It's actually a great lesson in economics.
Canada has one thing to export....oil. For years, oil prices consistently climbed. With that, so did the Canadian economy and the Canadian dollar.
But they have a terribly concentrated economy. In other words, all their eggs are in one basket -- the price of a single commodity. That commodity tanked. Which brought on two major problems.
First, it wrecks the Canadian energy companies and associated industries that serve energy.
Second, because their exports are so concentrated in oil, declining oil prices wreck the value of their currency.
For a diversified economy (like the U.S.), a weak currency has some short-term benefits...it makes imports more expensive, and therefore makes locally-produced alternatives more attractive.
Trouble is, if you're Canada, you're importing a lot of stuff because, for a lot of reasons, you don't have that many locally-produced alternatives. Now, your economy is tanked AND the price of imports is going through the roof because your currency is also tanked, and you can't produce the stuff yourself that would allow you to take advantage of the weak Canadian dollar.
Our neighbors to the north have a no-foolin problem, and the only way out is for oil to make a comeback.
