OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper named Natural Resources Minister and veteran banker Joe Oliver as finance minister on Wednesday and pledged that he would balance the federal budget in 2015 as outgoing minister Jim Flaherty had promised.
Oliver will be replaced at natural resources by a junior science minister, Greg Rickford, who will retain responsibility for developing mineral-rich northern Ontario. One of Oliver's key responsibilities had been promotion of the Keystone XL pipeline to the United States and other crude oil lines.
