Expect loonie to fly high for awhile, bank official says

Based in Toronto, Westlake was the guest speaker for an event hosted by the Yarmouth and Area Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by Register.com.

Giving his audience at the Grand Hotel a brief overview of the economy, he said forecasters anticipate little change in the value of the dollar for the rest of 2007.

“Certainly we think for the balance of this year it’s not going to slide back very much,” he said. “We would expect it to be in the low-to-mid-nineties (U.S.) some time during ’08.”

In the longer run the dollar should be trading at around the mid-to-high eighties, he said.

He acknowledged that a high-flying loonie is good news for some, bad news for others.

“Of course, there are a lot of people who are very concerned, who are very (much) affected, and there are a lot of people who are very happy about it if they’re buying property in the U.S. or travelling regularly, so it’s a real mixed bag,” he said.

As for predicting where the dollar is headed – and other economic forecasting – he said predicting an event or trend is one thing, but anticipating the timing is another.

“We’ve generally been pretty good at saying which way we think the pressure is and how the movement’s going to start,” he said, “but it really is tough to say exactly when it’s going to start and how quickly it’s going to happen.”

Westlake, who made those remarks during a question-and-answer session following his talk, made a similar observation during his presentation when he poked some good-natured fun at the professionals making the predictions.

“The thing about being an economist is that you’re always right if you don’t give a date when something’s going to happen,” he said.

Aside from the dollar in particular and the economy in general, Westlake spent a few moments talking about the Royal Bank of Canada, along with his involvement in the chamber of commerce movement.

He noted that RBC has about 3,000 employees in Atlantic Canada serving 815,000 clients, more than half of those clients in Nova Scotia.

The Royal’s Yarmouth branch moved to its present location at 399 Main St. in 1979 after having been at its previous site – 341 Main, now the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s western branch – since 1913.

Westlake is a former chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“I hear good things about the Yarmouth chamber so I certainly appreciate being here,” he said.