Silver Percentage US Vs Canadian Dollars

ASW Cdn $ is 77.6% of the weight of silver in the U.S. Dollar.
By reducing the overall weight a little, and reducing the silver fineness a little, adds up to a big little amount.

Both the overall weight and the fineness are less only by a small amount. Probably done that way for the Cdn dollar to retain most of it's credibility, and not notice the ASW reduction too much.
Besides, the Cdn silver dollar was struck in far fewer numbers, so that the amount od silver required to produce the series was only a small fraction of that required to produce the Peace dollar series.

I think it was just a way of saving some cost on the Canadian Treasury.

You have to set some sort of standard, and that is the standard they chose.

In the UK coins were 92.5% silver till 1920, then they debased and went with 50% silver till 1947 at which point they removed the silver completely. Gold was removed from circulation in 1933. This didn't matter so much since the currency was still backed by physical gold held in the Bank of England, and was until Gordon Brown (in his wisdom) decided to sell half of the gold reserves at one of the lowest rates possible...and announce the sale ahead of time so that prices could fall further.

I digress. Britain has always held that the standard of British silver should be 925 parts in a 1000 (though a second higher standard did/does exist called Britannia standard, .950) on the other hand some of the continental silver like coins of France were produced at .825.

Some countries produce/produced gold coins in 22ct, and others in fine gold 23.99ct. Silver proofs are produced at different standards too.

Obviously production of coins on a large scale does demand some cost considerations, even meaning the withdrawal of copper in replacement by steel with a copper cladding.

The long and short is that choices need to be made and a bar set at some level and there is no mandatory level it must be set at. This means naturally there have been variations country to country.

When the decision was made to go to an 800 fine silver standard, the Canadian Treasury at the time were economic rationalists, not coin collectors.

Now, the RCM is perfectly happy to produce 1000 fine silver coins for collectors.
If you wanna buy 'em complete with a profit margin for the Canadian People, then the RCM is happy to make 'em, and market 'em to you.

Most of the RCM's coin collector products are of leading World standard.

Inflation. The silver in the coins was becoming more valuable than the face value.

"Inflation" as a reason makes my head spin, which is probably why I dropped out of my college Economics class. Their money became more valuable than their money, so they had to make their money less valuable. (head explodes)

I think Pacificoin hit it right on the head, World war 1. Canada's population was only about 8 or 9 million around then. Purely economic would make sense to me.

Blame the Americans! So it is written, seriously! My reference is Striking Impressions by Dr James Haxby. With low silver prices Canada made 65c on every $1 worth of silver coinage produced. Meanwhile opportunist parties in the US were exporting Cdn coin "with tacit approval of the Cdn govt" to sell to the Oriental market for melt. But demand for coin within Canada increased and by late 1919 it was costing more than $1 to replace every $1 worth of silver coin that was melted. So in 1920 the silver content was reduced to 80% and the 5c replaced with nickel.

My quick calculation is not well under face.

For example a 50c piece weighed 11.62 grams = .41 oz

92.5% silver = .38 oz silver content

Silver price at $1.34/oz X .38 oz = 51c of silver per each 50c piece (in addition to production costs to mint).

Indeed at 1919 silver prices, 92.5% content, coin minted would be at a loss, assuming my calculations are correct.