia Power is actually involved in two businesses, not one.

Utilities generate power, and they distribute power. The rise of residential/ small solar arrays, such as the one sitting on my roof in Kentville, serves to green Nova Scotia’s power grid and to push the utility to alter its generation patterns. But by using its other business – the distribution of power – as a noose to strangle the residential production of electricity for the grid, Nova Scotia Power is proposing at a stroke to reverse all of the significant gains achieved by the solar power industry in Nova Scotia.

It is a disgrace, and I implore you to voice your concerns through appropriate channels in government so that such a retrogressive, anti-competitive, and frankly greedy and stupid proposal as that offered by Nova Scotia Power is rejected forthwith.

With best regards.

David Duke, PhD, is a professor and chair of the Department of History and Classics at Acadia University. He lives in Kentville.