Candidates for two MD of Taber wards battle at forum

Posted on October 9, 2025 by Taber Times

By Heather Cameron
Taber Times
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

On October 1, the Taber and District Chamber of Commerce held an All Candidate Forum at the Taber Legion.

All but two seats for the Municipal District of Taber Council were acclaimed.

As part of their campaign for a seat David Torrie, Tamara Miyanaga, Brian Hildebrand, and Ben Elfring were all in attendance.

In Division 3, Brian Hildebrand and David Torrie are on that ballot, and in Division 4, Ben Elfring and Tamara Miyanaga will battle it out.

The candidates were asked several questions, including:

How do you see the recent changes to grazing lease agreements impacting young farmers and ranchers? And what role should the M.D. play in supporting the next generation of producers?

“I have been talking to some of my fellow lease holders. And I think everyone who has leases is willing to work on making the situation a fairer one. I think they all realize that it’s been a very good deal thus far and so I think lease holders are willing to come to the table. I think we just need to get in the room, listen to each other, and work on the issues.” – David Torrie

“These last 20 years, while the M.D. had tax recovery land, there were many other municipalities who received the land at the same time. They chose to sell it. They sold it at a cheap price and people turned around and farmed it or sold it making profit off money which was there for the municipality. The MD of Taber recognized that it’s a resource that’s available for everyone to benefit. So for 20 years, they paid seven cents an acre to have cattle on that land. If you were to evaluate what grazing lease goes for now, it is nowhere in comparison. The rate that we have set for this current policy is $26. Still far from market. $100 is what the tendered stuff has been going for. Do I have value in the grazers what they’ve done? Absolutely. So that is why the current policy actually sets aside community pastures. They have it now for time and eternity with the motion that was made. They can renew every 10 years. The other leases, they will be there for five years giving people the opportunity to perhaps buy, to perhaps change, use, or just to renegotiate the price. There’s no For Sale sign on all that land. So, it’s a misnomer, but it is so that other folks can have an opportunity, but the word I heard is to have your own destiny. This allows those ranchers to look after the land that they deem as theirs and buy it or set the right price.” – Tamara Miyanaga

“These municipally owned lands are owned by the MD of Taber as a whole, as a collective, and the 7,900 residents of the M.D. of Taber need to benefit from that land. All of the residents. That includes grazing associations, it includes current lease holders, but it also includes the rest of the residents. When the rate is far below market, someone has to make up the difference. And that ends up being the ratepayers: the residential, agricultural, and the industrial ratepayers. That is not fair to anyone. The lands need to be beneficial to everyone. The new rate is $5 an acre. The previous was 7 cents an acre, but the open market tendered rate that the M.D. is receiving is $30 an acre. So even the new rate is in excess of an 80 percent subsidy. Who is paying that? The ratepayers as a whole are paying that. They’re paying for it through reduced services, through reduced municipal capacity, and through increased taxes. Where is the fairness in that? We need to give everyone the opportunity to benefit from this resource that we as a collective own.” – Brian Hildebrand

“I was on Council when we got all of this tax recovery land back. And basically at the time, the government of the day did not want to give it back to us. The tax recovery land they deemed was sensitive land, especially the grassland. And we basically gave them our word that this land would not be broken, and it would stay as grazing land and as native prairie where native prairie is. Some of that land has been broken. We said if it comes to it, we would be allow it to be broken again, but it’s Council’s decision, but this land these 24 sections of land is virgin native prairie so I think it should be staying in the ranchers’ hands. They’ve done a very good job over all the years and personally, I see no reason for it to change. – Ben Elfring

How do you propose to increase revenue for the M.D. of Taber without raising taxes?

“I think if we make the M.D. of Taber an attractive place for businesses to locate and if we can try to build residential, as there’s high demand for residential housing, our tax base will grow without needing to increase individuals’ taxes. We need to make opportunities for other businesses attractive so that they come and they build here and then they pay taxes here. And if we can get affordable housing into the different communities in the M.D., that increases our tax base and so each individual family doesn’t have to pay more taxes. It’s not just the lease holders that have been getting a good deal. A lot of agriculture has been getting a good deal. And so I think it all needs to be looked at on how we can make it all fairer.” – David Torrie

“To increase economic development whether it’s agribusiness or a plant of some kind is first and foremost. The M.D. has prioritized staffing for economic development, and some may say that’s wasteful, but we actually need to pound the pavement to let people know that we have this amazing hot spot. The highway is being twinned. We live in the Canada Premier Food Corridor and it’s being promoted. The promotion of the M.D.’s Taber is happening quite naturally and so bringing in those assessed properties will make a difference. Looking at other alternatives which the M.D. has begun and finding ways for efficiencies. The 15-year-old gravel crusher is at end of life, costing us upwards of a half a million a year to repair. We can’t afford to buy a new one, so, we’re looking at other services like contracting out gravel crushing. We have the gravel. We didn’t have the operators. We don’t have a machine that’s functional anymore. So, we are looking at alternative ways to deliver services which will help reduce costs and lessen taxes.” – Tamara Miyanaga

“If we’re not going to increase taxes, we need to have better utilization of our resources, including the municipally owned lands, but also the rolling resources that we have as well. On that, the M.D. has started on a program here of running graders or operators four days on, four days off. And by running fewer days with the operators at a longer day, the graders should have more blade downtime and get more done in a day. We need to do things like that that increase the efficiency of the equipment that we have as far as growth goes. As far as advocating for Highway 3 twinning and getting that on the ground goes, it’s great encouraging growth in the region. We also need to collaborate with our municipal partners and work on having the infrastructure in place to provide those agrifood businesses that want to come here. Our water, and our wastewater needs to be ready for those people to come. We also need to have lots and houses ready for the people to live in.” – Brian Hildebrand

“I think the M.D. of Taber has to look internally at how we’re spending the tax dollars. I have seen a lot of wasted money. The other way to support less taxes is through agribusiness, trying and promoting agribusiness, and all other types of businesses in the M.D. It’s wide open.” – Ben Elfring

Has the M.D. been transparent in its dealings over the last four years?

