Issues separatists do not want to discuss – Part 5

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Ryan Dahlman

Issue Twelve: Oil and Gas Industry Defaults on Obligations

Current figures on oil and gas industry defaults on obligations to Alberta taxpayers (municipal and provincial governments) are:

• Cleanup costs which will become (and partly are now) provincial taxpayers’ responsibility to pay: $31 billion.

• Municipal taxes ignored by the oil and gas industry which will be made up by municipal (mostly rural) taxpayers: $150 million. Note, for example, it was only a few years ago Cypress County sent a letter to its taxpayers advising that defaults on payment of oil and gas industry taxes was going to cause residential taxes to more than double and farmland taxes to rise by 1,500 per cent.

Question 12(a)—How will an independent Alberta force the oil and gas industry to pay its obligations? The $31 billion shortfall is a contractual obligation to provincial taxpayers. Municipal taxes are another type of obligation to taxpayers. When you consider this, remember that the last Alberta budget not reliant on oil and gas royalties was in 1949, and that from 2005 to 2015, 25 per cent of revenue in Alberta’s provincial budgets came from oil and gas royalties. In other words, that industry bears heavily on provincial governance and has become very comfortable with having its own way in Alberta for four generations.

Question 12(b)—How will the government of an independent Alberta change the rules to avoid future oil and gas industry defaults such as the $31 billion and the $150 million defaults, described above?

Issue Thirteen: Trans-Mountain Pipeline Expansion

Beginning May 1, 2024, and onwards into the future for many decades, benefits have been accruing and will continue to accrue to Alberta from the Trans-Mountain Pipeline Expansion, for which the federal government incurred, and now carries, a $34 billion debt. The expansion increased oil sales out of Alberta by 580,000 barrels of oil per day, which, at a current price of about $75 per barrel, means a daily benefit to Alberta’s economy of about $43,500,000 ($15,877,500,000/ year). The federal government paid and continues to pay interest on the $34 billion debt, but will, realistically, require an independent Alberta pay that $34 billion, plus interest, to Ottawa when Alberta is no longer a part of Canada, because almost all the benefits of Ottawa’s borrowing accrue to Alberta.

Question 13—How will the government of an independent Alberta pay the $34 billion debt, plus interest?

Gregory R. Côté, Irvine