[2][4] The MacKinnon Report provided 26 recommendations to the Government of Alberta to address the delivery of services and the province's economic competitiveness.
[12] The MacKinnon report said that "implementing or raising taxes isn’t the solution"—the problem with Alberta's finances is that the provincial "government is overspending".
[14] A September 4 article compared the report to the rhetoric and political arguments used by Ralph Klein, who was premier of Alberta from 1992 to 2006, and who eliminated the deficit by implementing "massive cuts to government spending and services" at the "expense of hospitals, roads, light rail transit lines, and investing in better health-care services or education".
[16] In January 2020, CTV News reported the Premier's Office directed the blue ribbon panel chair MacKinnon to issue an op-ed titled "If we make measured choices now, we can avoid draconian cuts later" drafted by staff in the Premier's Office to be published in the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal in May 2019.
[17][18] Lori Williams, a political science professor at Mount Royal University and Jared Wesley, a political science professor at the University of Alberta raised questions on the independence of the panel's investigation and findings, stating the assistance and correspondence between MacKinnon and the Premier's Office undermined the independence of the panel.