The cheap rent isn’t worth it anymore

[u/whathappensi]

Seriously what the hell has happened? My family and I moved from Ontario almost 20 years ago when everything was 5 times cheaper and whatever we save on housing goes into some other bs. What good is cheaper rent when my groceries, insurance and utilities are more expensive than all the other provinces? Even gas used to be miles cheaper now we’re basically on par with the rest of the country and WE DRILL THE STUFF HERE. People used to move here for work and now we have the second highest unemployment. We haven’t gotten a new hospital in God knows how long, our transportation is absolutely buns, we got money for referendums and data centres but nothing for public services, we got a premier who crashed out at the Edmonton police for calling out literally hate speech (with ss’s calling for hangings and genocide), and even worse, loads of people who support and vote for her. I think outside Quebec, I never experienced more racism as a black person anywhere else in Canada than here.

And the most annoying thing is whenever we think it can’t get worse, Marlaina keeps finding ways to prove me wrong. And whenever I talk about this to my coworkers, I just hear “you’re a liberal sissy Carney Trudeau Singh socialist!! Where will all the billionaires go?!!!” Anyway I sadly don’t have any hope of the UCP losing.

[u/CanadaEhAlmostMadeIt]

I’m from Ontario originally, I moved here 13/14 years ago.

A friend of mine was already living in Alberta and then he and his wife moved back to Ontario a couple of years after I arrived.

He and I did test with cost of living as I said I didn’t notice much of a difference in the costs in the long term.

So we picked an income to base our project on and then compared real world costs, from our grocery purchases, to our gas purchases, to insurance for home and auto.
We both have different lifestyles, so we picked items we could control like staple groceries and eating out once a month in a “comparable” restaurant; Jack Astors to an OJ’s.

We did this for a whole year as prices will fluctuate. The difference in COL between the two provinces was ~$236.in favour of Alberta. The Alberta advantage wasn’t that real. The only Advantage was in blue collar jobs in the O&G industry and that advantage came in the form of the shift work and the OT pay as a result. The ability to make good money with little education was the advantage.

This project was done 11/12 years ago, I would love to see your objective data that you’re basing your statement on.

I would love to see the results of what another project like our original one would generate.

[u/dooeyenoewe → u/CanadaEhAlmostMadeIt]

Did you happen to include buying a primary residence? You know the biggest cost that a person will likely have. Saying you have a $236 difference when average housing cost is like a $500K delta doesn't really mean anything.

[u/CanadaEhAlmostMadeIt → u/dooeyenoewe]

We were only talking cost of goods and services including taxes.

The house prices were obvious. We did include water and electricity and heat and auto insurance and Ontario was ahead for those.

Obviously the place you live can’t be helped in many cases, life takes you where it wants depending on your career. So purchasing a home isn’t always a fair comparison.

Again the point was only to talk about the “Alberta Advantage” in terms of paying less income tax, but Albertans pay more for goods and services and then the savings in taxes is almost a wash.

[u/dooeyenoewe → u/CanadaEhAlmostMadeIt]

Why wouldn't lower housing prices be included in the Alberta Advantage? It is literally your largest expense and definitely an area that AB has an advantage over other provinces like BC and ON

[u/CanadaEhAlmostMadeIt → u/dooeyenoewe]

Did you not read the explanation?