A report from the Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) says unpaid taxes from oil and gas companies in Alberta have reached a crisis point.
Starland County Reeve Steve Wannston says the county has received the report and the latest numbers indicate that Alberta’s Rural Municipalities are currently owed nearly $250 million. This represents a quarter of a billion dollars that is now not available for roads, bridges, community recreation facilities, community groups, and rural water and sewage systems. For Starland County, the amount currently sits at over $10 million.
“This situation is completely unacceptable to the many hard-working Albertans that pay their taxes through both the ups and downs of the economy. Despite years of lobbying efforts, the Government of Alberta refuses to address this situation through common-sense regulations,” he stated in a press release from the Starland County.
A breakdown of these numbers indicates the problem is not getting better but is accelerating. $250 million represents a 42% increase from the overall amount in RMA’s 2020 member survey and a 203 per cent increase from RMA’s 2019 member survey. The average rural municipality is facing an unpaid tax burden of $3,560,331 from the oil and gas industry. Much of this tax owing is from bankrupt companies which is understandable and expected considering the downturn in the global economy. More troubling is still-operating oil and gas companies are responsible for 57 per cent of the unpaid taxes from the oil and gas industry.
“At present, the government does not consider whether an oil and gas company has paid their property taxes in deciding whether to issue or renew a company’s ability to drill for oil and gas in Alberta. This situation could be rectified easily and quickly but the government has so far refused to do so. Albertans need to ask why they are allowing one set of rules for one industry with another set of rules for everybody else,” the release states.

While there is still snow on the ground, baseball players are looking forward to the spring, green grass on the diamonds, and relaxed restrictions.
Drumheller Minor Baseball has already opened their registration, and President Rob Visser says they are getting healthy numbers.
“Our registration numbers are not too bad, especially considering it is winter. I have talked to a number of the other associations who are slow,” said Visser. ‘We definitely need some of the older groups numbers to pick up, but at the younger groups we’ll have multiple teams.”
Baseball has enjoyed a resurgence in the valley over the last few years and the players are benefiting from the growth. This season they are launching a provincial AA baseball program.
“We are optimistic we will have two teams at the U11 level, our goal for the future is to be able to field AA level teams at all age groups if we continue to build momentum,” he said
Despite the restrictions in place last season, Drumheller Minor Baseball was very active. While other associations decided not to play, Drumheller had 80 players registered.
“We did a lot more than a lot of associations, we were actually pretty proud of how much we played,” said Visser. “We started in mid-June and went to July as a starting point. We had a few user groups that wanted to play more into the summer. We went well into August and even for some of the younger groups. We actually played a tournament in Olds on September long weekend.
In July, 75 players signed up for a baseball camp, in partnership with the Drumheller Dragons, with instruction from Les Mactavish, from the Vauxhall Baseball Academy.
A great change for the association last season is they rebranded the teams as the Drumheller Miners, an homage to the past. With support from local sponsors, they were able to purchase seven new sets of jerseys.
The association also launched its new website and can do all its registration online.

“We applied for and received our official association status, we are now in the process of applying for our AGLC casino license which we hope will pave the way for funding that can help contribute to future facility upgrades,” said Visser.
For more information or to register go to www.drumhellerminorbaseball.com. The association is in need of umpires, and are open to sponsorship opportunities. For more information email dmbaregister@gmail.com