In February, the Bank of Canada will stop distributing pennies in Canada. Given my history and notoriety in recommending that Canada abandon the penny, I think they should have a special ceremony and let me send the last penny out into circulation.
I mean, how often is it that someone from UWO is mentioned in a University of Trono publication like this:
The Bank of Canada has announced it will phase out the penny. Why now?
John Palmer, an economist at Western University, has been telling the
Bank of Canada to get rid of the penny for the past 30 years. Pennies
are a nuisance. How many people nowadays would stop to pick up a penny
off the ground? A century ago, you could pay for a chocolate bar with
two or three pennies; now they have no real purchasing power. And they
cost the bank 60 per cent more to produce than they’re worth. The
question is why the bank took so long! The answer is that it probably
just came down to inertia. In any institution, there’s always risk with
change.
Actually, it's been only about 23 years or so, but who's counting?