While the high dollar increases the buying power of Canadian consumers and businesses, there is a downside to a stronger loonie.

With 95 shopping days until Christmas, tree grower and exporter Richard Lord says a loonie at par with the greenback is no gift for him.

"It means I'm crying," Lord told CTV News. "It's going to hurt us in particular because our season is so short."

Lord sells 80 per cent of his Christmas trees to U.S. customers, and the Canadian dollar's rise has meant a 15 per cent loss for him over the past 12 months.

"The market is competitive enough that we just cannot raise our prices enough to compensate for that," he said.

With the Canadian dollar closing just below parity with its U.S. counterpart on Thursday, countless businesses across the country are feeling the pinch. The film industry is worried now that Canadian shoots are costing American studios more, Peter Leitch of Vancouver's Northshore Studios says.

"We're so dependent on our American customers," Leitch told CTV News, "which is about 80 per cent of the business in Vancouver."

Leitch says that U.S. studios come to Canada not only because we can produce world-class product, but also because we've been competitive price-wise.

"It's going to be a lot more challenging with our dollar at par," he said.

With three out of four visitors to this country coming from the U.S., the tourism sector is also hard hit. Over the past five years, tourism has dropped by more than a third.

To compensate for this, tourism operators want Ottawa to invest $100 million for new advertising to lure Americans back.

Randy Williams of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada is one of those pushing for new ads.

"If you don't get into the U.S. market and tell them what we have," he said, "they're not going to consider Canada as a destination."

Even some importers have to adapt, as for those who pass the savings on to their customers, cheaper products earn them less profit.

Flower importer Debbie Wittet told CTV News she's looking to boost sales to make up the difference.

"To be able to keep up with what we were doing a couple of years ago, we have to raise sales by about a third," Wittet said.

Among the big winners in all this however are Canadian professional sports teams, who pay their players in U.S. dollars.

"As long as the guys and ladies who buy the tickets... aren't being pounded by a dollar that's causing them to slide back economically," Edmonton Oilers President Patrick Laforge said, "then we're good with it."