Government Operations committee  Let me take one last stab at it. What used to happen, when people put coins in parking meters and put coins in the slots in their buses, those coins would be collected by armoured cars and taken back to the coin pool and recirculated. So when a financial institution demanded mo

Government Operations committee  It's not pulled out of the air. It's a conclusion reached by the National Coin Committee, of which we are a member, that this is what the wizards in the financial institutions think has been happening. The question becomes, this can't go on forever. People aren't going to end up

Government Operations committee  Not yet. I guess--

Government Operations committee  Two quick things. One is that we have a sales marketing staff on our payroll. We also have representatives in countries who aren't on our staff, and they seek out the contracts. There's no payment to them unless a sale is made, so it's more than 20 or 21. Point two: With respect

Government Operations committee  It's difficult to say. We have an interest shown in ten right now.

Government Operations committee  We make it, in Winnipeg.

Government Operations committee  Yes, under contract. For example, we have a contract with the Government of Thailand and with New Zealand. All coins are manufactured in Winnipeg.

Government Operations committee  Oh, no.

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  No, that's the Bank of Canada.

Government Operations committee  I can start and Mr. Neville can continue. This is quite interesting for me because I worked nearly my entire career at the Department of Finance and for the International Monetary Fund in Washington. The working environment in both those places was mainly Anglophone. I was surp

Government Operations committee  I'm going to let Mr. Neville speak to it, because that's a tough question. I don't think our experience at the Mint with Tim Hortons and the poppy coin was a universal success. We had problems and we've learned some lessons as a result. We will continue to explore the productio

Government Operations committee  Yes, precisely. You're right in saying that the euro is the currency of all those countries, but it is very interesting to note that each country is entitled to put its own effigy on the back of its euros.

Government Operations committee  It costs us less than a penny to make a penny in Canada. In the United States it costs them more. It doesn't cost us much less than a penny to make a penny these days, but we still have positive seigniorage even on the penny, in terms of our production costs. On the one-cent and