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With still no budget date announced, Finance Minister Joe Oliver has been remarkably scarce during question period.

Yet Oliver will be accessible to a privileged group next week: Not Members of Parliament, but members of the Economic Club of Canada.

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On Wednesday, the club will host an event titled “The State of the Canadian Economy with Joe Oliver, Minister of Finance.”

The lunch at the Royal York will cost Economic Club members $100 each. Non-members must pony up $124 to hear the finance minister deliver his thoughts on Canada’s economy.

Of course, only embittered malcontents would dare gripe about a Bay Street audience paying to get an update on our economic state while parliamentarians await Oliver’s budget.

Lest there be any doubt about the blue-chip nature of the event, its sponsors include American Express, Fed Ex, Glaxxo Smith Kline, Sun Life Financial and other corporate venerables.

It is booked for the day before, according to the Globe, Oliver is slated meet with a group of private-sector economists to, presumably, solicit advice on the federal budget, whenever he might deliver it.

Asked for comment on the choice of venue, Oliver’s spokesperson, Melissa Lantsman, wrote only, “Minister Oliver was in the house yesterday. Stay tuned for a budget date.”

Just last week, Lantsman told colleague Stephen Maher that Oliver had been absent from the House because he was busy preparing the budget.