By Chris Fournier April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Canada’s dollar traded near parity with its U.S. counterpart, failing for a second day to rise beyond that level as crude oil fell and the economy fared worse than forecast. The Canadian currency, nicknamed the loonie for the aquatic bird on the C$1 coin, was the worst performer against the greenback over the past five days of all 16 of its most-traded currencies except South Africa’s rand. Reports on housing yesterday and employment last week fell below economists’ median estimates, lessening pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates. “The market is reluctant to move beyond parity in the absence of domestic support,” said Matthew Strauss, senior currency strategist in Toronto at Royal Bank of Canada, the nation’s biggest lender. “We haven’t had any data that supports the notion of more aggressive rate hikes than what’s already priced into the market.” The Canadian currency was little changed at C$1.0033 per U.S. dollar at 8:12 a.m. in Toronto, compared with C$1.0025 yesterday. It reached 99.78 Canadian cents per U.S. dollar on April 7, the highest since July 15, 2008, after rising to parity the previous day for the first time in 20 months. One Canadian dollar buys 99.67 U.S. cents. Crude oil for May delivery dropped as much as 1.1 percent to $83.43 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, its fifth straight decline. To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Fournier in Montreal at cfournier3@bloomberg.net

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