Canadian Currency

Currency

The Bank of Canada plays a vital role in the monitoring and management of paper notes. Coins, on the other hand, is handled by the Royal Canadian Mint. Thus, the responsibility of ensuring sufficient paper currency to meet the needs of the economy rests upon the Bank of Canada as it is crucial for the efficient operation of a nation. Furthermore, it is the Bank’s responsibility to establish a high confidence level in the notes issued as they have to be readily accepted without any concern of counterfeit.  Counterfeit prevention education is managed and marketed through ads and informative websites in hopes of educating the public. In addition, Bank of Canada’s responses and preventions towards counterfeit notes are research and development with innovative security features that are easy to check and hard to imitate.  Co-operation and teamwork with police forces and prosecutors also help further align the Bank of Canada role with crime prevention.

Design, Process, Distribution

The bank of Canada controls the process of design, production, and distribution of bank notes.  The design and production of bank notes is a lengthy process, which can take up to several years. Following the approval of the design, the production is designated to private sectors in security printing companies and then they are sent to the bank. The last step of distribution is the balance of aspects. The Bank of Canada must be prepared to supply financial institutions with enough notes to satisfy public demand. The value of currency is based on the simple notion of supply and demand. The bank of Canada has the ability to increase or decrease dollar value by buying the currency, holding the currency, or selling the reserves back to the market. These are one of the several ways Bank of Canada is able to control and manipulate the value. Lastly, as the bills slowly deteriorate and become unfit for further circulation, they are gathered by the banks and sent through high speed equipment to be shredded.

Paper or Plastic?

The recent release of the new polymer money into the market has gotten a lot of interesting debates. Benefits of this new material of bank notes include security, durability, innovative, and convenience.  The security features are said to be lead-edge around the world, and very difficult to imitate. However, we have already seen some cases of duplication. The durability aspect of polymer is said to last two and half times longer than ordinary paper notes, thus reducing costs and becoming environmentally friendly. Once again, there were issues and concerns of the numbers of complaints involving the cohesiveness of the bills. The innovative, and convenience factors are justify through the means of becoming leaders of new technology and development despite the lack of integration of acceptance in older machines. Although polymer money has great potential, there are huge expectations and is a great illustration of how careful considerations are required to withstand criticism of the general public.