I am foxed

by the dip the cdn dollar is taking. It doesn't make sense. Canada is after all an oil and gas exporting country. Every spike in the price of oil should be bolstering the currency. Looking into it further I realise that Eastern Canada imports oil while Western Canada exports it. Seems to be an of an ass-backward solution if you ask me. This needs some more investigation. I think this might be due to a lot of cheap pipeline capacity in the US. This might explain the lack of a unified Canadian energy "system". There is of course the traditionally cdn weak nationalism.

The more I read, the more I realise that the Canadian nation-building experiment is still very young and hampered, especially in the post-war years, by living next to a large culturally influential neighbour. Nowadays, Canadian nationalism is increasingly dependant on the existence of the American bogeyman.

The Federal Government in Canada may have partially failed as an institution but the judicial system, the initiator of so much change in Canada, grows not only more unified but also extends a strong cultural influence.

The judiciary as an element of a nation-building exercise is interesting because it does not confront political and cultural challenges from the south directly. Perhaps this is a natural result of a young political system that has has not been able to sufficiently confront influences from America and Europe. To a certain degree, both the civil and common law systems in Canada are forging an independant and perhaps more unified system. It remains to be seen to what degree the judiciary carries the can, as it were, before continentalists like Manley and Harper get the better of all of us.