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A premier who refuses to restore funding for Alberta’s Child and Youth Advocate isn’t likely to bend to any pressure at all.

Bring him your demonstrations, your placards, your crying babies — Jim Prentice won’t waver from his promised agenda of wrenching Alberta’s finances into shape.

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Now we also hear the first solid details of the premier’s overall fiscal plan.

This means serious pain across the public sector and far beyond, with job losses and cuts to core services.

The government will cut $2 billion from operating expenses, fully five per cent of the $40 billion now being spent on everything from health care to tourism.

This will be an absolute cut, finance officials say — a true drop of five per cent from this year’s spending levels.

In real economic terms, the cut is closer to nine per cent because population growth plus inflation is supposed to be nearly four per cent in the 2015-16 budget year.

Prentice is ordering a paradigm shift. Sometimes it’s hard to realize he’s completely serious about it.

This means serious pain across the public sector and far beyond, with job losses and cuts to core services.