In 2012, the Canadian Federal government decided to pull the plug and stop minting Canadian pennies. Coincidentally in the same year, the benevolent Royal Canadian Mint (a crown corporation, that is a corporation owned by the Federal government) changed the composition of Canadian Toonies and Loonies, going from coins comprised of primarily of copper and nickel, to coins primarily composed of stainless steel. This represents the latest link in a long chain of currency debasement that has lead to the degeneration of the Canadian dollars purchasing power and, in my opinion, the degeneration of Canadian society that is dependant upon the dollar to conduct commerce.
It is fairly common knowledge that after 1968, all Canadian currency was debased into copper or nickel tokens whose purchasing power was a shadow of it's former self. What isn't common knowledge is that the progression from a somewhat sound currency to an abominable and unsound currency did not mean an immediate collapse of the currency itself. Rather, the process has been a slow, drawn out one whereby the currency steadily, but surely, looses purchasing power, despite the best efforts of the issuing authorities' (that is, national central banks and federal governments) to keep the currency afloat.
The logic for this is quite simple. Since 1967, the Canadian government has changed the composition of the currency to use more and more inexpensive components, such that the government could be free from the impediment of free market forces that would make it impossible for them to expand (in some cases, exponentially) the money supply. This is the hallmark of Keynsian economics, is intervention by governments and central banks into the economy to fire up the economy when it starts to slow and cool down the economy when it gets over heated.
"Advocates of Keynesian economics argue that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes which require active policy responses by the public sector, particularly monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynsian_economics
There are many problems with this philosophy, the primary one being that it does not allow for the free market system of price determination by aggregate supply and demand. The only way this is possible is by force or fraud, as in any market (whether free or not) participants will always act to minimize losses and maximise profits. The only way to prevent those same participants from acting this way is to either forcefully prevent them from acting that way or by misleading them to convince them to act otherwise. As this relates to Canadian currency, both principles hold true.
In Canada, it is illegal to melt down currently circulating coin currency (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-52/page-2.html#h-8). This is the government forcefully preventing Canadians from extracting a profit from currency whose component value is higher than their face value.
Many Canadians are mislead to believe it is illegal because coins have the image of the Queen of it. Others believe that because the currency is legal tender, it is unnecessary. Even though in just the past 5 years the currency has seen a substantial decline in purchasing power, because it is accepted as legal tender most Canadian unquestioningly regard Canadian currency as a sound medium of exchange. Nowhere in a public education curriculum is the concept of currency composition ever taught.
All of this, in my opinion, is the government and central bank fraudulently misleading or forcefully preventing Canadians from acting to take profit off the currency, as many coins melt value (the market value of all their components) are HIGHER than their face value. To simply melt and resell the components, one could realize an immediate profit.
The attached spreadsheet contains a breakdown of the composition of non-silver Canadian coins and their market value. If not for the government force and fraud, all coins would be nothing but tokens composed of various metals. All these metals have a market price (which this spreadsheet pulls) that in my opinion, if the government force or fraud disappeared, the value of these coins would revert to.
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