Sorry, Justin Trudeau. Tough luck, Tom Mulcair. We’ve spent all the money. There’s nothing left.

That, in a nutshell, is the message Finance Minister Joe Oliver delivered to the opposition parties Wednesday in a particularly partisan economic update.

He confirmed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s latest bundle of baby bonus spending hikes and tax cuts will use up $5 billion of the $6.4 billion surplus that had been projected for next year.

And he dared the opposition Liberals and New Democrats to cancel any of those goodies.

Zeroing in particularly on Liberal Leader Trudeau, Oliver said anyone who claims to support Canada’s middle class should back the Conservative agenda — including Harper’s plan to let couples with children split their incomes for tax purposes.

Trudeau has already said a Liberal government would cancel that particular break, saying that it benefits only the well-to-do.

New Democrat Leader Mulcair is cagier. Speaking to reporters later, he said the NDP would try to get the government to amend its income-splitting plan to benefit more families.

But he also reconfirmed a pledge not to increase personal income taxes for anyone.

Translation: the NDP would maintain some form of income-splitting should it form government.

In economic terms, there was little new in Oliver’s update.

As expected, falling oil prices are eating into government revenues. The update predicts this will cost Ottawa about $2.5 billion next year in lost taxes.

And as expected, the Conservative government plans to vacuum up whatever surplus remains to finance its most recent election pledges.

At one point, it had been headed for a surplus in this fiscal year. But now, because of the tax and spending promises just announced by Harper, it expects a $2.9 billion deficit in 2014-15 followed by a relatively paltry surplus of $1.9 billion the next year.

Its fiscal projections, like those of all sitting governments, become rosier farther down the road.

That, too, was expected.

More interesting was the political message.

Like Jim Flaherty before him, Oliver tried to walk a delicate line between fear and self-congratulation.

On the one hand, he emphasized how badly the world economy is doing, noting that Europe is in dire straits and that even mighty China is slowing down.

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The political message the Conservatives hope to convey from this is that in a fragile world, Canadians need solid, stolid Harper at the helm.

Yet on the other hand, Oliver described the Canadian economy as a singular success – an oasis where jobs abound and incomes are rising.

He said that middle-class Canadians are doing particularly well — a direct challenge to the Liberals, who say the middle class is hurting.

More than once, he took specific aim at Trudeau.

“Now is not the time for risky experiments or a flighty trip back to discarded ideas and failed policies,” Oliver said at one point.

In the ancient past, before Harper became prime minister, economic updates were seen as a way to let MPs know the state of government finances.

That’s why, in those long-ago times, they were delivered in Parliament.

Now, economic updates are part of the never-ending campaign. They are unveiled wherever the government can be made to look good (in this case, before a largely business audience in Oliver’s home town of Toronto).

They may also be delivered, as was this one, at a time when Parliament is not sitting and the finance minister cannot be questioned.

Economic updates always had a political purpose. Now, politics is their sole purpose. The aim of this update was to put the opposition into what the Conservatives hope is an impossible bind.

Harper and his crew have spent or promised to spend virtually all of Ottawa’s fiscal surplus. Unless the opposition parties want to cancel tax breaks or put the country further into debt, there is little credible that they can promise.

That, in effect, was what Oliver said Wednesday. That was the point of his fiscal update.

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