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That Alberta’s finances are in rough shape is no surprise. The MacKinnon report was commissioned by the United Conservative government as a road map to fixing that. But buried within its many pages are facts and busted myths about the province, which might actually manage to take most Albertans by surprise. Here are three of the most interesting ones:

1. Alberta’s cost of living is really not that high.

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Alberta’s alleged “high cost of living” has been used in the past to justify such things as lavish public sector salaries and high per-capita government spending, the report says. But, it concludes, it’s actually not true.

Not if you compare provincial taxes and utilities in various cities across the provinces. And not having a sales tax or health premiums considerably reduces Albertans’ tax burden.

More expensive living “may have been true at different times in Alberta but is not the case today,” says the report. “In fact, Alberta’s overall cost of living — measured by a comparison of provincial taxes and utilities in key cities in each of the provinces — is lower than the comparison provinces (B.C., Ontario and Quebec).”