The Canadian dollar against the US dollar, 1925 to 2025

This issue covers what one Canadian dollar was worth in US cents, each year from 1925 to 2025, both as quoted and after inflation. It comes in five images: the chart, the yearly change, the Party Scoreboard (Liberal vs Conservative / PC) and two PM Scoreboards (the average yearly change, and the average value, under each Prime Minister).

On the charts, each year is shaded by the federal party in office for most of that year: red for Liberal, blue for Conservative and Progressive Conservative (PC). Diagonal stripes mark minority governments.

The dollar is harder to pin on one government than most measures. In 21 of these years, Ottawa fixed the rate directly for all or part of the year, and from mid-1926 to about 1929 the gold standard held it near par. Since 1970 it has floated: no rate has been fixed, though until 1998 the Bank of Canada, acting for the government, routinely bought or sold currency to resist large moves (about 150 times from 1995 to 1998 alone). It has moved mostly with world prices for what Canada sells, the strength of the US dollar and interest rates. So this issue also tests the party comparisons: the yearly change eight ways, and the average value as well.

In brief. One Canadian dollar was worth 100.0 US cents in 1925 and 71.5 in 2025, as yearly averages. After adjusting for inflation in both countries, its value fell 30% over the century, from 101.9 US cents in 2025 prices to 71.5. Its real high was 108.7 in 1976 and its low 69.4 in 2002. There are two ways to compare the parties, and they point in different directions. On the yearly change, the real value fell 0.1% a year on average in Liberal years and 0.5% in Conservative and PC years. That order holds against each decade's average, without the Depression and war years, and without the 21 years Ottawa fixed the rate; since 1971, while the dollar has floated, it reverses, and allowing for world commodity prices (from 1973) widens the reversed gap. None of these gaps is larger than chance could easily produce. On the average value, Conservative and PC years come out higher: 98.0 US cents (in 2025 prices) against 92.6 in Liberal years, a gap within what chance could easily produce, and higher still when each year is compared with its own decade. Two results are larger than chance easily produces: that within-decade gap in value, and the dollar's bigger swings from year to year in Conservative and PC years (4.6% a year, up or down, against 2.6%). With as many tests as this issue runs, either could still be chance. Shading and ranks show who was in office, not who caused the result.

The numbered markers give context, not credit or blame:

After 1970 we marked six of the many events the Bank of Canada ties to a move in the dollar, three in Liberal years and three in Conservative and PC years, although Liberals held office in 35 of those 55 years. Five are outside shocks; the sixth, the 1991 inflation targets, was a decision of the government and the Bank together. Large falls with no marker include 1977, 1978 and 1994 in Liberal years and 1992 and 1993 in Conservative years; the text describes them.

The chart shows what one Canadian dollar was worth in US cents, on average, each year. The dashed line is the rate as quoted at the time: in 2002, a Canadian dollar bought 63.7 US cents on average. The solid line is the real value, which adjusts the rate for inflation in both countries and shows it in 2025 prices. The two lines meet in 2025.

Inflation in either country changes what a dollar buys. In 1991, a Canadian dollar bought 87.3 US cents. From 1991 to 2025, prices rose 98% in Canada and 136% in the United States: they multiplied by 1.98 in Canada and by 2.36 in the United States, so US prices rose about 19% relative to Canadian prices (2.36 ÷ 1.98 = 1.19). In 2025 prices, then, that 1991 dollar was worth about 104 US cents (87.3 × 1.19): Canadian goods were dearer against American goods than the quoted rate alone suggests. Our other issues adjust money for inflation with Canadian prices alone. That does not work for an exchange rate, which is the price of one currency in the other: it would put the 1925 dollar at 1,804 "US cents".

A higher real value means Canadian goods and services cost more against American ones. The Bank of Canada puts it this way: a stronger dollar lowers the prices of imports, but it can slow growth by making Canadian exports, and Canadian goods that compete with imports, less competitive. A weaker dollar does the reverse: it raises import prices and business costs, and cushions exporters. So a stronger dollar is not simply better or worse.

For most of these 101 years, the rate was set in the market, but not always.

