Nova Scotia Comes Alive in 2011!

That %#@*&! Canadian Dollar!

1 Canadian dollar = 0.949217 U.S. dollars

Okay, so now we have a few bragging rights because our dollar is stretching toward equity with the U.S. one. Now those trips to Florida and New York flow smoothly without those last minute mental calculations before buying something. Here is a short history of how much Canuck money is needed to buy a US greenback:

1971-01-01  1.0118

1975-01-01  0.9948

1980-01-01  1.1640

1985-01-01  1.3240

1990-01-01  1.1720

1995-01-01  1.4132

2000-01-01  1.4486

2005-01-01  1.2248

2007-07-01  1.0502

Now it’s under 95 cents. But who’s moaning? Take a stroll down to your tourism operators and you may see some long faces. Many are looking toward Europe and Central Canada because the Americans are staying home.

Is this just because of the dollar? No, of course not. There is the passport issue where American officials are demanding that Americans going abroad have one – as well as Canadians heading south. Then there are security issues at the border, those color-coded alerts which can tie up traffic for hours. And one of the big bombs is the price of fuel. These all take tolls on the once north-flowing Yankee river of tourists.

Another big spender is the real estate buyer. In 2002 an American could come up to Nova Scotia and get two bonuses. the first was cheap land, way less than in the lower 48. And the cream was buying a $145,000 waterfront property (twice or three times as much down south) for around $100,000US.

The one thing to remember is that we are rising against the American dollar but not as quickly against the UK pound or the Euro. That means that there is still a large European and British market who still benefit from our currency.

For example, in a London fish and chip shop the national lunch sells for 6.95, which looks about what it is in Canada, $6.95. But that’s pounds! When you look at your charge card bill in the next month it shows: $14.78CDN. That’s expensive enough to give up fish for the trip!