By Commodity News Service Canada

WINNIPEG, December 14 The Canadian dollar strengthened against its US counterpart on Monday as the loonie saw some recovery, but still hovered near an 11-and-a-half year low on weakness in crude oil.

At 8:45 a.m. CST the Canadian dollar was at US$0.7284 or C$1.3729 which compares with Friday’s North American close of US$0.7277, or C$1.3742.

At 8:45 a.m., New York Mercantile crude oil futures had lost US$0.21 to sit at US$35.41 a barrel.

In Canadian domestic data, national wealth, or the total value of non-financial assets in the Canadian economy, declined C$190.4 billion to C$9,205 billion at the end of the third quarter, Statistics Canada said in a report on Monday.

According to StatsCan, the loss was mainly attributable to a C$285.4 billion decrease in the value of natural resource wealth as energy prices fell in the quarter.

The TSX was weaker in early activity, down 53.57 points at 8:45 a.m. CST to sit at 12,736.38.