Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Wednesday the country cannot go back into yearly deficit financing, but he said the federal government wouldn't try to "engineer" a budget surplus.

"We cannot go back to the 1970s, '80s, early '90s in Canada, where deficits became part of the fiscal framework … year after year," Flaherty said to reporters after he made a luncheon speech to a joint meeting of the Empire Club and the Canadian Club in Toronto.

He added that Ottawa also will not try to produce a surplus "on the back of Canadian families," the provinces and territories.

Flaherty said the government has several steps it can take to control spending, including examining public sector workforce salaries and the "unsustainable" rate of growth in the equalization program with the provinces and territories.

Flaherty has said recently he is confident the country will run a surplus for the current fiscal year, but he added that he would not completely rule a deficit out.

The federal government ran a $1.7-billion deficit in August but reported a $1.2 billion surplus for the April-to-August period.

Flaherty acknowledged that the revenue side of the budget may not be easy to predict, given the sharp fall in the price of oil and the volatility in the Canadian dollar on market recently.

"The goal here is to manage the economy responsibly for Canadian families [and] Canadian businesses," he said.