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A decade ago, Canada set out to become an energy superpower. Now, it enters 2016 riding down one of the world’s most battered petro-currencies.

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Where the price of oil goes, so goes Canada’s dollar. No other major currency is as closely tied to the value of its key commodity export as the loonie is to crude right now.

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When the clock struck midnight on Dec. 31, the loonie officially recorded its longest and deepest downturn since it became a floating currency in 1970. And there’s no relief in sight.

The loonie’s 16 per cent decline against the U.S. dollar over the past year marks its third straight annual decline. The currency has lost more than a quarter of its value since 2012, falling to 72.27 U.S. cents from US$1.01. That’s almost a penny a month.

Wednesday it sank further to 71.10 US cents.

In the 45 years since Canada ended its currency peg to its largest trading partner — a period spanning two votes on Quebec separation, a full-blown fiscal crisis, a previous Saudi-engineered oil price rout and several recessions far worse than the shallow contraction early last year — no dollar depreciation has been this bad for this long.