New $50 bill designed to foil the fakers

The Bank of Canada is introducing new plastic bank notes like these $50 and $100 bills which are supposed to evoke “the country’s spirit of innovation.” The $100 bill focusses on medical innovation, the $50 bill on scientific research. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

No hidden messages here on the new plastic $50 bill which includes an image of the Coast Guard icebreaker the Amundsen and some Inuktitut syllabics: just a lot of security features, says the Bank of Canada, which sent an analyst to Iqaluit this week to help retailers see the difference between real and fake bills. (FILE IMAGE)

You won’t find any faces hidden in the windows of the Coast Guard icebreaker, the Amundsen, on Canada’s new $50 bill, which came into circulation March 26.

And the Inuktitut syllabics there read “the Arctic” not something arcane, as some have worried.

“There are no hidden messages,” said Marc Trudel, an analyst with the Bank of Canada, at an April 2 briefing on the new bank note at the RCMP “V” Division headquarters in Iqaluit.

But all the same, the new red and white plastic $50 bill has lots of new security features designed to confound counterfeiters.

In Iqaluit to explain to local retailers how the new bill can help them avoid accepting or passing fakes, Trudel pointed out the new $50 bill’s high-security qualities.

These include hard-to-duplicate transparent windows, a unique hologram that changes colours in light, raised elements on the design and a $50 rainbow image in the middle of the frosted maple leaf, which you can only see when you hold it up to the light.

The new recyclable bills will be tougher and last longer than the current $50 bills, which are made of woven cotton (and not paper as most people think, Trudel said).

While those old $50 bills wear out in seven years, the new ones will last ten, he said.

And that’s good because the plastic bank notes cost nine cents more a piece to make, that is, 19 cents each instead of 10 cents each for the old ones.

The RCMP hopes the new $50 bill, which follows the introduction of a similar plastic $100 bill late last year, will cut down on the number of fake bills circulating around town.

Cpl. Denis Lambe said there have been two counterfeiting incidents this past year in Iqaluit — in one police nabbed counterfeit money and arrested a man found with a money-making device in his home.

More recently, there’s been a report of small denomination bills being passed at a local retailer, which police are now investigating, Lambe said, adding that “it’s a concern if people are flooding Iqaluit with fake bills.”

Often counterfeiters chose spots where people don’t take the time to look closely at the bills. That’s common phenomenon in Iqaluit where there’s a high staff turnover in retail stores.

To avoid being fooled by fake money, the advice from Trudel and Lambe is to check your bills.

On the new $50 bills, you can see if the shoulders of Queen Elizabeth are slightly raised, and whether you can see her matching portait in a white area when you hold it up to the light. You can also hold a light through the bill’s tiny semi-transparent, frosted maple leaf and see if the number 50 pops out.

While it may seem that Iqaluit has a lot of fake bills going around town, you’re still liable to find way more fake money in B.C., Ontario and Quebec.

And there actually aren’t that many fake bills in circulation anywhere, says the Banck of Canada: overall in Canada, only about 2.7 million counterfeit bills are circulating out of a total of 1.5 billion.

Marc Trudel, an analyst with the Bank of Canada, demonstrates how you can check to see if you have a fake $50 bill — the new plastic bills have a rainbow-coloured number 50 inside their semi-transparent frosted maple leaf. When you put a light through the leaf, you can see the number pop out. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)