"You could imagine the situation is worse today than in the 1990s," Doyle said earlier this week, referring to the last time the loonie saw a prolonged decline. "We're much more dependent on oil now than we were in the past."
Douglas Porter, chief economist at the Bank of Montreal, also weighed in on the issue and he believes a dip below 70 cents U.S. "is more of a psychological threshold for the average Canadian rather than a critical measure."
Porter said the biggest impact may be that average Canadians "will feel like something is amiss or that they're poorer" as a result of the drop. He said food and gas prices may rise as a result of the struggling loonie, and Canadians vacationing in the U.S. will no doubt feel a pinch.
"My bigger concern is it might start to show up in many other prices... like clothing prices, or book prices, or car prices," Porter said.
While the Canadian energy industry is suffering a slowdown, other sectors such as film production have benefited, as many U.S. producers prefer shooting in Toronto or Vancouver in order to take advantage of the drop in the Canadian dollar. The cattle industry has also benefited, because although the Canadian dollar is down, the price of cattle is still maintained at the levels of the U.S. Last year, Canadian cattle exports to the United States totaled $1.5 billion. However, Canadians often escape the cold weather and travel to warmer areas of the United States, although they soon discover their money will not give them parity they used to have.
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