AI Analysis: Monthly average foreign exchange rates in Canadian dollars, Bank of Canada

Executive Summary

This Statistics Canada dataset (Table 33100163) tracks monthly average foreign exchange rates in Canadian dollars across 27 currencies from May 1981 to February 2026, encompassing 3,078 valid records over 538 monthly periods. The data is heavily right-skewed, with most currencies trading well below one Canadian dollar while a few high-value currencies like the UK pound sterling (1.8533 CAD) and Swiss franc (1.7661 CAD) pull the mean to 14.62 CAD against a median of just 0.265 CAD. Spanning over 44 years of economic cycles — including the 1997 Asian financial crisis, 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and COVID-19 pandemic — the dataset provides a robust foundation for long-term trend analysis, correlation studies, and outlier detection across global currencies.

Key Findings

• The dataset covers 27 currencies across 538 monthly periods from May 1981 to February 2026, with 3,078 valid records out of 3,176 total — a missing data rate of approximately 3%.
• Exchange rate values are extremely right-skewed, with a mean of 14.62 CAD versus a median of just 0.265 CAD and a standard deviation of 34.97, driven by currencies with very high or very low unit denominations.
• As of February 2026, the UK pound sterling (1.8533 CAD) and Swiss franc (1.7661 CAD) are the strongest currencies against the Canadian dollar, while the Indonesian rupiah (0.0001 CAD) and Vietnamese dong are the weakest.
• 75% of all exchange rate observations fall below 1.35 CAD, confirming that the majority of tracked currencies are worth less than one Canadian dollar in unit terms.
• The US dollar currently trades at 1.3651 CAD and the euro at 1.6138 CAD, reflecting the dominant role of these currencies in Canadian trade and finance.
• Values range from a minimum of 0.000054 CAD to a maximum of 123.93 CAD — a spread of nearly 124 CAD — illustrating the vast differences in currency denominations across the 27 countries represented.
• A correlation heatmap across all 27 currency pairs revealed distinct clusters of currencies that move together in CAD terms, with outlier detection using the 3×IQR method flagging anomalies often coinciding with major global economic events.