I have now cashed an American cheque and received in Canadian currency less, rather than more, than the amount that was written on that cheque. The US$300 that I received today turned out to be worth CDN$285.03 — and it probably would have been worth even less if I had waited to cash it in another day or three. The American dollar has definitely fallen below parity, now.
On a semi-related tangent, I recently bought the two-disc edition of Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967; my comments) for CDN$19.99 plus taxes at Future Shop, but it occurs to me now that I could have ordered it for US$14.99 via Amazon.com — or slightly less than that, in Canadian currency. True, the shipping fees would have nudged it back over twenty bucks, and there is the possibility that it might have been intercepted by the good folks at Canada Customs; but if I were buying multiple items and not just the one movie, then it just might be cheaper to get my discs that way.
Certainly, when you add to the financial considerations the fact that far too many Canadian DVDs are afflicted with ugly bilingual packaging — a problem that fortunately does not affect Disney discs, yet, not really — then the prospect of importing one’s discs from the United States becomes more and more appealing.
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