Canada To Replace Paper Currency With Plastic?!

I lived in Australia for a while and liked their notes. Washable too.

Oh god forbid if the Canadian Government would leave the production of Canadian money stock in Canada. Why out source it..we could use the jobs here

Australia has had polymer notes since 1992. They work fine.
When they were introduced, the new notes were smaller than the paper ones: much more convenient.
I can't recall anyone complaining about them.
Peter

The Australian government owns the patents to the technology, and would sue the pants off the Canadians if they stole it.


Peter, lots of people, particularly bank tellers, shopkeepers, and others that had to count and sort large numbers of mixed notes, complained about them - and many of them still do. The polymer notes tend to stick together when you're trying to count or sort them, and once they get folded, they stay folded, only returning to flatness with great difficulty; a pile of polymer notes is much less tidy than a pile of paper notes.

Australian polymer notes were introduced with the aim of there being two key improvements over paper: they last longer in circulation and they withstand hot, tropical conditions better than paper (this last point has been a key selling point for NPA's customers in Southeast Asia).

Canada doesn't have any tropical regions, so the only benefit they'd gain is from increased longevity. They'd certainly want to do some extensive cold-weather testing before adopting them.

As for abolishing nickel, they'd simply be following general world trends. A small percentage of the population is allergic to nickel, so governments worldwide are moving away from it's use in coinage. Canada has been reluctant to abandon nickel in the past, because it's one of the world's largest suppliers, thanks to the Sudbury meteorite. Abandoning nickel would thus be unpatriotic, too.

Sure, the polymer is "counterfeit-resistant" - all NPA banknotes have a "see-thru" section of clear plastic, that acts like a watermark on paper notes. That's hard to replicate, because even if you use plasticized glossy paper in a printer or photocopier to try to duplicate the "feel", you can't make a see-thru section. But you can get counterfeit resistance that's almost as good by using holograms etc. while still keeping the paper substrate.

quote: "... lots of people, particularly bank tellers, shopkeepers, and others that had to count and sort large numbers of mixed notes, complained about them - and many of them still do."

- Queenslanders are prone to grizzle: last week, not enough rain; this week, too much rain; too much money to count ...

quote: "... a pile of polymer notes is much less tidy than a pile of paper notes"
- I rest my case: you've got a pile of money, but tidyness is an issue ...
more seriously, this is only a concern for those who hope to get nearUnc notes from circulation. Joe Public doesn't see this as an issue.

Mr Canada: The size reduction was particularly welcomed when the $50 and $100 were introduced: no-one had a wallet big enough to hold the old paper ones.

Peter in Oz

Can't they leave anything alone? Our coinage has been through one debasement after another. Gone is the time when pocket change reflected real value. Now the mint routinely stamps and issues junk. A lot to be proud of. Now the folks in charge - likely after numerous conferences and donut dunking clatches - want to replace paper with polymer. It's disrespectful, it's infuriating. But it is - par for the course.