Is Canada’s cinderella province now the belle of the ball?

Yes, for a number of reasons, Saskatchewan is all the rage these days.

Suddenly, people are saying that Saskatchewan is not just “a good place to come from’’ but a great place to relocate to.

Nowadays, telling your neighbour that you’re moving to Saskatchewan will elicit looks of envy and curiosity rather than incredulity and pity.

Saskatchewan is, in a word, “hot.” The burning question is: “Why?”

Certainly, it’s not the weather.

Global warming or not, Sas-katchewan still boasts some of the lowest temperatures, highest wind-chill factors and worst blizzards in Canada.

The scenery hasn’t changed, either. Plains and prairies, not mountains and foothills, still dominate the landscape. But even though the altitude’s the same, the attitude is different.

It could be the result of the provincial NDP government’s ongoing campaign to promote Saskatchewan as a “great place to work, live and invest.” The advertising campaign has been seen on billboards in Calgary, talk shows in Vancouver and transit buses in Winnipeg.

The message to Calgarians stuck in gridlock on the Deerfoot Trail is simple: if you lived in Regina, you’d be home by now. Or: that $400,000 fixer-upper you just purchased in Stampede Park could have bought you a monster home in Saskatoon — as well as a cottage and a boat.

Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert and Industry and Resources Minister Eric Cline have been stumping across the western provinces, selling Saskatchewan to anyone who will listen. With housing prices less than half the national average, the lowest electricity, natural gas, telephone and auto insurance (all of which are Crown-owned) rates in the country, and an economic boom second only to Alberta’s, Saskatchewan indeed has lots to offer.

And lots are what many Alberta and British Columbia residents are after these days.

Realtors in Regina and Saskatoon tell tales of clients, usually former Saskatchewan residents, selling their homes in Alberta and B.C., pulling up stakes and moving back to the promised land — Saskatchewan.

Even the numbers are starting to tell the story. Population data from 2006 indicate Saskatchewan received about 3,700 migrants from Alberta from July 2006 through September. Of course, 4,700 Saskatchewanians left the province for Alberta during the same period, but the numbers are clearly showing that migration out of Saskatchewan is slowing and migration into Saskatchewan is growing.

And it’s not just cheap housing that is drawing people to the province. Year-over-year job growth has been running around 20,000 for the past 12 months. In fact, there are more jobs than people to fill them, as Cline has noted on several occasions.

Certainly, others are sitting up and taking notice. Newspaper columnists in Winnipeg and Calgary have recently written glowingly of the “Saskatchewan advantage.”

As one Winnipeg Free Press writer recently noted, Saskatchewan is “kicking our butt in job creation, economic growth, wages and tax rates, thanks almost entirely to its burgeoning oil industry.’’

Well, that is partly true. Sas-katchewan’s oil industry — the second-largest in Canada, in terms of production — has been booming. In the first 10 months of 2006, the province pumped out a record $6.6 billion worth of oil and $1.6 billion worth of natural gas.

More important, however, sales, personal income and business taxes are now lower than those in Manitoba, and Saskatchewan does not have Manitoba’s hated payroll tax.

Although Alberta is impossible to beat for its low taxes, successive waves of tax reform — starting with personal income taxes in 2000, business taxes last spring and a two-percentage-point cut in the provincial sales tax this past autumn — have kept Saskatchewan’s taxes within spitting distance of Alberta’s.

Yes, Saskatchewan has it all — competitive taxes, affordable housing, plentiful jobs, a booming economy, a low cost of living and an enviable quality of life.

Now, if we could just do something about those winters. IE