More importantly for Canada, the changes in China greatly increased the global demand for commodities as inputs for the production of manufactured goods and the construction of transport systems, housing and other urban amenities (Chart 10). The economic impact on Canada of these shocks was immense.
Canada benefited from the lower prices for imports from China—whose share of our imports rose from under 4 per cent in 2000 to more than 12 per cent in 2015— and from the higher prices for exports of commodities to China. The commodity price increases in turn caused a rise in the value of the Canadian dollar (Chart 11).