The Canadian Dollar is like the South African Rand

By William Corden

I just went down to the local foreign exchange shop to buy some US Dollars for a trip I’ll be taking next week…. I found out to my surprise that it now costs Can$1.4169 to buy a single greenback dollar, or one Canadian Dollar now gets you about 70 cents US

Back in 2007 these currencies were at parity.

In 2011, 1 Canadian dollar actually bought you $1.06 of our neighbour’s currency, because of the strength of our energy production and commodities power.

Since then it’s fallen off a cliff, mainly due to ridiculous green policies, and its current parlous state makes travel to the US- something that used to be a cheap getaway- no longer worth the effort.

Inflation in the US has made most items more expensive than they are here at home.

So cross border shopping, when combined with the third degree you get from the border guards doesn’t have the pull it once had.

If the Canadian political system (no matter what stripe it may be) could get its act together and release our energy and mineral resources we’d be back at parity again in no time.

By the way, the once invincible South African Rand has depreciated by more than 50% in the past 15 years . it used to be backed by gold but somehow all that gold has gotten into the wrong hands  (I wonder who?).

People who live middle class lives there can’t afford to get out because the money from their quite often opulent homes translates into peanuts if they want to re-settle elsewhere.

I don’t think we match the South African government for corruption but we certainly more than match them in economic incompetence.