"What we really want to do is get the message out that we want to be made whole again."
Paul McLauchlin, president of the Rural Municipalities Association (RMA), says rural municipalities have been forced to face the brunt of provincial policy decisions to subsidize the oil and gas industry in addition to other core funding cuts and downloads by the province.
It's now reached the point where it is jeopardizing infrastructure vital to all Albertans.
We're talking about roads, bridges, and water/wastewater networks.
He points to how bridges alone are a $2.9 billion liability that costs about $500 million annually to maintain. He says some are getting beyond their lifespan and the replacement costs are significant.
"We're holding it together, but the fact is that because our core funding is decreasing, we're going start to run into a critical mass right now that our assets are going to start to decrease so much that we're going to have to start closing bridges and shutting down transportation routes in the province. We're calling on the government to try to make us whole again and allow us to get this infrastructure back in line with where it should be."
He says rural Alberta is a key fiscal economic contributor to the province.
"If we're starting to fall backward, I think the government needs to realign their priorities and start to be accountable to rural Albertans."
That includes rural MLAs, whom they are asking to stand out and be counted.
Today, they launched the 'Below the Drill' campaign and will be releasing a series of reports over the next five weeks to highlight the financial impact of these fiscal policies upon rural Alberta.
RMA says provincial policy changes and inaction over the last three years have stripped Alberta’s municipalities of $332 million in vital municipal tax revenue. These policies, some of which were initially introduced to offset the impacts of the pandemic and reduce costs for the oil and gas industry during hard times, have left rural communities struggling to maintain essential infrastructure and services.
"We recognize that things were pretty tough during COVID and there were some allowances given, but since then prices have recovered," says McLauchlin, "and in many cases what we're really concerned about is that some of those decisions made by the provincial government actually made the rich richer and the poor poorer and ultimately has done so on the backs of rural Albertans."
RMA says the government has removed the Well Drilling Equipment Tax (WDET), imposed a three-year tax holiday on new wells, and a 35 per cent reduction in assessments on shallow gas wells. Then there's the ongoing issue of unpaid taxes from the oil and gas sector.
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On Dec. 31, 2020, the Well Drilling Equipment Tax Rate Regulation came into effect that set the tax rate at $0.
"We've heard that concession has been made permanent by Municipal Affairs and their expectation is that that that will be 0 from here on in. Regretfully again, one level of assessment and taxation that was available has been eliminated by this government as a subsidy on the backs of rural Albertans."
McLauchlin says it's all tied to a larger discussion RMA has been seeking with Municipal Affairs.
"We're not asking for new funding, we're asking for them to replace all the cuts that they've been undertaking year-over-year."
That includes cuts in core funding and how the police funding model has been downloaded to municipalities.
He says they want to know where rural MLAs stand on these issues.
"Are they honestly working for rural Alberta? Right now, the province of Alberta is looking at actually a tax reduction potentially based upon what Minister (Brian) Jean has said is a tax reduction on mature assets. We're responding with a call to action to rural municipality MLAs across the province."