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Iveson seems to think this was the Klein government being unfair to Edmonton – hitting it hard because it voted overwhelmingly Liberal rather than Tory, at the time. “While other parts of the province got attention, Edmonton bore the brunt of public service cuts,” Iveson said in a revisionist version of Alberta’s political and economic history.

Indeed, Iveson insisted that rather than single Edmonton out, the new Kenney government should be grateful the capital city bailed the rest of Alberta out during the recession. The city helped buffer Alberta against the worst of the recession, in Iveson’s version, by creating 40 per cent of the new jobs in Alberta over the past two years.

So there, Mr. Kenney. Take that!

This is typical of the disconnected thinking of “progressives” like Iveson. Those are two sides of the same thing, but I guarantee you no New Democrat or NDP-friendly mayor would see it that way.

Edmonton is always going to bear the brunt of any public-sector cuts. After all, our city has twice as many public-sector workers per capita as anywhere else in the province. We are Government City. Any party committed to making the provincial government leaner – in removing the bloat, stopping the hemorrhaging of red ink and balancing the budget – HAS to cut jobs in Edmonton disproportionately.

Our city is where the fat is the thickest.

On the flip side, Edmonton doesn’t get to take credit for the jobs created here in the last two years because most of them were taxpayer funded. They were not created as a result of some effective municipal economic development strategy, or broad-based tax cuts or incentives that attracted gobs of private investment.