I have been a longtime reader of Canadian Coin News and would like to briefly follow up on Bret Evans’ article in the April 18 issue regarding the recent appearance of counterfeit polymer $100 notes in Ontario’s Niagara region. Evans did a great job providing a detailed timeline regarding the first counterfeit Frontier series $100 notes from B.C., as well as an update on what counterfeiters have been up to recently.
It would be accurate to say that the Bank of Canada’s choice to incorporate Australia’s polymer substrate and hologram technologies into our own series of banknotes has been quite successful. Not only are these technologies greatly extending the lifetime of a typical note, but they have achieved their intention of thwarting would-be counterfeiters. According to the RCMP’s most up-to-date currency counterfeiting statistics, apart from a one-time spike in 2014, the number of counterfeit Canadian banknotes, being passed and seized, has been declining steadily since the introduction of the Frontier series. The force’s most up-to-date data shows that 2015 was an all-time low of about 20,000 notes passed and seized, from a high of about 60,000 in 2011. However, in this unending game of cat and mouse between the Bank of Canada and counterfeiters, a new threat has emerged that may reverse this trend.
I was recently contacted by a friend, who works at a financial institution, to view a “really good” counterfeit note that she had seized that day. With the decline of the number of fakes and the knowledge that counterfeiters’ best attempts have been subpar at best, my response was that I would try to come by in the next couple of days. Then two words came out of her mouth that turned my “next couple of days” into “when do you close?: “It’s polymer!”
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