Today, Canada's foreign currency reserves sit in the Exchange Fund Account, held in the Finance Minister's name, and the Bank of Canada manages them as the government's agent. The government sets the policy on buying or selling currency, with the Bank, and allows it only in exceptional circumstances; the last time the Bank did so to move the Canadian dollar was in 1998. The Bank of Canada sets interest rates on its own, aiming at an inflation target it has agreed with the government since February 1991 (2% since 1995). Interest rates in Canada compared with those abroad move the dollar, and the Bank's own analysis is that its major swings come mostly from commodity prices and interest-rate gaps. Bank staff have also found that the US dollar's own swings against all currencies matter a great deal.

As yearly averages, the quoted rate was highest in 1957 and 1959, at 104.3 US cents, in the float of the 1950s. Day to day, it went higher: about 109 US cents on November 7, 2007.

The real value peaked at 108.7 US cents in 1976, although the quoted rate that year (101.4) was lower than in 1957 or 1974. In the early 1970s, strong world demand raised the prices of raw materials and the US dollar was weak; when oil prices tripled in 1973, the year of the Arab oil embargo, money flowed into Canada, partly because Canada imported little oil on balance, so its trade and payments with the rest of the world were expected to suffer less than those of other major industrial countries. In 1976 wide gaps between Canadian and US interest rates supported the dollar, as provinces, cities and companies borrowed heavily abroad. What made 1976 the real peak was faster inflation in Canada: from 1972 to 1976 the quoted rate barely moved, but prices rose 42% in Canada and 36% in the United States, so Canadian goods grew dearer against American ones.

The Bank of Canada's history of the dollar (Powell, 2005) describes the long slide that followed, and it is the only source we found for the reasons given for most episodes before 1994. From late 1976, political uncertainty, softer prices for commodities other than energy, worries about Canada's competitiveness and a large current account deficit (Canada paying more abroad for goods, services and interest than it earned) weighed on it. In 1980 and 1981 came concerns before the Quebec referendum, weaker prices for commodities other than energy, and money flowing out as Canadians bought foreign-owned oil firms after the National Energy Program. High US interest rates drew money to the United States in 1984 and 1985, and worries about Canada's economic and financial prospects, with falling commodity prices, pushed the dollar to a then-record low of 69.1 US cents on February 4, 1986.

The same history says it then recovered to 89.3 US cents in November 1991. In 1986, the Bank of Canada and the federal government stemmed the fall with heavy buying of Canadian dollars, sharply higher interest rates and large federal borrowing abroad; from 1988, a rebound in commodity prices, expansionary federal and provincial budgets, tighter monetary policy (from February 1991 under inflation-reduction targets set by the government and the Bank) and interest rates well above US rates lifted it. It then slid through much of the 1990s: lower Canadian interest rates as inflation fell to and below the new target range, worries about federal and provincial deficits, and the Mexican peso crisis of 1994 and 1995. It held near 73 US cents in 1995 and 1996, helped by higher interest rates early on, signs that deficits were coming under control and stronger commodity prices, then fell again in 1997 and 1998, despite very low inflation, moderate growth and solid government finances: the history puts it partly down to lower commodity prices after the Asian financial crisis, and also to Canadian interest rates well below US rates and the US dollar's pull as a safe haven. Investors' optimism about the US economy drew money south, and the dollar hit its all-time low of 61.8 US cents on January 21, 2002.

From 2003, a strong world economy led by the United States and China raised prices for Canada's commodity exports, oil above all, while the US dollar weakened. The dollar reached par in late September 2007. In late 2008 it fell sharply, as commodity prices dropped and investors moved money during the global financial crisis, then recovered and averaged above par in 2011 and 2012. It fell from 2013 as US growth prospects improved, and fell hard in 2015 after world oil prices dropped by more than half from June 2014; Bank of Canada staff found that broad US dollar strength did more of the work than oil. From October 2024 to early 2025 it fell again, which the Bank put mostly down to rising uncertainty over US trade policy; on November 25, 2024, the incoming US president threatened tariffs on all Canadian goods. It then rose through the first half of 2025 as the US dollar weakened against many currencies.

The quoted rate was at or above par in 18 of the 101 years: 1934, 1937, 1947 and 1948 (the official rate), 1952 to 1960, 1972, 1974, 1976, 2011 and 2012. In 1925 to 1927 and in 1973 it averaged less than four hundredths of a cent below par, which rounds to 100.0.

