Short answer: no.
An article in today's Financial Post suggests some economists think that currency instability is "now a serious concern" for Canada. They are wrong.
The rapid drop has been exacerbated by crumbling oil prices and monetary divergence, as a strong American labour market and solid economic growth led the U.S. Federal Reserve to increase interest rates in December.
Well, of course crumbling oil prices have had an impact on the US price of the Canuck Buck.
This all seems like hooey and empty hand-wringing to me:
- The Loon is a petro-currency and moves with the price of oil. A year ago, nobody but nobody predicted the price of oil to go below $30/bbl. People aren't buying as much of our oil, and they're paying much less for what they do buy. It should come as no surprise that the demand for the Canuck buck has dropped off the shelf and that hence the foreign value of it has also dropped precipitously.
- The US Fed announced a raise in the interest rate, and that has led short-term capital flows to move toward the US. That part is correct. But by a lot of measures (especially real growth and labour-force participation rates), the US economy isn't doing all that well itself. The Canadian economy seems healthier in many ways (aside from all that massive gubmnt debt and aside from what looks like ridiculous fiscal mismanagement in Alberta and Ontario).
- Businesses trading internationally can and do hedge against currency fluctuations. Those that don't sometimes win and sometimes lose. I have a friend who runs a small-ish manufacturing business, and he hedges all his US dollar transactions in the forward market through his small-town bank. I expect he has taught the bankers there a few things. If people don't want to gamble about the short-term swings in a currency, they can hedge against those swings in the forward markets.