Question Re CRH And Mintage Numbers

Since 2004.
Making no dent in the mintage numbers.
If anything more coins must be minted to replace the ones removed by the ARP.

It doesn't affect the "mintage numbers" at all, since that is the count of how many were made. What it does affect is the survival rate (the percentage of that original mintage that still exists).

And unless the RCM is tracking how many of each date they are destroying (which I'm pretty sure they're not doing), there's no real way to quantify the survival rate in absolute terms. The only thing you can do is to grab a large random-representative sample of coins, do a statistical analysis of the dates and see if the relative abundances of each date are in line with expectations derived from the mintages. This may or may not be an accurate indicator of survival rates, since the number of coins being "hoarded" but not actually "lost" (by banks, private individuals, etc) is largely unknown. The Mint could estimate roughly how many coins are "disappearing" from circulation each year, from how many coins the banks request be issued to replace them, but they don't know and can't know exactly where all those "missing" coins are going. Hoards? Tourists? Rolling off the ferry and falling to the bottom of the lake? There's no way to tell.

Also to note: while the ARP might have officially begun in 2004, Canadian banks have always been withdrawing and returning for melt any coins that are heavily worn, corroded, damaged or otherwise unfit for use. Again, the numbers of 1979 coins withdrawn in the period 1979-2004 would be unknown; it wouldn't be as high as the old silver withdrawal rates (since pure nickel is a much tougher alloy than coin silver and lasts much longer in circulation) but it would still have happened.

Statistically, coins should be being removed "evenly" across the date range, since nobody is hunting down and destorying specific dates.

Thank you very much for the feedback...very educational.