A penniless Canada: Mint begins years-long process of collecting and melting down 82-million kg in coins

Taken From: National Post

Date Published: February 6th, 2013

Jim Flaherty, Canada's Minister of Fiance, stamping the last
penny at the Royal Canadian Mint.

Summary: As of Wednesday, Canada has officially eliminated the penny. 35 Billion pennies, weighing around 82 million kg or 180 million pounds will be collected and melted down. This process will take around a year. All transactions will now be rounded to the nearest $0.05. Pennies will still be accepted as money, but it is up to businesses' discretion whether they will accept the coins. From there the business can hand them over to the bank, and from there the bank will pass it over to the Canadian Mint. It will be a slow process; It is estimated it will take around 3 - 4 years to get the pennies out of circulation. There is still a long way to go before they disappear completely from every day life. Canada is following many other countries' decision to stop producing low-denomination coins. The United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Brazil and many other countries have stopped. The reason is because in Canada, it costs 1.6 cents to produce one penny. The production cost exceeded the monetary value.

Opinion: I think it is a good decision to remove the penny.It's a big step to remove something so big out of our lives and out of Canadian culture. It will be, in a few years, weird to live without the penny. I want to keep the penny in circulation, but it's better for the country and it's economy. It will save the country around $11 Million dollars every year, as that is the price to produce the pennies.