The Alberta government is freezing wages for all non-union government workers, said Finance Minister Joe Ceci on Wednesday.

“Salaries for civil service managers will be frozen for two years, and we will be asking the entire public sector to share in this effort.”

Oh, wait. That wasn’t Joe Ceci on Wednesday; that was then-Premier Ed Stelmach on Oct. 14, 2009.

The money saved represents just .057 per cent of the government’s $50-billion budget.

Let’s try again: “The government of Alberta today introduced a three-year management salary freeze, effective April 1, which will save taxpayers $54 million.”

Sorry, got it wrong again. That was from a government news release on Feb. 19, 2013 when Alison Redford was premier.

Here’s Joe Ceci on Wednesday. Really, it is: “The freeze will be in effect for two years and we expect it will save government approximately $28.5 million per year.”

You’ve got to feel a little sorry for Alberta’s 7,000 non-union civil servants. They’re always the first to be tossed under the fiscal bus when the government runs into financial trouble.

They’re the first because, politically speaking, they’re so eminently tossable. They can’t put up a struggle. They aren’t protected by unions, so governments can act unilaterally against them. Even though some on the low end of the scale make a relatively modest $70,000 a year, there are some, such as deputy ministers, who are making upwards of $300,000.

The move is designed to put pressure on unionized government workers to accept wage freezes.

And it’s not as if anybody is about to stage a protest rally in favour of senior civil servants on the front steps of the legislature any time soon (as much as I’d like to see that).