As yearly averages, both lines hit their lows in 2002: 63.7 US cents as quoted and 69.4 in 2025 prices. In 2025, the dollar averaged 71.5 US cents, the lowest quoted rate since 2003 and the lowest real value since 2002.

During the Second World War, the quoted rate stayed fixed at 90.9 US cents from 1940 to 1945, but prices rose 15% in Canada and 29% in the United States, so the real value fell from 101.9 to 91.1. (In 1939 the dollar still averaged 96.0 US cents, because the rate was fixed only from mid-September.)

The second image shows how much the dollar's real value rose or fell each year, in per cent. It rose in 48 years and fell in 53. In 23 of the 101 years it moved by more than 5%.

The reasons given below for 1932, 1934, 1952, 1988, 1993 and 1994 come from one source, the Bank of Canada's history of the dollar; for 1998 and later years they also draw on other Bank of Canada material, including Monetary Policy Reports, speeches, a staff analytical note and a 1998 press release.

The five largest rises:

The five largest falls:

The Party Scoreboard counts the years 1925 to 2025: 101 yearly changes in the real value, 70 in Liberal years and 31 in Conservative and PC years. 2026 is not counted: it has no full-year figure yet.

Across all 101 years, the real value fell 0.3% a year on average; the median was −0.6%. The median is the middle value when the years are lined up from lowest to highest. A few extreme years can pull an average a long way; the median is less affected.

In Liberal years, the average was −0.1% and the median −0.1%. In Conservative and PC years, the average was −0.5% and the median −1.4%.

The board's first row is the average value itself: 94.2 US cents (in 2025 prices) across all years, 92.6 in Liberal years and 98.0 in Conservative and PC years (medians 97.0, 96.1 and 98.5). That row answers a different question from the others. The value in any year carries over much of the year before, so the average reflects the value each government inherited as well as what happened in its years; the yearly change shows mostly what happened in its years (a yearly average still carries part of any move late in the year before). Tests on the value row:

The board adds two more rows as tests of the yearly change. "Without fixed-rate years" leaves out the 21 years when Ottawa fixed the rate for all or part of the year (1939 to 1950 and 1962 to 1970): 0.0% in Liberal years (+0.02%, 50 years) and −0.4% in Conservative and PC years (30 years). It keeps 1926 to 1931, from the return to gold to the ban on gold exports in October 1931, though gold held the rate in effect only until 1929; leaving those years out too gives −0.1% for Liberal years and −0.2% for Conservative and PC years: the same order, with a smaller gap. "Since 1971" counts only the years since the 1970 float: −0.5% in Liberal years (35 years) and −0.3% in Conservative and PC years (20 years). The first test keeps the order of the average yearly change; the second reverses it. On medians, since 1971 reverses it too (−0.8% and −0.1%).

The gap in the average yearly change row is 0.4 percentage points a year (−0.14% against −0.54%). A percentage point is the difference between two percentages; we call them points from here on. We tested the gap eight ways.

Timing. The dollar fell faster in some decades than others. Measured against each decade's own average, the real value did 0.15 points a year better than its decade's average in Liberal years and 0.34 worse in Conservative and PC years: a gap of 0.5 points.

Two big episodes. The Depression years under R.B. Bennett, 1931 to 1935, were Conservative years, and the real value fell 0.4% a year on average. The Second World War years under Mackenzie King, 1939 to 1945, were Liberal years, and it fell 2.2% a year: in 1939 and 1940 as the rate dropped to its fixed wartime level, and from 1942 as US prices rose faster than Canadian prices under the fixed rate. Leave out the Depression years alone and the averages are −0.1% for Liberal years and −0.6% for Conservative and PC years; leave out the war years alone, +0.1% and −0.5%; leave out both, +0.1% and −0.6%.

Years Ottawa fixed the rate. Leave out every year with a fixed rate (1939 to 1950 and 1962 to 1970) and the averages are 0.0% for Liberal years and −0.4% for Conservative and PC years: the same order.

Recent years. Since 1971, while the dollar has floated, the order reverses: −0.5% a year in Liberal years and −0.3% in Conservative and PC years. Since 1981, −0.5% and −0.1%. In the 20 years from 2006 to 2025, 10 for each party, −1.3% and −0.6%.

