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In K-12 education, it urges that some funding be linked not to enrolment, but to how well a school board follows government directives. The Alberta Teachers’ Association will fight from the staff rooms to the streets.

Even with all of these measures, and many more, the report says the debt could not be paid off until the mid-2040s.

The report takes no account of how much cutting could be prevented with a sales tax. The panel, under its UCP mandate, was told not to consider taxation.

The result is a fiscal conservative’s dream battle plan, very clear in its language, extremely tough in its call to immediate action in almost every area of spending.

Early reaction was predictably heated. NDP deputy leader Sarah Hoffman accused the UCP of preparing to break its election promise not to cut spending for health and education.

Notably absent from the big news conference was the premier himself, who appears, for now, to be leaving some space between himself and the recommendations. The UCP’s immediate strategic task is to figure out how far the government can or should go.

The report itself is both blunt and accurate in its assessment of how successive governments — mostly conservative — have bungled Alberta’s finances.

Our health care and other systems cost more, and often deliver less, than comparable services in Ontario, B.C. and Quebec.

Public servants are better paid, even though the report argues that Alberta’s cost of living is often lower when tax rates are included.