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The possibility of a spring federal election appears unlikely after Finance Minister Joe Oliver announced Thursday that the 2015 budget will be delayed until at least April due to “market instability.”

A day after Oliver said the government’s surplus projection for 2015-16 factored in falling oil prices, the minister said Thursday he needs more time to determine what tumbling crude and growing economic headwinds mean for Canada before he can deliver the federal budget.

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“Given the current market instability, I will not bring forward our budget earlier than April,” Oliver said in his prepared speech Thursday to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. “We need all the information we can obtain before finalizing our decisions.”

It’s not only the federal budget date that is a moving target.

Retail giant Target’s pullout of Canada — and the 17,600 lost jobs that go with it — is the latest economic headache for a Tory government grappling with cratering oil prices and eroding federal revenues in an election year.