On October 24 (halfway through the fiscal year) Alberta finance minister Travis Toews tabled the 2019-20 Alberta budget. The first provincial budget of Jason Kenney’s UCP government, it announced substantial spending cuts—specifically, a 2.8% reduction in nominal spending by 2022 (or 0.7% per year on average between now and then). In real per capita terms—i.e., after one accounts for both inflation and population growth—annual provincial spending by 2022 is projected to be 16.2% lower than it was last year.

Here are 10 other things to know about the budget:

Alberta’s public sector will be reduced by approximately 7.7%. There will be an anticipated loss of more than 16,000 public sector jobs over the next four years through a combination of layoffs and attrition. Five days after the budget, the Government also announced its intent to ask for ‘wage rollbacks’ from public sector workers.

There will be substantial cuts to Alberta’s health sector. Healthcare spending will grow by just 1% annually in nominal terms over the next four years—which amounts to a substantial cut in real terms, in light of anticipated population growth and inflation. It had been rising by 3% annually in recent years, due largely to population increases and an aging population. (The good news is that the budget did commit $100 million in new funding for a mental health and addictions strategy.)

K-12 education funding is being frozen at $8.2 billion until 2022, even though enrolment is projected to increase by 2.2% each year between now and then. This will likely lead to some combination of larger student-teacher ratios, layoffs, salary reductions and deferred facility maintenance. The good news is that there will be a 20% funding increase for a school nutrition program that feeds more than 30,000 students one meal per day. This amounts to a total of $5 million.¹ However, one should keep in mind that there are more than 700,000 K-12 students currently enrolled in Alberta schools.

Tuition fees are going up, and operating funding for colleges and universities is going down. Tuition fees for post-secondary students are expected to increase by up to 7% annually over the next four years, ending the tuition freeze brought in by Rachel Notley’s NDP government. Also, interest rates on student loans are increasing from prime to prime plus 1%. (It’s important to note that Alberta students already have the highest student debt in Canada .) For the current fiscal year, operating funding for post-secondary institutions will decrease by between 0% to 8%. And by 2022-23, provincial funding for operating budgets may see a decrease of a much greater magnitude— possibly as much as 20-25% lower than last year in nominal terms (that’s without taking into account rising enrolment or inflation). According to Alex Usher : “That would make these the single largest set of cuts to Canadian institutions since the Depression.”