Mr. Speaker, I tried to follow the question but I missed a little bit of it there.
It seemed to me that the hon. member was talking about the opportunities to market the minting of coins which would stimulate jobs and would have some economic spinoff. Certainly, if we can do that internationally that is fine. If the Mexicans want to mint a new peso and they ask us to provide the technology, that is wonderful. If we can have a long term plan to improve the minting of our own Canadian coin that would be wonderful.
However, there are flaws with this survey. It states that there are two main concerns with the implementation of the $2 coin. First, it seems as though there is no overall strategy with regard to our currency. We are talking about different weights and the
fact that we may have to re-mint all of our coins. Why are we going to implement a new $2 coin and then find out that we have to change our loonie, quarter, nickel and dime because the weights are not right?
It is going to be a cruel joke on Canadian business. Certainly it will be a cruel joke on those who are manufacturing vending machines because they are going to have to refit those machines annually or every two or three years. It is just not well thought out. We also have to consider the cost to the Canadian consumer which would be immense, far more than $250 million and far more than any economic stimulus generated by the minting of new coins in Canada.