Monday’s report of the Alberta Government’s so-called Property Tax Accountability Strategy Working Group had lots of big ideas about how to recover unpaid taxes “from companies that are still operating and reducing future unpaid taxes.”
Seventeen recommendations in all, according to the government’s news release, which also quoted Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams piously explaining that “unpaid taxes put an unfair burden on Alberta taxpayers, who end up footing the bill or seeing their services reduced.”
Seeing as there’s something like $250 million in municipal property taxes unpaid by Alberta oil and gas companies, that’s a lot of burden on the taxpayers of the province’s rural municipalities.
The working group’s big ideas include making property taxes part of the Alberta Energy Regulator’s mandate and “enabling the regulator to act faster and with stronger tools when companies fail to meet their tax obligations.” Plus, the release said, “they also call for improved data access for municipalities and increased data collection to better monitor the issue,” whatever that actually means.
But the real news, it’s said here, was Mr. Williams’ admission, and that of Energy Minister Brian Jean, that those municipalities are never going to see the money they’re owed – it’s gone with the wind, too bad, so sad, forget about it!
Companies are legally obligated to clean up the messes they’ve made, right? “We appreciate that a lot of that isn’t going to come forward, isn’t going to be paid back to the province or municipalities,” Mr. Williams told a news conference at the Rural Municipalities of Alberta’s spring convention in Edmonton on Monday. But don’t worry, the CBC reported, he’s passionate about fixing the mess.
Mr. Jean, with astonishing frankness, further explained: “What happens at the end of a life cycle of some of these oil fields or gas fields that are not producing the wealth that they used to produce, is that the leaders of those companies often strip off the value and find ways to pay what they prioritize to pay.” That explanation is so cute! One thing they don’t prioritize, obviously, is their debts, at least to the citizens of the municipalities where they used to operate.
But Mr. Jean’s comment includes another worthwhile point, it’s often the same companies that aren’t paying their taxes that also aren’t cleaning up their messes. Others agree.
“While most oil and gas property taxes are paid in full every year, unpaid taxes remain a real and persistent problem that the province is committed to addressing,” the anonymous author of the government’s press release signed off. “Alberta’s government will be reviewing the report’s recommendations and evaluating the next steps over the coming months.”
OK, then!
Surely we all understand, though, that this government is unlikely to be any more committed to making oil and gas companies of the type described by Mr. Jean pay their taxes or clean up their messes in the future than the UCP has been since its inception.
More than 20 O&C companies that exceeded Alberta’s limit on tax arrears have been allowed to acquire new wells since 2023, the Investigative Journalism Foundation reported in February.
Acknowledging this aloud, it must be noted, invites a hostile reaction on certain social media sites, including from a number of accounts that look suspiciously like bots. It would be interesting to know who’s running those.
Still, it’s fair to say that every day is Tax Freedom Day for Alberta O&G operators if they choose to operate that way, and polluter pay is not really a thing in here, and likely never will be.
And it’s quite reasonable to expect nothing is going to change in the coming months, or probably the coming years, no matter what the latest working group report or news release says.
RCMP come knocking in ‘procurement irregularities’ investigation
Last night The Globe and Mail reported that the “RCMP have executed search warrants as part of their investigation into procurement irregularities at Alberta’s health authority, a controversy that has dogged Premier Danielle Smith’s government for more than a year.”
Needless to say, this is a highly significant story that has the potential for major repercussions for the provincial government. Earlier in the day, the Globe published another major story on a dispute between two companies involved in building addiction recovery facilities for the Smith Government. It contained some pretty startling allegations made about the businessman at the centre of the long-running procurement controversy.
Frequently, when such a development breaks, Premier Smith is suddenly overcome by an irresistible urge to travel, with or without the assistance of an attentive Saudi Arabian flight crew. Unfortunately, notwithstanding the current price of oil, now is probably not a good moment for a quick trip to the capitals of the Middle East. They say Vancouver is lovely in the springtime, though, so perhaps a shorter jaunt could be arranged.
Meanwhile, I’m sorry to have to refer readers to news stories that are behind a paywall, but Alberta media for a variety of reasons have been hesitant to cover this story, leaving it to the Globe to do the heavy lifting. With luck, perhaps some un-paywalled media organization will have joined the coverage by later today.