“I have a great relationship with the people there, but I haven’t been heavily involved in a lot of the Council meetings. I hope to be involved and get to know more about it. I know that there’s definitely been some concerns that a lot of the things that that happened in that process that were not clear, and that there were clauses that were changed. I think there’s some things that could be looked at. I feel like everybody in the M.D. is valuable. I think all the different industries are valuable and we need to listen and we just we need to talk it through.” – David Torrie

“The BRID approached the M.D. of Taber, and we had a closed-door discussion to see if we thought it would be even a feasibly be an option for us. Then, we had a motion on the table to investigate further. Then, we had a meeting on the parameters at the Committee of the Whole meeting. They’re open to anybody, and M.D. council meetings are recorded. The decision to move ahead as quick as we did on the 24 quarters. Taber had the water available. The leases were coming to an end. It was the right time with the right opportunity. It wasn’t closed.  There were public notifications involved in the process. When I got on Council eight years ago, they said the biggest thing you’re going to have to deal with is these leases that are due in February 2026 because they left the rate the same for 70 cents an acre and they didn’t change it, so you better figure out because they’ve been told there will be a change. We held public meetings and multiple locations multiple times. It was transparent and open.” – Tamara Miyanaga

“Do I think the process was transparent? I think it was as transparent as it could be. When it comes to leases, there was actually a push from someone friendly with the leaseholders’ interest not to hold the discussions in Committee of the Whole, which are public meetings, but to workshop them behind closed doors. I pushed against that. I did not want it workshopped. I wanted to be held in a meeting where the public could come and so they were in Committee of the Whole. Those meetings are advertised. They are public. The minutes are available after they’ve been approved. One thing that I will commit to though for next term if re-elected is that Committee of the Whole meetings are recorded and livestreamed. I think that is something that will bring on more transparency to the process. That’s my goal as I come into this election is to learn the issues and to listen.” – Brian Hildebrand

The breaking up native prairie grass into 24 quarters really concerns me. To me, it’s not the right thing to do environmentally. You’re taking land away from lease holders and uh yeah, it’s going to make a lot of money, but $6 million isn’t going to cut it. You got to build roads. You got to build infrastructure. How much is that going to cost? You got to fence it at $6,000 probably per quarter. This hasn’t been thought through, and it hasn’t been talked through, especially to the people of the M.D. of Taber. I’ve talked to lots of leaseholders, and they talk and talk to Council, and it falls on deaf ears. They’ve got their mind made up. This is what’s going to happen and it’s not right for the residents and the ratepayers of the M.D. of Taber.” – Ben Elfring

What is your view on the current farm mill rate and how should the tax burden be distributed between different sectors in the M.D.?

“The farm rate has been frozen since sometime in the 1990s and that’s a challenge that we are having with Council. Agricultural buildings are not taxable and that is provincial legislation. There’s nothing that the M.D. of Taber can do about that. We have lobbied to get that changed but it is provincial legislation and that is out of our hands. Being that those rates have been frozen for 20 years or more, there is a disparity in the taxation rate between irrigation and dry land. So when taxation is increased on all farms, it increases the disparity even more. And if we get to a fair rate or what someone might consider fair for row crop and high intensity production, it is going to be abusive for dryland and grazing operators, so we have to be careful how we deal with that. We as a Council, we’re lobbying for that that change so that we could somehow tax more for the high use areas.” – Brian Hildebrand

“Really, I think the question is about agriculture. Everyone who is at the current Council table earned their living from farming and the option on the table was always how can we separate irrigation taxation and dry land. We went to the Minister. We’ve lobbied with our neighbors and the answer has been there’s no way to separate the two. Well, we think we have an option and there’s not one farmer in the room who will like this. It is if you are an irrigator. We’re looking at how the county of Lethbridge did head tax. Looking at can we tax irrigation? Can we find a commonality that County of Lethbridge did with head tax? I actually don’t love the idea, but I think the disparity is so vast that the Government of Alberta needs to look at it. They need to separate dry land and irrigation.

We need to look at alternative options. If you own an acreage or you own a business in the MD of Taber, the taxation is incredible. That needs to be frozen.”  – Tamara Miyanaga

“It is clear that that irrigated farms, any intensive part of the farming side of gets an amazing deal. Now that you look at all the issues, you realize that somehow, we have to run the M.D. We have to have the money that we need to take care of the roads and uh the water systems, all the different things that need to be done. I think it’s something we’re going to have to investigate and see if we can change. The argument that um that the dry land doesn’t abuse the roads because of the tonnes also would suggest that lease holders that own cattle are also very easy on the roads and now I think it needs to be looked at. We’re looking at developing a bunch of irrigated land in the M.D. and I’m not necessarily against that. I know it needs to be looked at, but I know we need to listen to all the sides. We just need to look at it and try to come up with something that’s fair. It needs to make sense. Maybe we do need more irrigated land. I just think we need to look at all the options.” – David Torrie 

“On our taxes, roughly 35-40% is education tax, and that goes right to Edmonton, but there’s a way that the County of Lethbridge had done it with the cattle and put on a head tax on cattle.  I don’t know how much revenue that’s brought in, but I know there’s a pile of cattle in the County of Lethbridge. Maybe that’s something to look at on irrigated land. – Ben Elfring

For those who might have been unable to attend, the election forum was livestreamed and can be found online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWMf_ZDGjYg

The municipal election is on Oct. 20.