By Chris Fournier May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Canada’s dollar rose along with the currencies of Australia and New Zealand versus its U.S. counterpart as crude oil approached $87 a barrel and gold touched the highest level since December. The currency has been the third-best performer this year among the U.S. dollar’s 16 most-traded counterparts, trailing Mexico’s peso and the South Korean won. Canadian employers added 25,000 jobs to payrolls in April, a government report on May 7 is forecast by economists to show. “Key to the Canadian dollar’s near-term direction will be Friday’s employment reports,” Elsa Lignos, a currency strategist at Royal Bank of Canada in London, wrote in a research note to clients. The Canadian currency appreciated 0.4 percent to C$1.0141 per U.S. dollar at 8:15 a.m. in Toronto, from C$1.0179 on April 30. One Canadian dollar buys 98.61 U.S. cents. The loonie, as Canada’s currency is sometimes known, decreased last week on speculation gains on potential increases in interest rates were overdone. It reached parity on April 6 for the first time in almost two years. Crude oil for June delivery climbed today as much as 0.7 percent to $86.79 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold for immediate delivery advanced as much as 0.3 percent to $1,183.25 an ounce, the highest level since Dec. 4. Canada gets about half its export revenue from raw materials. To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Fournier in Montreal at cfournier3@bloomberg.net

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