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While the reasons for that spend are not nefarious — high public sector wages are a reflection of the province’s oil-fuelled private sector ones — there is no doubt that the previous PC government bought labour peace by jacking up salaries as long as oil royalties continued to fill the gap between low taxes and high spending.

Well, the good times are gone.

In the absence of oil royalties, the only thing papering over the gap now is debt. According to local economists, Alberta’s debt isn’t unmanageable, per se. But it’s only sustainable as long as the government can keep its spending growth curves, and its labour costs, in particular, under control.

If the economy as a whole continues to claw its way back, and the NDP can keep a handle on wages, over time Alberta will be able to slowly close in on the deficit without catastrophic spending cuts.

The overall picture isn’t exactly rosy. There is a reckoning coming for the provincial budget if the oil prices stay at their current levels indefinitely. The province is eventually going to need to look at short-term cuts, long-term wage stagnation, tax increases, or a combination of all three in order to replace the lost boom-time oil revenues.

But small improvements now, even if they seem to have only a marginal impact on spending in any given year, will put the government as a whole in a much stronger financial situation over the next 10.

In short, the province’s public sector workers would do well to play kindly with this government. Alberta workers have done well here over the past two decades, and they should know it. Those who believe the self-serving reports that their comparatively high wages are some kind of right-wing/Statistics Canada fiction are welcome totry their luck elsewhere.

Meanwhile, an NDP that has stanched the outlandish spending growth that had become rampant under the PCs will be able to make a much more credible pitch to the Alberta electorate in 2019. Particularly if the economy continues to improve.

Ceci may be coming to the bargaining table with a basket bereft of the usual goodies. But United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney is coming to this picnic with the knife.

• Email: jgerson@nationalpost.com | Twitter: jengerson