The penny drops

Congratulations Jim Flaherty — you’re the first finance minister in Canadian history to render the country penniless. And we mean that in a good way.

Aside from nostalgia, there’s no good reason to cling to the humble copper. And sentiment over a one-cent piece isn’t worth $11 million. That’s what Flaherty’s sensible decision to pitch production of the penny will save taxpayers each year.

At this point, in a similar commitment to efficiency, we’ll cash in all our pennyrelated puns, folk sayings and aphorisms. (Feel free to skip to the next paragraph.) Flaherty’s move makes a lot of cents. The penny finally dropped in Ottawa. Maybe Flaherty isn’t such a bad penny. It’s a dollars and sense decision. He’s cut the country off without a penny. Soon we won’t have two pennies to rub together. That’s our two cents worth. Arrgh . . . enough.

Penny production — totalling about 660 million coins a year — is to end in April. Canadians will still be able to spend coppers already in circulation, for what that’s worth. And the public needn’t worry about merchants rounding up their prices. That hasn’t been much of an issue in countries where the one-cent coin has already been eliminated. A Bank of Canada study concluded that rounded up and rounded down transactions generally even out for the consumer.

The penny’s demise is a victory for New Democrat MP Pat Martin, who a few years ago launched a private member’s bill to scrap the one-cent piece. His next crusade: Getting rid of the nickel.

Martin may have a point. As the inimitable Yogi Berra put it: “A nickel isn’t worth a dime today.”