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His very abrupt resignation came just a few weeks later.

Mr. Oliver “is a team player, he’s not going to cut against the grain,” said Finn Poschmann, vice president of research at the C.D. Howe Institute. “He’s going to steer the path set by the government.”

One reason the Harper government may be determined to follow through on its election promise is that fiscal reality means it has few other options.

According to Craig Alexander, chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank, if the government is successful in its vow to eliminate the deficit in 2015, it will likely be left with only a small surplus.

“The problem is, it’s not going to be huge, and that means that government will have very little fiscal room to make large-scale tax cuts,” said Mr. Alexander. “And that leads them in the path of [more modest] targeted measures” such as income splitting.

Simply put, much as the government would like to ease the load for tax payers across the board, to do so would be too costly. So if all it can afford to offer is income splitting, that’s what it will do.

Still, Mr. Oliver isn’t being very specific with the tax plan and mostly stuck to the Conservatives main talking economic points Monday. It could be that there was little-or-no warning he would be thrust into his new job.

“So, I was sitting on a plane at Pearson Airport, just before take-off to Vancouver, when my BlackBerry buzzed, which is not terribly unusual.

“It was an email from my staff who said the Prime Minister wanted to speak to me, but no indication what it was about and that was unusual. Then seconds later another email arrives, this time from my wife saying the PM wants to speak to me.”

It wasn’t until the plane landed five hours later that he learned about his new portfolio.

The lofty ministerial appointment was not something Mr. Oliver went out looking for or was expecting. Rather it was handed to him, and he took it because that was the job that needed to be done.