Policy takes time. Markets react to announcements within days, but a policy's effects on the economy, and through it on the dollar's real value, can take a year or more. So we also credited each year's change to the party in office the year before: 0.0% for Liberal years and −0.8% for Conservative and PC years. With a two-year delay, −0.1% and −0.6%.

World commodity prices. Prices for the commodities Canada sells, such as oil, metals and grain, move the dollar. Since 1973 (the Bank of Canada's commodity price index starts in 1972), the dollar's real value and commodity prices (in US dollars) have moved together: for each extra 10% that commodity prices rose in a year, the dollar's real value tended to rise about 1.6 points more. Commodity prices rose 7.3% a year on average in Liberal years and 0.4% in Conservative and PC years. Over these years, the real value fell 0.7% a year in Liberal years and 0.3% in Conservative and PC years. After allowing for commodity prices, the gap widens the other way: in Liberal years the real value did 0.5 points a year worse than commodity prices alone would predict, and in Conservative and PC years 0.9 points better. This is a rough adjustment: commodity prices explain only about a quarter of the yearly ups and downs.

The quoted rate. On the rate as quoted at the time, without the inflation adjustment, the order holds: −0.2% a year in Liberal years and −0.4% in Conservative and PC years.

Chance. The yearly change is noisy: in 23 of the 101 years the real value moved by more than 5%. To see how large a gap chance alone produces, we shuffled the party labels across the years 100,000 times. Half of the shuffles gave a gap of 0.6 points or more, and one in ten a gap of 1.5 points or more. Gaps at least as large as that row's came up in about 66% of the shuffles; for the row without fixed-rate years, 70%; for the since-1971 row, 91%.

What is left: on the yearly change, the dollar's real value fell a little less in Liberal years. That holds against each decade's average, without the Depression and war years, without the years Ottawa fixed the rate, with a one- or two-year delay, and on the quoted rate. Since 1971, since 1981 and over the last 20 years, it fell less in Conservative and PC years, and allowing for commodity prices (from 1973) widens that gap. None of these gaps is larger than chance could easily produce. Over the century, the real value fell 30%: 13% across the 70 Liberal years and 19% across the 31 Conservative and PC years, or about 0.2% and 0.7% a year compounded. With this many ups and downs, the compounded fall is larger than the simple averages above suggest.

Two differences are larger than chance easily produces. One is the average value compared within each decade, described under the Party Scoreboard: higher in Conservative and PC years. The other is volatility. Conservative and PC years were more volatile: the real value moved 4.6% a year on average, up or down, against 2.6% in Liberal years. A gap that large came up in 10 of the 462 arrangements that keep each party's runs of years together (2.2%). Shuffling single years gives fewer than 1 in 1,000, but big moves tend to come in runs of years, so the 2% figure is the fairer one. The Depression and the swings of 2008 to 2015 (the financial crisis, the 2010 rebound and the 2014 to 2015 fall) came in Conservative years, but the gap remains without them (4.0% against 2.6%) and without the fixed-rate years (4.6% against 2.9%). We ran many tests in this issue, and with this many, one or two results at the 2% level can turn up by chance alone; treat these two as worth watching, not as settled. That describes who was in office when the dollar moved. It does not show that either party caused it.

We did not test against the United States, as our GDP per person issue did: this measure is already Canada against the United States.

The first PM Scoreboard sorts each term by the average yearly change in the dollar's real value, from the highest to the lowest. Rank 1 is the largest rise, not the best result: a stronger dollar helps some Canadians and hurts others. A second PM Scoreboard, below, sorts the same terms by the dollar's average value.

Most rows are a term: one unbroken stretch as Prime Minister, however many elections it spans. Each year counts in proportion to the days in office that year, so 1957 counts partly for Louis St-Laurent and partly for John Diefenbaker. The "Years counted" column adds up those shares.

The exchange rate and both countries' prices go back before 1925, so whole terms count, including Arthur Meighen's first term from July 1920 and Mackenzie King's first from December 1921. That is why the title starts in 1920.

The 18 ranked rows are 15 terms plus 3 combined rows. A combined row repeats terms already listed; it is not another government.

