Canadian Dollar Reaches Parity with US$

boxlight writes in to mark the occasion when the Canadian dollar hit parity with the US dollar for the first time in 31 years. The article notes that Canada has run a budget surplus in each of the last 10 years. "This is actually bad for the profits of Canadian corporations that sell their products to the US for US dollars (Canada sells far more to the US that the US sells to Canada); but it means us Canucks will get cheaper Macs as the Canadian prices get closer to US prices with every new release."

Comments

Re:what to do with "Canadian dollar jokes"?

[ShieldW0lf]

Don't get too comfortable with this state of affairs.

What will happen when we stop digging sand for oil to pipe to the US?

What will happen to the value of all those homes in Alberta when this highly inefficient short term industry dries up? Because there are a ton of young people out there who have two mortgages on those highly overvalued homes, expecting that they are going to have some long term worth. Will anyone want to buy them and live in them later? Probably not.

Every barrel of oil we sell the US from those sands represents a vast amount of human effort by Canadians that doesn't do anything to further the interests of our country, and actually leaves us a polluted mess of land that we'll later have to clean up.

Re:what to do with "Canadian dollar jokes"?

[ashitaka]

Always someone brings up this point but it doesn't reflect the reality of common parlance. In a myriad of languages and dialects of English anything "American" is from the States and the question "Are you American?" implicity specifies a citizen of the United States of America. Someone from Canada is Canadian, from Bolivia is Bolivian, from Peru is Peruvian. None of these people will refer to themselves as American. (And a lot are more than happy not to do so)

A citizen of the USA in various languages:
French: Américain
German: Amerikanisch
Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc.: Americano
Japanese: (A-meh-ri-ka-jin)
Chinese: (Mei-gwo-ren) (Mei-gwo = Transliteration of America + "Beautiful Country" characters)

I think you get the picture.

Now will the right wing

[Bullfish]

believe that Bush is running your country into the ground?

Re:Now will the right wing

[Bluesman]

The right wing has believed this since the beginning. See Pat Buchanan, et. al. The Republican partisans who make up about 20% of the population are the ones who believe Bush can do no wrong, and nothing will change their mind.

Those of us who used to be Republicans and paid the slightest attention know that Republicans and Democrats are both socialists at the core. You can see this just by looking at the terms of debate about health care. There's no argument that universal health care is a bad idea, unconstitutional, etc., although some Republicans still give lip service to that (except Ron Paul). They're all arguing over who has the better plan to implement it.

Re:what to do with "Canadian dollar jokes"?

[GeckoX]

Um...do you have any idea how fast we've been blowing through the oil sands in Alberta?
In 2000, there basically was NO oil export coming out of Alberta. Take a look at a recent satellite image of northern Alberta...go ahead, I'll wait...

So how old did you figure you'd be by the time we've finished selling our soul?
Sorry, it's already sold. What I meant was, until we've finished delivering the soul we've already sold.

Re:Article is useless without a graph!

[technicalandsocial]

Although like most US policy of the last 6 years, instead of fixing the issue they plan to take over others. Soon Canada, the U.S. and Mexico will share the "Amero" as currency within the North American Union.