{"id":17647,"date":"2016-02-11T12:51:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T17:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17647"},"modified":"2016-02-13T17:18:43","modified_gmt":"2016-02-13T22:18:43","slug":"canada-sells-off-most-of-its-gold-reserves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17647","title":{"rendered":"Canada sells off most of its gold reserves"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\" class=\"wrap12 story-head\" tabindex=\"0\">\n<div class=\"colfull\">\n<div class=\"story-headline\">\n<h3 class=\"story-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/gold-canada-reserves-1.3443700\" target=\"_blank\">Canada sells off most of its gold reserves<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"story-deck\"><strong>Thousands of gold coins being sold, figures show<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"small lighttext\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.3443856.1455207943!\/cpImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/16x9_620\/investments-gold-and-rare-coins-topix.jpg\" alt=\"A one-ounce gold Canadian Maple Leaf coin. The Royal Canadian Mint has produced pure Maple Leaf gold coins in a variety of denominations for more than 40 years. \" width=\"100%\" height=\"349\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wrap8 story-primary\">\n<div id=\"leadmedia\" class=\"story-leadmedia col8\">\n<div class=\"figure\">\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">A one-ounce gold Canadian Maple Leaf coin. The Royal Canadian Mint has produced pure Maple Leaf gold coins in a variety of denominations for more than 40 years. (Ed Betz\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wrap8 story-bodywrapper sclt-storybody\">\n<div id=\"sharecount_gig_containerParent\" class=\"story-middle col2\">\n<div id=\"sharecount\" class=\"sclt-share\">\n<div id=\"yui_3_11_0_1_1455212697361_13\" class=\"gig-bar-container gig-share-bar-container\">(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"story-body\">\n<div class=\"story-content\">\n<p>Canada is selling off most of its remaining gold reserves, mainly by selling gold coins, figures from the Bank of Canada and Finance Department show.<\/p>\n<p>The country held just $19 million US worth of gold as of last Monday. Through\u00a0most of 2015, the country&#8217;s gold reserves stood at more than $100 million US.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/player\/play\/2380215253\">DOC ZONE: A look at Canada&#8217;s diminished gold reserves<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Finance Department figures show that Canada sold 41,106 ounces of gold coins in December and another 32,860 ounces of gold coins in January.\u00a0That left Canada holding 21,929 ounces of gold as of the end of January, worth $24 million US.<\/p>\n<p>With our gold holdings worth $19 million US as of three days ago, that suggests further sales this month, as the price of gold has been rising\u00a0\u2014 up to $1,245 US per ounce today.<\/p>\n<p>The figures don&#8217;t say which coins Ottawa has been selling. The Royal Canadian Mint\u00a0has produced\u00a0pure Maple Leaf gold coins in a variety of denominations for more than 40 years. They&#8217;ve proven to be popular\u00a0around the world, with more than 25 million troy ounces of coins sold\u00a0since 1979.<\/p>\n<p>Canada also produced $5 and $10 gold coins in the 1912-1914 period. The mint\u00a0began to\u00a0sell\u00a0off its\u00a0stash of\u00a0that vintage gold in 2012.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Canada&#8217;s shrinking gold reserves\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Canada may be one of the world&#8217;s biggest gold-mining nations, but the government of Canada hasn&#8217;t been a big buyer of gold coins, or any other gold, for years. That&#8217;s not too surprising, since no country now uses a gold standard to value and back its currency.<\/p>\n<p>Year-end data from Finance for each of the last 10 years shows that Canada&#8217;s\u00a0gold hoard has\u00a0been worth a maximum of $181 million US during that span.<\/p>\n<p>At current levels, our gold holdings amount to less than 0.1 per cent of the $82.6 billion US that Canada has in official international reserves.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S., by comparison, had 8,133 tonnes of gold (261.5 million troy ounces) as of the end of 2015, according to the World Gold Council, worth almost\u00a0$300 billion US. That amounted to more than 72 per cent of its total foreign reserves.<\/p>\n<p>Back in the 1960, Canada held more than 1,000 tonnes of gold. But it began steadily selling off\u00a0its hoard, and by 2003, the country\u00a0had just 3.4 tonnes.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Canada has\u00a0less than\u00a0one\u00a0tonne.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada sells off most of its gold reserves Thousands of gold coins being sold, figures show A one-ounce gold Canadian Maple Leaf coin. The Royal Canadian Mint has produced pure Maple Leaf gold coins in a variety of denominations for more than 40 years. (Ed Betz\/Associated Press) (Note: CBC does not endorse and is not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[103,3544,3000,1865,12329],"class_list":["post-17647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-canada","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-gold-reserves","tag-royal-canadian-mint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17769,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17647\/revisions\/17769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}