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The Liberal talking point on the Harper government is that it has run out of gas.

The oil price collapse has left Stephen Harper “lurching about,” said Justin Trudeau.

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The budget delay “sends a message of real confusion on their part a lack of confidence, a lack of direction,” said former Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale.

Nine years to the day after first being elected, it’s true this is not a government in the first flush of youth. But neither did the Prime Minister look as if he is panicking when he spoke in St. Catharines, Ont., Thursday.

He reaffirmed his faith in Conservative Classic, the original formula of balanced budgets, open markets and low taxes that he credited with seeing Canada through the recession.

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He said the tumbling oil price, and the Bank of Canada’s subsequent downgrading of growth projections, were significant, but that the “oil industry is not the entire Canadian economy – it may benefit other parts of the economy.”