Skip to main content

So if the CAD is not a petro currency why is it falling?

OK,

Over the past few weeks there's been a debat in Canada as to whether the Canadian economy was facing the "dutch disease", which for those who don't know -- the Dutch economy was decimated when the country discovered oil, that drove up its currency and killed its manufacturing sector (we're talking the late 50's and early 60s).

First and foremost the whole "dutch disease" has always been a side bet, even in the Netherlands -- other factors played an equally important role in the destruction of the manufacturing sector; bad management, bad labor practices and bad government policies -- added to a strong currency caused by the the oil & gas sector.

For some reason Westerners  (Canadian -- not global)  have taken the view that the strong commodity sector -- and oil in particular have nothing to do with the strength of the CAD, of course this is complete bullshit, but where they are right, its not the only reason.  Several studies have showed that manufacturing has been on a long decline -- while oil prices have only been a factor over the past 5 or so years.

I remember being in Calgary when oil was around $34/bbl -- wealth was just not there, the same guys with the same assets today are multi-millionaires and talking as if this had always been the case.

Anyway, riddle me this, if the CAD is not a petro currency (where the movement of the currency is tied to the price of oil) what has been happening to the CAD over the past few weeks.  As oil prices have weakened due to Europe and China, the CAD has come under pressure.

Now, Mr. Mulcair has never been one to take a very nuanced vue of the world -- in fact, that's what made him so successful.  It was his point that oil was hurting the economy of Ontario and Quebec -- while this is partly true, other natural ressources are also to blame here -- we are talking grain, metals and minerals here.  But the overall reality is that Ontario manufacturing has been declining for a very very long time. But sound bits are sound bits -- now Western Canadians (not always people with the thickest skin) are very offended...

In reality Canada is not Kuwait/Saudi Arabia, but the reality of our country is that what's made it strong over the past decade has been things that are heavy and heavy and hurt when you drop them on your foot.  Canada is increasingly a natural ressource play -- that's just the truth (look at the composition of the TSX).


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu