UPDATED: By the pricking of Wells’ thumbs ...

... something sneaky this way comes.

Open locks, whoever knocks!

Is it a mini-budget? The fall fiscal update? Jim Flaherty’s hotly anticipated plan to pay down the deficit in five years or less? We don’t know! That’s what makes it all so fascinating.

Anyway, I’ll update this post as more information comes out, but feel free to speculate furiously in the comments.

UPDATE: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a blueprint! According to the Globe’s Steve Chase, that is:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will this afternoon unveil a new plan demonstrating how the Harper government would return deficit-swamped Ottawa to balanced budgets, seeking to bolster the Conservatives’ fiscal stewardship credentials as an apparently inevitable fall election nears.

Mr. Flaherty, eager to craft a political legacy in which Ottawa’s plunge into deficit figures less prominently, will lay out a blueprint to get back into the black in the years ahead.

The Tories will promise they can balance the budget without raising taxes or cutting transfers to the provinces and expect to get back into the black by 2015.