iPolitics... If you’ve got an old $1 bill that you’re using as a bookmark or a pile of $1,000 bills hidden in a safety deposit box, listen up: it’s soon going to be time to give them back.
The federal government, acting on the advice of the Bank of Canada, plans to remove legal tender status from a variety of old banknotes, including $1, $2, $25, $500 and $1,000 bills. A total of $1.1-billion worth of old paper currency is to be pulled from circulation.
The problem, says the 2018 federal budget, is that “large denominations facilitate illicit activities such as counterfeiting, money laundering and tax evasion.”
The $1 and $2 were long ago replaced by coins and while there are still 151.6 million dollar bills around, they’re probably more of a nuisance than anything. As for the $25 and $500 bills, they were issued in 1935 and few of them around.
It’s the $1,000 bill that’s clearly the major target. The last M-note was issued in May 2000 but there are still 741,638 of the banknotes in circulation worth a tidy $741.6 million. If you’re looking for one, it’s red and part of the old Birds of Canada series.
According to a Finance Canada official, one of the problems with the $1,000 bill is that it’s a lot easier to counterfeit than the new plastic currency, with its sophisticated security features.
Once Parliament approves the legislation, all these banknotes will be taken out of circulation. The Bank of Canada will continue to honour these bills and exchange them at face value but financial institutions will be forced to return them to the Bank every time one is brought in.
The Bank says that if you don’t want to redeem any of those bills, you can always decide to keep them as bookmarks.