The fall sitting of the Alberta legislature has wrapped up, delivering 16 bills and a budget while serving up acrimony, controversy and a dash of pettiness.

Premier Jason Kenney’s government wrapped up the eight-week session in the early hours of Thursday morning.

In that time, it passed its first budget featuring an $8.7-billion deficit and plans to ratchet back or freeze spending in some areas to balance the books by 2023.

There was legislation to fire Election Commissioner Lorne Gibson, who had been investigating Kenney’s United Conservative party for fundraising violations and had already levied more than $200,000 in fines.

The government rewrote the rules on farms so that small operations will no longer have to follow employment standards or have workplace insurance.

Rules were also passed giving the province power to use billing rules to get more new doctors to practise in underserviced rural areas.

Government house leader Jason Nixon said the pace of change was rapid and will continue.

“Since we formed government seven months ago, 162 of our [election] platform commitments have been met or are substantially underway,” Nixon said.

The government found itself at loggerheads with public sector unions.

It announced it will seek wage rollbacks in current wage arbitration talks with some unions, while thousands of health care support workers, nurses and lab technicians were told they may soon be losing their jobs as the government works to reduce costs.

NDP house leader Deron Bilous said Kenney campaigned to protect frontline health care, not cut it. And he said Gibson’s firing paints a disturbing motif for the first year of the UCP government.

The government overhauled or ended some legislation passed by the previous NDP government, and question periods were often acrimonious and insulting.

The UCP called the NDP the worst government in Alberta history for ballooning the debt to $63 billion, while the NDP called Kenney the most corrupt premier in Canadian history for firing the election commissioner.

NDP Leader Rachel Notley was even kicked out of the chamber for refusing to apologize for accusing the government of misleading the public over the bill that ousted Gibson.