Rural Municipalities of Alberta President Kara Westerlund speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about Budget 2025.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Michael Higgins: The need to stretch public dollars as far as possible. What does that say to you about expectations for the budget?
Kara Westerlund: I like hearing the words ‘stretching your dollar as far as it can go,’ because anyone that works in our world understands that municipal government is the government closest to the people, and we’re the most accountable financially to as well.
So if you want to stretch that dollar, the best place for those dollars to be spent is within our municipalities and with our local governments.
MH: Where do you think that might leave rural municipalities with this budget?
KW: We do have four main priority areas that we are hoping to see and focus on with the upcoming budget. They include: rural municipality viability as well as municipal infrastructure, community services within our rural areas, and another big topic for us, financial help with rural health care and emergency and disaster services as well.
RMA recently released an infrastructure report that was not good news. We’re facing about $17 million worth of infrastructure deficits, which could balloon to about $40 million by 2028 if we don’t take action this year and into next year.
MH: Given those budget asks, what’s the likelihood this budget might address some of that by addressing the issue of unpaid property taxes involving the energy sector?
KW: It’s a great topic to be discussing. We just put a member survey out for annual unpaid oil and gas taxes within our municipalities. I will be frank and honest with you, the numbers aren’t great, and they will be higher than the numbers from 2023.
We are expecting that number to continue to climb, and it will be well over that $260 million of outstanding taxes, which common sense would tell you, we could put to work in our communities, attacking and taking a chunk out of that infrastructure deficit. As well as some of the other community needs that we have within the organization.
So those numbers are still coming in. We will have final numbers, I suspect, here in the next week to 10 days, right before our annual spring convention. We will be releasing that information too as well.
I’ll be frank again with you, I’ve been a member on with RMA for the last seven years, and a councillor for 15 years, this topic is nothing new. It continues to be the number one issue that we’re facing out here. We have offered many solutions to this complex issue, but not complex in a sense that if you’re operating and continue to do business in our area, we just expect you to pay taxes like everybody else.
MH: So much focus right now on President Donald Trump’s impending tariffs. What kind of impact do you expect that to bring to rural municipalities?
KW: Obviously there’s the impact to industry, as our members are 85 per cent of the land mass, so obviously agricultural, forestry and the oil and gas sector, that’s huge. Any of that discussion or the threats that are being pushed out there obviously are having local economic impacts on projects getting up and running and creating a lot of uncertainty out in the private sector.
Another unique position that we find ourselves in at RMA is we do own a procurement company that our members are able to purchase things like graders right down to toilet paper in washrooms.
We do have a lot of partners south of the border, obviously, with some of the bigger equipment that we help our municipalities purchase. There’s some uncertainty, and we’re hearing numbers as much as 1.5 per cent on top of contracts or tenders that are going out.
So there’s that implication on that side of it as well, and of course, we talk a lot about the impact to business in Canada, but there is going to be some harsh realities and some harsh hits to some of the businesses in the U.S. too, if this continues on, or if it gets put into place.
MH: How prepared are rural municipalities for the wildfire season ahead?
KW: Once again we’re seeing indications of an early wildfire season. Unfortunately, it seems to be the normal world that we’re working in.
RMA undertook a process in the fall of 2024, which just wrapped up. We’ll see a wildfire report with 31 recommendations for municipalities, for RMA, as well as for the provincial and the federal governments.
Some of the key highlights that are coming out there, and the recommendations, focus on a number of areas including training, equipment, communications with all levels of government, as well as our residents. Looking at streamlining response efforts, as well as the recovery planning aspect of it.
I could probably spend many hours discussing wildfire mitigation and proactiveness in the work that’s being done, so I will just keep it there. We do have a report that’s fresh off the press. The group was made up of elected officials, industry leaders, Alberta fire chiefs were at the table, we had firefighters at the table.
So a very good and comprehensive report that’s coming out, chock full of great recommendations for our municipalities.
