Welcome to international currency investment. In a day it can fluctuate quite a bit.
The dollar is somewhat rising, but the thing is currency is such a complicated measure especially with currency pegging. A stronger CAD is probably bad because, like someone very wisely mentioned, Canada largely exports. Therefore, less will be bought of Canadian goods and the purchasers will likely turn to a cheaper source of resources like Russia for example. The Euro has more purchasing power against the Ruble than the CAD. It's kind of a cool topic and something I have done a lot of projects/papers on. A lot of the tension lies within this theory of "global imbalances". Definitely something worth reading up on if you have any interest in international trade.
Currency doesn't reflect the economic standing of a country. So there is no "competition" and this doesn't mean that Canada is having a more efficient economy than the US (even though they probably are right now). I have been following the GBP, Yen, and Euro really closely and all of the "experts" predicted completely wrong of what actually turned out to be the case. The Yen was supposed to be at around 87 per dollar and it is now around 94. The pound was supposed to be 60 etc. Trade balances are a good indicator of what currency is going to do, but those are utterly impossible to predict. Thankfully it looks like the world economy is getting a lot better than the doomsday prediction that a lot of economists were certain was going to happen. There is a lot of speculation of a bubble happening, but at this point it is hard to tell which area it would be in if it does happen.
