Originally published June 24, 2025 at The Narwhal. Read the full story here.

In early June, the smoke outside the Warburg Community Hall, one hour west of Edmonton, hangs thick, a blanket that stretches the length of the white-knuckle highway between Edmonton and Calgary. Inside the hall, where a shuffleboard floor leads to a small stage, there are doughnuts in plastic containers and Maxwell House instant coffee on offer past rows of plastic folding tables and chairs. Help yourself.

A crowd trickles in — approximately 30 by the time things get underway — made up of landowners and rural councillors gathered to hear Kara Westerlund, the president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, a coalition of 69 counties and municipal districts. She’s speaking at this meeting of the Warburg Pembina Surface Rights Group about companies not paying their taxes owed to local governments and about the province’s new plan to deal with old wells. 

The organizer, Karl Zajes, is a tireless man sporting a black cap emblazoned with a maple leaf and the word “Canada” — itself a political statement at this time and place in Alberta. 

Frustration, unlike the coffee, percolates. 

The small crowd talks of the double standards they see between how they’re treated compared to oil and gas companies — the lack of regulations or enforcement, the ability of companies to withhold taxes or lease payments, to let weeds bloom or to leave wells leaking and rusting for years on end. 

“I want to be clear, $100 million [in taxes] right now is outstanding by companies that continue to operate on our landscape,” Westerlund tells the gathering, referencing her organization’s latest report. “They’re just simply choosing not to pay us because there’s no recourse.”

The morning after the meeting in Warburg, the smoke keeps closing in, thickening. Children are kept inside, the haze giving a weight to the world, a strange hardness despite the gauzy air obscuring the fields. 

The ambience is starkly different in Calgary that day, within the cavernous ballroom of the new BMO Centre. There, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith stands on a stage flanked by giant screens projecting her image, speaking to the well-heeled international crowd at the Global Energy Show — an annual conference of hundreds of industry leaders, from the head of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to engineers pitching new devices to help extract oil. 

High-powered beams of light shine from the stage to the ceiling dozens of meters overhead and a bank of news cameras fill a riser at the back of the room. There are no doughnuts. A lounge on the second floor is restricted to VIPs.

“Obviously, Alberta benefits tremendously from developing its energy to the fullest, but the rewards aren’t limited to our province or a handful of companies, far from it,” Smith says. “Everybody wins when Alberta realizes the full potential of its energy.”

Smith speaks of global power and conflict and emissions, on national priorities and a willingness of her government to incentivize building pipelines. 

She doesn’t talk about residents in places like Warburg, who don’t feel like everyone is winning. 

It’s hard not to see the lines that have been drawn across Alberta. The policies and priorities that fuelled a compact between energy and landowners are disintegrating. The cities are rising, with their glimmering towers built by oil, while rural communities deal with the consequences. Companies maximize revenue and limit costs — even if that means ignoring well cleanup, dodging taxes or lease payments.

It’s a line that often appears to have the government on one side, and residents on the other. In Warburg, Westerlund pointed out that there were no provincial politicians in the room, though the town is just an hour from the provincial capital.

“What I want to point out is we’re all friends in this room,” Westerlund tells those gathered in Warburg. “We’re all here for the same reasons and for the right reasons. Where’s your MLA?”

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE NARWHAL.