Canada’s dollar pared its advance after a government report showed employers unexpectedly reduced jobs in November and the unemployment rate rose. “That was a real rally killer,� said Blake Jespersen, director of foreign exchange at Bank of Montreal, speaking by phone from Toronto. “The headline number is quite bad. It immediately caused a 50 basis point sell-off in the Canadian dollar.� A basis point is 0.01 percentage point. The loonie, as the currency is also known, was still poised for a 3.4 percent rally this week after central banks including the Bank of Canada acted to make it cheaper for lenders to borrow in dollars to contain European sovereign-debt turmoil, encouraging demand for higher-yielding assets. The Canadian currency appreciated 0.1 percent to C$1.0126 per U.S. dollar at 7:13 a.m. Toronto time after earlier gaining 0.6 percent. One Canadian dollar buys 98.76 U.S. cents. The number of jobs fell by a net 18,600 last month, following October’s 54,000 drop, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. The unemployment rate rose for a second straight month, to 7.4 percent from 7.3 percent. None of the 23 economists in a Bloomberg News survey predicted a job loss, and the median estimate was for the unemployment rate to be unchanged. The loonie, as the currency is also known, slid 1.2 percent on Nov. 4 after the statistics agency reported that Canada’s economy lost the most jobs since the 2009 recession. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney will keep the target lending rate at 1 percent on Dec. 6, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. The central bank’s inflation-targeting regime and its “inherent flexibility� allowed the country to handle the global financial turmoil of 2008 and 2009, Carney said in Montreal on Nov. 23. To contact the reporters for this story: Chris Fournier in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at cfournier3@bloomberg.net; Frederic Tomesco in Montreal at tomesco@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net

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