conversely, the exchange rate (cad/usd) is a ratio so it is not altered by inflation.
currency is not a real market. all currency trading is manipulation. the idea that you can increase or decrease the value of a currency by buying more or less of it is the same right-wing error in logic that leads conservatives to argue that printing money creates inflation (which is an error. money creation does not lead to inflation.). this is the kind of flunkie economics that you frequently hear from conservatives running for office, but that has no empirical basis and is essentially never repeated by academics. that paper by milton friedman was withdrawn but conservatives never got the memo, or don't seem to care.
printing money does not lead to inflation, and buying up a specific currency does not drive the value of it up. it's the same flunkie right-wing mistake frequently made by ignorant conservatives that think they understand economics and don't understand economics at all.
while it is true that an extremely disciplined market might in theory not follow price signals, most trading is done by large institutions. in fact, most trading is done by software and is increasingly done by ai. it's actually quite predictable and increasingly so.
for oil to be selling at $110 dollars in 2013 dollars today, it would need to be to be upwards of $160. for it to be selling at $110 dollars in 2000 dollars, it would need to be over $200.
i found this chart of oil prices adjusted for inflation, and you can see that oil prices are nowhere near their peaks when the cdn dollar was close to parity with the usd. in fact, the value of oil as adjusted for inflation has actually decreased recently. this is a reflection of how much inflation has occurred since the pandemic, which itself was a result of hikes in the cost of oil.
for that reason, oil prices have a kind of moderating effect. you might be annoyed that the price of gas is rising, but when you compare it total inflation and the value of the us dollar, it tends to be misleading as to where the actual objective value of things is headed.
narratives by fake leftists (who are actually conservatives pretending to be left-wing) that the iran war increased the price of oil are in truth actually false, when the price of oil is properly adjusted for inflation. these people are not good sources of information and should not be trusted at face value. you need to fact check what they're telling you very carefully. the us dollar has been falling over the same time period (relative to the euro), so it cancels out in terms of real value and in terms of international currency. but these two things (inflation-adjusted price of oil and usd) are deeply interconnected, it's a kind of feedback loop.
this is a chart of the usd/cad exchange rate and it follows the inflation-adjusted oil chart very closely. that is, the shape of it, not necessarily the peaks.
but i'm not showing you anything that a professional wouldn't tell you is obvious.
it's only the market fundamentalist right-wing conservative flunkies, and their fake left progressive wannabes, that would challenge the point to begin with by citing simplistic mathematical models (you see these models in economics 101 and if you had a good prof she told you they're bullshit and told you not to take them seriously on the first day of classes) as predictive and by ignoring the empirical facts which show that they aren't. the connection between oil and the cad is common knowledge.
i'll reiterate that a market doesn't automatically have to follow price signals, but it will, and it's more predictable now than it ever has been due to the large volume of trading done by software and ai for big funds and whatnot. it would take an unrealistic amount of volume for a bad actor to get in there and fuck with it. it's almost impossible.
there's consequently little threat of the us fed manipulating canada's currency. the theory that the flunkies are promoting is fringe and debunked. that would not work.
steep hikes in the price of oil - adjusted for inflation - would do it, and not much else would.