"[Kenney] has to decide which is more palatable to Albertans frustrated with a stagnant economy and relentless government cuts: having the Alberta government continue to fight Ottawa over a carbon tax; or working with Ottawa on climate change to win approval for the Teck oil sands project to improve the economy, create jobs, reverse cuts and quell talk of rebellion in rural Alberta."

It’s not exactly the Boston Tea Party, but Alberta is experiencing a tax revolt.

Not a big one, mind you. Certainly not big enough to spark a revolution. Actually, it’s a one-man tax revolt. But it does shine a light on a growing problem facing the Alberta government among its conservative base.

Ironically, the light comes from a Liberal.

David Swann, former leader of the Alberta Liberal Party, held a news conference last week to announce he will not pay his provincial income taxes until deadbeat oil-patch companies start paying theirs.

It was pure political theatre, of course. Good luck not paying your taxes, Mr. Swann. But he has won applause from an area that hasn’t voted Liberal in 100 years: rural Alberta.

Swann’s mini revolt came after the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, an association representing 69 counties and municipal districts, revealed that oil and gas companies have failed to pay $173 million in property taxes the previous year. That’s double the amount they didn’t pay the year before.

The amount might seem small when you look at individual municipalities. According to the Calgary Herald, the amount of unpaid taxes to the government of Starland County, for example, is only $3 million. But that’s a huge chunk of the county’s $15-million budget.

After years living through a painful recession, the counties and districts are suffering still. It wasn’t supposed to be this way in 2020.

READ MORE: How can the federal government make Alberta ‘happy’?

In last spring’s provincial election campaign, United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenny had promised Albertans a strong economy and more jobs. Any cuts to government spending would be by finding painless “efficiencies.”

The counties and districts responded by voting UCP. Just about every riding outside the cities of Edmonton and Calgary supported Kenney.

But now, when they complain about the unpaid taxes, they receive this bit of harsh advice from Kenney, who pointed out companies bankrupted by low energy prices can’t pay their bills: “You can’t wring money from a stone.”

However, not every company that has defaulted on its taxes has sunk into insolvency. Approximately 60 per cent of the defaulters are still afloat.

Merrill Harris, Reeve of the Municipal District of Taber in southern Alberta, told reporters “there are certainly a number of viable operating companies in our municipality that have just not paid this year.”

Pretty much the only recourse open to Harris and others is to sue deadbeat companies in civil court — a long, expensive and risky route.

But without that money — or help from Kenney — rural municipalities are having to cut services and/or raise taxes to make up the difference. In other words, the provincial government is downloading cuts and taxes onto the rural municipal level, onto the very people who overwhelmingly voted UCP.

Not that they’re about to storm the Legislature. But a growing number of rural Albertans are not happy.

Say hello to angry landowners.

Oil and gas companies that drill on private land are supposed to pay the landowner compensation. However, just as they can’t or won’t pay taxes, they aren’t paying their leases.

In response, a group representing about 200 landowners in southern Alberta, called the Action Surface Rights Association, is urging farmers and ranchers to close the valves and cut power to the wells operated by deadbeat companies.

Having amateurs shut down energy wells is a really bad idea that poses big safety concerns, say experts. There have been no reports of anyone doing that — but just the fact that people in rural Alberta are talking about a little oilfield revolution should give the government pause.

Of course, much of what’s happening is beyond the government’s control. Energy companies are struggling because of the price of oil and natural gas. And because landlocked Alberta can’t get more of the oil it produces to the world market via pipeline, it’s force to sell it at a discount to the United States. The expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline is still several years away, at best.

But that hasn’t stopped Alberta’s opposition NDP from blaming the UCP government for not turning around the economy as it promised it would.

The number of jobless is up 50,000 provincially and the unemployment rate in Edmonton is eight per cent, the highest of any major city in Canada.

The NDP delights in poking these statistics at the government while demonizing the UCP’s $4.7-billion tax cut to corporations that has, so far, failed to spark an economic recovery.

It’s a simplistic and unfair attack.

But it’s no more simplistic or unfair than Kenney’s relentless attack against the NDP government’s “job-killing” carbon tax that he blamed for just about all of Alberta’s ills.

After winning the election, Kenney scrapped the carbon tax and threw out the NDP’s climate action plan.

When it comes to unfair and simplistic attacks, Kenney wrote the book. The NDP has simply proven to be a conscientious reader.

Kenney is desperately looking for good economic news and some might be around the corner. The federal cabinet is expected by the end of February to decide whether to approve Teck Resources’ $20-billion Frontier oil sands project in northern Alberta.

The problem for Kenney is that he has been such a tireless opponent of the federal carbon tax — and many federal climate policies — that Ottawa is sending up warning flares in his general direction.

Federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson pointed out this week, “provinces need to have targets” to help Canada achieve the national emission-reductions targets. He suggested Kenney’s continued legal battle against the federal carbon tax is not helping with that. “What we’re looking for is, is concrete action on climate change,” said Wilkinson.

READ MORE: Will never-ending political battles in Alberta make 2020 an unhappy New Year?

This presents Kenney with a dilemma.

He has to decide which is more palatable to Albertans frustrated with a stagnant economy and relentless government cuts: having the Alberta government continue to fight Ottawa over a carbon tax; or working with Ottawa on climate change to win approval for the Teck oil sands project to improve the economy, create jobs, reverse cuts and quell talk of rebellion in rural Alberta.

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