Rank 1 goes to Paul Martin: the real value rose 6.6% a year over his 2.2 years counted, almost all of them 2004 and 2005, as a strong world economy raised prices for Canada's commodity exports, energy above all in 2005, and the US dollar weakened against all major currencies in 2003 and 2004. Yearly averages move part of this between terms. By November 2003, under Jean Chrétien, the real value had almost reached its 2004 average, so the rise in that average, which counts fully in Martin's term, came before he took office; and the rise late in 2005 counts mostly in 2006, for Stephen Harper. Measured month by month from December 2003, when he took office, to February 2006, when he left, the real value rose 11%, about 5% a year. Next come Louis St-Laurent (+1.3%), whose government devalued the dollar in 1949 and floated it in 1950, after which it rose above par; Mackenzie King's second term (+1.0%) and first (+0.9%); and Brian Mulroney (+0.6%).

The lowest is Arthur Meighen's first term, at −3.4% a year, in 1920 and 1921. The dollar had fallen to a discount after the First World War, with high inflation and the cost of the war weighing on Canada's payments abroad. Most of that fall came before he took office in July 1920, but yearly averages count part of it in his term, and in 1921 prices fell faster in Canada than in the United States. Measured month by month from July 1920, when he took office, to December 1921, when he left, the real value was roughly flat (up about 1%, within the rounding of that era's price indexes). Next come his two terms combined (−3.0%); John Diefenbaker (−1.6%), whose government set out to lower the dollar in June 1961 and pegged it at 92.5 US cents in 1962; Jean Chrétien and Justin Trudeau (both −1.4%); and Mackenzie King's third term (−0.7%), whose government fixed the rate at 90.9 US cents when the war began in 1939 and raised it to par in 1946.

Jean Chrétien's years (1993 to 2003) include the slide of the 1990s and the 2002 low described above, then almost all of 2003, the largest yearly rise of the century (+12.6%). Justin Trudeau's (2015 to 2025) include part of 2015, the year of the largest fall, which counts mostly for Stephen Harper; a rise of 5.6% in 2021, which the Bank of Canada put first down to broad US dollar weakness (late 2020 and early 2021) and then to higher oil and other commodity prices; then the US dollar's surge in 2022, as US interest rates rose quickly, and the falls of 2024 and early 2025.

The second PM Scoreboard sorts the same terms by the dollar's average real value while each was in office, in US cents at 2025 prices, from the highest to the lowest. It counts the same years in the same way, with the same combined rows and the same five short stretches below the ranking. Rank 1 is the highest average value, not the best.

Mackenzie King's second term ranks first, at 104.1 US cents, then John Diefenbaker (103.5), King's first term (103.1), Louis St-Laurent (102.4) and Pierre Trudeau's first term (101.6). The lowest are Jean Chrétien (76.7), Justin Trudeau (78.1) and Paul Martin (86.2).

This ranking mostly follows the decades. The 12 highest rows all start before 1970, and all but one (Pierre Trudeau's combined row, which adds 1980 to 1984) end by 1979; the three lowest are three of the four ranked terms since 1993 (the fourth, Stephen Harper's, ranks 13th, at 97.1). Reading the two PM Scoreboards together shows the difference between the level a Prime Minister presided over and the change during the term. John Diefenbaker ranks second by value, because the dollar's real value averaged 107.7 US cents (in 2025 prices) in 1957, the year he took office, and stayed above 100 through 1961, but 16th by change, because it fell to 95.6 in 1963, the year he left office. Paul Martin ranks first by change and 16th by value: the dollar rose fast in his years, but from a low starting point.

More on the method: How the charts work

Who we are: About Gov Scoreboard

Spot an error? Write to [email protected].

Adapted from Statistics Canada, Tables 10-10-0009-01, 10-10-0126-01, 33-10-0163-01, 18-10-0005-01 and 10-10-0132-01 (retrieved 2026-10-04), and 18-10-0004-01 (retrieved 2026-10-05). This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.

Exchange rates before 1951: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Banking and Monetary Statistics, 1914-1941 (1943), Table 173, and Banking and Monetary Statistics, 1941-1970 (1976), Table 15.24. US prices: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, series CUUR0000SA0, yearly and monthly.

Dates in office: House of Commons, Procedure and Practice (4th ed., 2025), Appendix 6.

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