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Canadian Dollar (CAD) Exchange Rates on 22nd February 2012 (22/02/2012)

Exchange rate full table

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• North/ South America
• Asia & Pacific
• Middle East/ Cen Asia
• Africa

Canadian dollar (CAD)

Sign $ or C$
1 Canadian Dollar is subdivided into 100 cents.

CAD is the currency code for the Canadian dollar (CAD) which is represented in accounting with the $ symbol or C$ when necessary contextually to delineate it from other currencies denominated in dollars. The Bank of Canada is responsible for governance and implementation of Canadian monetary policy, issuance of Canadian notes, coin, and currency as well as having a general mandate of promoting the economic and financial well being of Canada. This is in comparison to the Central Bank mandates of other nation states which are more specific toward price stability or economic growth and employment. The Bank of Canada is wholly owned and operated by the Government of Canada.

Coins used:
- frequently used: 1¢, 5¢, 10¢, 25¢
- rarely used: 50¢, $1

Banknotes used:
- frequently used: $5, $10, $20, $50
- rarely used: $100

Central Bank
Bank of Canada
http://www.bankofcanada.ca
The CAD is the sixth most traded currency within currency markets and it is oftentimes linked to its dominant southern neighbor in currency pairs. The CAD is also the worlds sixth largest reserve currency when being measured by value. Countries that have central banks that hold and use the CAD as a reserve currency include the Dutch, French, and British foreign territories in the Caribbean as well as many of the central banks in South and central America. This regional use of the Canadian dollar over the United States dollar is for both political and economic reasons. In some instances, due to internal politics the leadership of many countries do not wish to be seen as having ties to the United States and in others it is for economic reasons where economically their central banks feel it is prudent to spread their holdings of reserve currencies into CAD to mitigate debt exposure risks inherent in the United States dollar (USD).

The Bank of Canada has also openly stated that they have not and do not intend in any way to interfere with the CAD as it trades in foreign currency markets. While they have an interest in promoting the financial well being of Canada, as is their mandate, in defining this mandate they have not shown the interest in proactively affecting the CAD prices relative to other currencies. This is in juxtaposition to many other central banks that have an established policy, whether published or anecdotal, of pushing their currencies up or down on the world markets in order to suit an economic or political purpose.

It is worthy of note that they CAD was unique amongst many major world currencies from 1950-1962 in that it was not tied to the Bretton Woods system and as a result was a floating currency, not a fiat currency as is the USD, because it was always been pegged, anchored, or tied in one way or another to the USD until the 1970's, but a floating currency that was allowed to fluctuate on the open markets. Since the USD abandoned the gold standard and Bretton Woods it has floated against worldwide currencies freely, independent of the floating fiat currency, the USD. The value of the CAD on open markets has fluctuated more than would be expected for a major currency. It traded as low as $0.6179 against the USD in 2002, rose steadily with a large jump of 23% in 2007. This, as a result of the rise in commodity prices, namely oil of which Canada is a net exporter, the impact of the worldwide credit crises, and the devaluation of the USD through decreasing United States interest rates.

Therefore the value of the CAD is substantially affected by events and interest rates not only in Canada itself, but also by its dominant neighbor the United States. This is not only due to the USD dominance on the world scene but also because 84.2% of Canada's export trade is with the United states and 56.7% of items imported to Canada come from the Untied States. With this heavy concentration of trade with the United States, as a dominant trading partner, economic events within that the United States have a direct impact on the economy and currency of Canada. This combined with the worldwide price of oil are the two external factors with the largest impact on the CAD. Internal politics, interest rates, fiscal policy, monetary policy, and they nations economy being the largest internal factors.

The CAD as legal tender is broken into 1/100ths with the smallest denomination being one cent. An interesting fact of note with regard to its use as legal tender is that there is an actual legally defined limit as to how much a person is legally required to accept in payment with coins, as opposed to payment with bills. For example, when paying a debt greater than $40 a person is not required to accept payment if the payor is using any combination of $2-$10 coins. Other limits for maximum required acceptance as legal tender are as follows: maximum of $25 with $1 coins, maximum $10 with $0.10 - less than $1 coins, $5 with $0.05 coins, and $0.25 with $0.01 coins. While most countries leave issues of acceptance of coin to pay bills or debts up to each creditor, the Canadian legal code specifically outlines these rules making it a unique feature of the CAD as legal tender.

The history of the CAD has deep routes in its country's ties to England and the British Pound. At one time the CAD was actually called the Canadian Pound. After nearly a century of consistent changes to how the Canadian Pound was benchmarked in value the Uniform Currency Act was passed in 1871 which finalized the issue with the decision that still holds to this day, to switch from the Canadian Pound to the CAD thus binding the CAD forever to the USD. The exact ratio and ways in which it has been bound has changed over the decades, but one way or another the CAD has since 1871 been much more closely ties to the USD than any other worldwide currency. This combined with the Canadian dependence on trade with the United States makes the CAD inextricably tied to the USD with the primary mitigating factor being Canada's ability to export oil, which in the late years of the first decade of the 21st century has been increasingly important in supporting the value of the CAD in spite of the significant drop in the USD.

Other References
Wikipedia article on Canadian Dollar
XE.com Live Currency Converter for CAD

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