Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Fuzz]

The IJF has identified nearly 600 Alberta companies responsible for millions of dollars of municipal tax arrears and unpaid leases to landowners.

Unpaid oil and gas property taxes have created an increasingly large burden for local governments in Alberta. Rural municipalities reported companies owed $81 million in cumulative tax arrears in 2018. As of the end of 2024, the property tax debt had grown to nearly $254 million, despite policies being introduced to stop insolvent or struggling companies from acquiring new oil and gas wells.

Taxpayers are also on the hook for unpaid leases to landowners, since property owners can apply to the province to reimburse them for outstanding bills.

https://theijf.org/article/data-reve...-gas-companies

A March 2023 ministerial order from Alberta’s energy minister established rules authorizing Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) to block the transfer of new well licences to companies that owe more than $20,000 in unpaid municipal taxes, unless certain conditions are met. There were 130 companies exceeding that threshold in 2024, according to documents released through an access to information request.

Twenty-one of these companies that owed more than the government’s threshold were given new well licences, the IJF has found, raising questions about how the energy regulator’s rules are enforced.

In 2021, Northern Sunrise County was the only municipality that reported tax arrears from Blue Sky Resources, which owed $28,215. When Municipal Affairs repeated its survey for 2024, the company’s unpaid tax bills in 15 municipalities had grown to nearly $3 million. Between May and December 2023, the AER approved the transfer of 407 well licenses to Blue Sky Resources.

“It's a mistake by the AER’s overall approach, where they think it is better for any solvent company, any company that is not officially bankrupt, to have the wells than for a company that is officially bankrupt to have the well. And so even if the company is doing very badly — it's not paying landowners, it's not paying municipal taxes, it's not able to pay for the closure of its assets — they will still approve any transfer from a bankrupt company to that officially still-operating company,” Yewchuk said.

So what happened to Blue Sky Resources after they were given all this runway from the regulator regulating?

October 2025: Blue Sky Resources files bankruptcy and insolvency notice. Total liabilities listed at $63.7 million.

[aaronck]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Definitely not anything that improved day-to-day life.

I think the one policy that they put forward (under Kenney) that was good was the one to entice movies and filming to come to Alberta. But it hasn't done anything to materially make life better and its not like it created permanent jobs at any great scale.

All it really did was create tax credits to try and lick the boots of another industry of mega rich corporations to do occasional work here. It would have been better if the incentive had been attached to creating permanent jobs and satellite studios here that maybe could occupy some of our empty office space.

I think one of the first orders of business when the Kenney UCP hit office was to cancel the film tax credit, they then after much outcry (and loss of things being fimed here) brought in a new one

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmon...edit-1.5445543