Loonie Flashback

Guess they aren't too eager to adopt a blended currency now. Even though the Canadian business class has spent the past two elections and last six years promoting an integrated North American economy.

Yesterday

December 3, 2001 - The loonie's days may be numbered. Earlier this month a poll revealed more than half of Canadian business leaders think Canada should consider adopting the U.S. dollar. Conducted just after the Canadian dollar hit a record low of 62.30¢ U.S. on Nov. 9, the poll also showed that, even if Canada doesn't adopt the greenback, many companies will increasingly set prices for big-ticket items in U.S. dollars.

Today

The commodity boom, and the price of oil in particular, is what's been driving the Canadian dollar to an all-time high. If you did two lines on a chart, tracing the price of oil and the value of the loonie this year alone, you would find they track very closely together. After bottoming out at around $52 at the beginning of the year, the price of oil has rocketed to the mid-90s. And the Canadian dollar, which was thought to be pretty fully priced at 85 cents back in January, crossed $1.08 briefly yesterday, hitting a new all time high. That's a 21-per-cent appreciation relative to the U.S. dollar in only 10 months. Wow.

Only six years ago, the loonie was languishing in the low 60s, back when oil was in the low 20s, which only makes the point. "They are very closely linked," says Jeremy Leonard, an economist with the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

Nothing, it seems, can stop the dollar, so long as nothing can stop the price of oil.

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The Peasants Are Revolting!

Gee Thomas, I seem to remember that as the crisis hit the auto industry last fall the Prime Minister not only did not have time, but outright refused, to talk to Buzz Hargrove of the CAW.

But of course Tom, can I call you Tom, goes even further and from his elitist ivory tower, looking down cries out; The Peasants Are Revolting!

The demonstrators are also decrying the secrecy surrounding the meeting and that the only people with access to the three leaders at the summit are 30 chief executives of some of the biggest corporations in the world.

But Thomas D'Aquino, president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, said getting access to political leaders is not the only way to be heard.

"I do not say to myself, 'If I don't get an hour with the prime minister in the next six months, I'm going to go out and protest and reject the system outright,' " he said. "I don't do that because civilized human beings — those who believe in democracy — don't do that."

“The peasants are revolting!”

“They always have been.”

Clearly Tom believes he and his pals represent the ne plus ultra of bourgeois civilization.

Democracy for him is private luncheons and back room meetings between Heads of State and the executive committee of the ruling class.

And for the rest of us it's the same old crumbs from the same old cake.


SEE:

Police Black Bloc

Jelly Bean Summit

Kim Campbell on North American Union

How The MacDonald Commission Changed Canada

Nationalism Will Not Stop North American Union




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