Opportunity: Canadian Dollar Stabilizes, Somewhat

Things have started to turn around for the Canadian dollar in the second quarter of 2025. It hit a 22 year low in January of 2025. Investors and property owners, who have been swooning at the high burn rate in their travel plans and property maintenance abroad, may wish to consider recent more positive trends and consider some risk mitigation opportunities now that the dollar is stabilizing somewhat.  

The most recent economic data is indeed atrocious, as Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz predicted in England late last year.

Last week’s KBR reported on a recent Statistics Canada study, Changes in Debt and Assets of Canadian Families, 1999 to 2012, that confirmed a trend that Canadians are carrying more debt than ever before.

There are three certainties in life – death, taxes and change.  So, dealing with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) can prove a stressful interaction for both taxpayers and their advisors.  

David Christianson, one of Canada’s Top 50 Wealth Advisors and this month’s featured guest speaker at DAW, says tax or financial advisors have the obligation to make critical conversations about what really matters our clients in the future, happen.

Canada’s tax system is based on self-assessment, but CRA has substantial powers and latitude to assess and reassess those returns as it sees fit, leaving the onus to prove otherwise with the taxpayer.

The government’s financial results will be released for the first quarter of the year no later than May 29, 2015, just in time for Canada’s most comprehensive 2015 tax and wealth planning workshop, featuring five top experts in the area of transition planning.