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“We start from the premise that we’re going balance the budget by 2015. And it may need some more sacrifice in budgeting among various ministries of the government,” he told reporters in Ottawa.

“What we do is we not only look at the revenue side but we look at tax loopholes, for example. We’ve been closing tax loopholes in every one of the budgets that I have done since 2006. And we continue to do that,” he said.

“We will also look at program spending. That’s true, too. And we can do some more tightening there, if necessary.

Mr. Flaherty was speaking after Statistics Canada said the economy slipped into reverse last month but still managed to eke out a gain for the final quarter of 2012 and end the year with total growth of 1.8% — down from 2.6% a year earlier.

Now, 2013 is shaping up as another under-performing year, with the central bank calling for 2% growth, but private sector analysts are expecting a much weaker performance as the global economy faces continued threats from Europe and fiscal uncertainty in the United States.

Statistics Canada said gross domestic product edged up 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2012, the same pace as the July-to-September period. On an annualized basis, the economy grew by 0.6% in the fourth quarter, compared with 0.1% in the United States, which annualizes all of its quarterly growth numbers.

Canada’s fourth-quarter annualized growth was the weakest since a 0.8% decline in the second quarter of 2011, which was heavily impacted by the tsunami in Japan.