So when do we start paying less?

The current strength of the Canadian dollar against its U.S. counterpart is a good and bad thing.

On the positive side, it’s good to see our dollar so strong. It has been a while – about 30 years, if you’ve been counting – since our dollar was last at par with the U.S. greenback. It also translates into a more solid reputation for our country internationally.

The situation is also great for those companies based in Canada (like professional sports teams, as one example) who are required to pay their employees in U.S. funds.

On the other hand, the strength of Canada’s currency – and more importantly, the corresponding weakness of the U.S. dollar – isn’t good for things like international trade, especially with the U.S., our largest trading partner.

And the longer the U.S. dollar remains weak, the more we run the risk of American companies based in Canada cutting their losses and pulling out, temporarily if not permanently, in favour of other locales that may be more cost-effective.

Now that our money and the U.S. are effectively at par – one day last week, the loonie closed at $1.0355 U.S., a level unprecedented for many years – the question arises: how long are we expected to pay higher prices for goods than in the U.S.?

Last week, the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation announced it would lower the prices on some of its products as a reflection of the strengthened Canadian dollar.

At the same time, it could be awhile before we see any savings in the price of things like cars, books and clothing, leaving us, as Canadians, to wonder why it can’t happen now.

After all, when the shoe’s on the other foot, it normally doesn’t take long at all for prices to go up.

Take books, for example, which include both a ‘U.S. price’ and a higher ‘Canadian price’ to reflect what has been for many years a significant discrepancy in the two currencies.

There was a time, when the producers of books decided their profit margins weren’t high enough, that stickers were placed on books increasing the price arbitrarily .

If it’s that easy to do, shouldn’t we now have stickers lowering the price – or at least narrowing the gap between U.S. and Canadian prices – since our dollar is actually worth more than the American buck?

We acknowledge it’s not quite as easy as that, and often there’s a backlog of inventory purchased at the higher price.

But we shouldn’t be expected to put up with this kind of thing indefinitely, which is what’s going to happen if we don’t make some noise about it.

And even if there isn’t anything we can do about it as individuals, surely our governments can do something on our behalf. Funny, but it just might fall into the area of something we elected them to do.