AP Warren BUffett expects greater strength for the Canadian dollar vs the U.S. dollar over the next five years.

It looks like Warren Buffett is a man on the move.  Later this month, he travels to China and Korea.  Right now, he's just returned from a shorter international voyage: a trip to Toronto. (Roughly 1000 miles from home base in Omaha.)

He spoke to a charity fundraiser at the Royal Ontario Museum's Crystal Thursday night, to an audience that paid $25,000 (Canadian!) each.  The Globe and Mail describes that audience as "Canada's elite."

The headline from the event: Buffett expects the Canadian dollar to continue to strengthen against the U.S. dollar over the next five years.

Tara Perkins writes in the Globe and Mail:

"Asked whether now is the time for Canadians to buy U.S. dollars, (Buffett) said the United States has been spending $2-billion a day more on goods than it can afford to. Over time, that behaviour weakens the currency, he said. His guess is that, within the next five years, the Canadian dollar will appreciate even more against the U.S. dollar."

The Toronto Star's business columnist David Olive admits that he wasn't able to get into the event. ("Donning the uniform of a Dairy Queen counter person doubtless would have helped. Buffett's favoured repast is a Dilly Bar with a Cherry Coke chaser.")

But he writes that someone in the room reported back that Buffett "expects the Canadian dollar to continue rising beyond the parity it recently reached with the U.S. dollar."

In addition, Olive writes, "Buffett said it was 'very unsettling' that Brazil now is helping prop up the U.S. dollar with its purchases of U.S. government securities. 'Brazil is a country whose own currency has gone to nil five times in the past century,' he noted."

Organizers of the event hoped to raise $4 million, with the bulk of the money going to the University Health Network of Toronto and Israel's Rambam Health Care Campus, and "a little" directed to Sick Kids, a children's hospital in Toronto.

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