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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

The penny loses its shine

Even mint workers don't care if it goes

By: Murray McNeill

Posted: 12/16/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

ROYAL CANADIAN MINT Enlarge Image

No one at the Royal Canadian Mint seems too concerned about the possibility pennies could become a forgotten currency.

PITY the poor penny.

Not only is the Senate's finance committee urging the federal government to do away with the beleaguered coin, but most of the people who make it aren't even going to miss it, if it goes.

Some coin facts

How about a penny for these thoughts:

-- The next closest Canadian coin, in terms of production volumes, at the Royal Canadian Mint last year was the dime. The mint's Winnipeg plant coughed out 370.7 million of them, followed by quarters (266.8 million), nickels (266.4 million), loonies (39.6 million), toonies (38.4 million) and 50-cent pieces (200,000).

-- Pennies used to be made from solid copper. Now they're made from copper-covered zinc because it costs less to produce them.

-- It costs 1.5 cents to make and distribute each penny produced in Canada.

-- The Desjardins Group estimates it costs the Canadian economy $130 million a year for the production, storage, transportation and other expenses associated with the penny.

-- Pennies are rolled and shipped out of the mint in boxes -- $25 worth per box, a union official says.

-- If pennies are abolished, would people still be able to give their two cents' worth on any given issue? Or offer you a penny for your thoughts?

Canada's circulation pennies are all produced at the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) facility in east Winnipeg.

In fact, it's the king of the production line, with more than a billion of them being churned out during one of its best years in recent memory -- 2006. And while that number dwindled to 455,700,000 in 2009, the penny still eclipsed all of the facility's other coin products.

Because it's the mint's most prolific product, one would think the production floor would be abuzz about its potential demise. But not so, according to an official with the union at the plant, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) .

"You don't hear people talking about the penny here at all," said Mitch Sylvestre, regional vice-president for Manitoba and Saskatchewan. "There are so many different coins produced here that it's just another coin."

Sylvestre said some of the employees who were there when the newly minted Winnipeg plant first started spitting out pennies in 1976 might have had an emotional attachment to it. "But they're all retired."

Even the threat of potential job losses is a non-starter, because PSAC and mint officials say they don't think anyone will lose their jobs if the penny gets punted. They figure the mint will just start producing more foreign coins to fill the breach.

Alex Reeves, the RCM's senior manager of communications, said the Winnipeg plant could be producing more foreign coins now if it had more capacity. And pitching the penny would give it that.

Another reason the union isn't worried about job losses is that only a handful of people work on the penny production line. That's because for the last 12 or 13 years, all of the blanks for the pennies have been manufactured in the United States and Europe. All the mint has to do is put on the finishing touches, package them up and ship them off. And Sylvestre said the handful of people doing that will likely be shifted to other duties, especially if the facility starts pumping out more foreign coins.

According to a 2007 study that can be found on the mint's website, mint workers aren't the only ones who aren't getting their knickers in a knot over the thought of losing the penny.

A study by Altitude Market Research and entitled The Future of the Penny in Canada, found Canada's small retailers were in favour of removing the penny from circulation by a margin of three to one.

And while the 1,500 consumers who were surveyed were more evenly split, 42 per cent of them still wanted to see it go, versus 33 per cent who wanted it to stay.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 16, 2010 B5

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