The Economy

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1) What is helping the Canadian economy?
Primary industries
Secondary industries
Foreign investment
2) What does Brian discuss?
Inflation
Currencies
Wages
3) What do they agree about?
Consumption
Corruption
Pollution
4) What resource still has a large supply?
Oil
Timber
Coal
Fanny: Hey, Brian, you know, recently I heard that the Canadian dollar is very strong.

Brian: It is. It's been amazingly strong in the last few months.

Fanny: What happened? I mean, how come?

Brian: It went up. The reasons behind why the Canadian dollar is strong...

Fanny: Yeah.

Brian: Very good question. Without getting too complicated, my understanding is the Canadian dollar is linked to a lot of primary industries, so things like, say like, oil or mining or timber from like forests and right now I think there's a high demand for those kind of products, so because of that it's pushed the Canadian dollar up. But also I think many other currencies have gone down a bit, like the American dollar has dropped a lot.

Fanny: Really. OK.

Brian: I don't follow the currency markets too closely.

Fanny: OK, I see.

Brian: But I think because the American dollar has gone down as well, that means that, you know, it doesn't take as much Canadian money to equal the American money now, so I think those are probably two of the reasons why it's been strong.

Fanny: I see. I know that Canada is a country which is really rich in the natural resources, but are there still a lot of natural resources left now.

Brian: That's another good question. I think that there are still quite a lot of resources.

Fanny: Oh, nice.

Brian: Which is, you know, is good but some of them are decreasing quite a bit.

Fanny: I think so, because of consumption.

Brian: It's too...

Fanny: Too big.

Brian: Right.

Fanny: Yeah.

Brian: And we export a lot of our resources too, so, you know, the Unites States is always taking a lot of our resources so that's like a huge market right there, but I think there's still lots of oil but maybe the... some of the trees, you know, they cut them down pretty fast and they take a long time to grow back, so you have to watch out there.

Fanny: OK, I think that's a very reason for the strong Canadian dollar.

Brian: It could be but you probably should ask an economist. Maybe they can tell you a bit more informed insight than I can.