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.  

Estate Planning with Life Insurance is an important cornerstone of family wealth planning, but with recent tax changes, a professional update is required for any tax and financial advisor working with high-net-worth families.

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Electronic filing is all the rage in Canada, as close to 750,000 more people chose to file their returns electronically in the 2016 tax filing season, for the 2015 T1 returns. One compelling reason: the average tax refund of $1678 hits your bank account sooner when professionals use EFILE or individuals use NETFILE. Close to 10 million people had those cheques electronically deposited.

In case you missed it, Finance Canada released draft legislation for consultation on July 29, the Friday of the August long weekend. Responses must be received by September 27. Of particular interest to investors: the implementation date for new taxation on switches in corporate-class mutual funds appears to be pushed back to January 1, 2017. And there’s much more than that to be aware of.

There are several tax credits that students, their parents and teachers should be sure to claim on their 2016 tax returns. Here’s a synopsis of them; the trick is to keep documentation for the claims now.

In the end, it was a philosophical battle that tested who is best responsible for the future of retirement savings in Canada: only 18.6% of respondants to Knowledge Bureau’s July poll question answered yes when asked, “In your opinion, is the enhanced CPP a better retirement savings plan than putting the equivalent amount of premiums into a TFSA?” The remaining 81.4% voted no—in favor of the tax-paid contributions to a tax-exempt savings vehicle over mandatory, partially deductible contributions to a taxable fund.