Article content continued

Indeed, Prentice’s short premiership already includes some notable broken promises. Before last month’s budget was tabled, the premier was warning Albertans to brace for massive austerity measures. So convincing was he on this point that he succeeded in luring the leader of the Wildrose Party and much of her caucus into crossing the floor. Yet instead of tabling “the most significant budget in modern times,” the document is heavily weighted to raising taxes, compared to its relatively modest spending restraint.

After releasing the budget, Prentice assured Albertans it was “a good plan” and that he would stick to it. “People know me by my reputation, by a lifetime of work,” he said. “When I say I am going to do something, I will do it.” Then the premier defied his own government’s fixed-election-date law, in order to send voters to the polls a year early.

Perhaps in response to the polls, Prentice seemed to tack to the right a few degrees Wednesday, announcing that a Tory government would freeze public-sector wages and hiring until the budget is balanced in 2018, and cut a quarter of the government’s agencies, boards and commissions by year’s end. Prentice’s team says he was merely fleshing out what is already in the budget, but he sure seems to have caught the province’s unions by surprise.