Yes, we share a numismatic obsession, I guess, is the point. It's a pretty small club, but we're there.
The first thing in terms of the study is we can provide that to the committee, if it's of interest. We provided the core conclusions of it to the Senate committee that studied this issue a few years ago. Deputy Governor Duguay presented it.
There is experience, and I will get to that in a second, but the first thing to recognize on the issue of rounding is the penny question should only be a question for cash transactions. That's when you use pennies, leave them, or pick them up.
Of course it matters how many items you get. We all think of the $1.99 price. Are they going to round up to $2 or down to $1.95? It matters how many items you buy at the time you're at the till, and where they round up to at that point. They don't necessarily round up to 0.99.
So first, it's only cash, and second, it's how many you get. Third, it's post-tax, as well—sales tax and GST vary by province. The fact is if you're using electronic payment there's no need to make this rounding decision.
The important point as well is that there is experience here. There's experience in New Zealand and Australia. In the case of New Zealand there's the elimination of the one-cent, two-cent, and the nickel. The experience is that there is no discernible.... There are rounding rules. People round down when it's appropriate and they round up when it's appropriate. The fact is that with competition retailers are held accountable, and they know how to serve their customers. So experience shows that it's not inflationary. This deals with a much smaller subset of transactions than one initially thinks.
And the last point, which is not where we would start on this, is it's a penny: we're talking about a penny move. In terms of the overall level of inflation, it is quite modest.
Even all of that said, the experience has been that you get both up and down as appropriate. It's relatively small in terms of the overall transaction, and there's no discernible effect. That is our perspective on what will happen with the elimination of the penny here.