Royal Canadian Mint work location Canada
The Royal Canadian Mint (French: Monnaie royale canadienne) is the mint of Canada and a Crown corporation, operating under the Royal Canadian Mint Act. The shares of the Mint are held in trust for the Crown in right of Canada.
The Mint produces all of Canada's circulation coins, and manufactures circulation coins on behalf of other nations. The Mint also designs and manufactures precious and base metal collector coins; gold, silver, palladium, and platinum bullion coins; medals, as well as medallions and tokens. It further offers gold and silver refinery and assay services.
The Mint serves the public's interest but is also mandated to operate "in anticipation of profit" (i.e., to function in a commercial manner without relying on taxpayer support to fund its operations). Like private-sector companies, the Mint has a board of directors consisting of a chair, the president and CEO of the Mint, and eight other directors.
Traditionally, the president of the Royal Canadian Mint is known as the Master of the Mint, currently Marie Lemay, who was appointed to the position in 2018. The board of directors, through the chair, is accountable to the Minister of Finance. The Minister serves as the link between the Mint, Cabinet and Parliament.
The Mint was named one of "Canada's Top 100 Employers" by Mediacorp Canada Inc. from 2007 to 2010.In March 2012, the Canadian government decided to cease the production of pennies. The final penny was minted at the RCM's Winnipeg, Manitoba, plant on the morning of May 4, 2012.In April 2012, the Mint announced it was developing MintChip, a digital currency to allow anonymous transactions backed by the Government of Canada and denominated in a variety of currencies. On January 12, 2016, it was announced that MintChip had been sold to Toronto-based nanoPay.History
When first established in Ottawa in 1908, the Royal Canadian Mint operated as the Ottawa branch mint of the British Royal Mint. In 1931, Canada became an independent dominion of the British Empire and the assets of the Mint were transferred to the Canadian government. In December 1931, the Mint was established as the Royal Canadian Mint and as a branch of the Department of Finance via an act of Parliament. In April 1969, the Royal Canadian Mint was incorporated as a Crown corporation via the Royal Canadian Mint Act for the purpose of minting coins and associated activities.Ottawa facility
For the first fifty years of Canadian coinage (cents meant to circulate in the Province of Canada were first struck in 1858), the coins were struck at the Royal Mint in London, though some were struck at the private Heaton Mint in Birmingham, England. As Canada emerged as a nation in its own right, its need for coinage increased. As a result, a branch of the Royal Mint was authorized to be built in Ottawa in 1901 after being first proposed in 1890.During a short ceremony, Lord Grey and his wife, Lady Grey, activated the presses for the Canadian Mint on January 2, 1908, officially opening the Ottawa branch of the Royal Mint. The first coin struck was a 50-cent piece. When the facility first opened, it had 61 employees. Three years later the Mint began refining gold by electrolysis in its assay department. This method proved to be too time-consuming and in 1915 the Mint introduced a new chlorination process developed in Australia to reduce processing times and increase the Mint's gold refining capacity. Since then, the Mint's refinery has undergone several changes and expansions. Today's process is a combination of chlorination and electrolysis.
Over the years the Mint had used different processes to recover and sell the silver often found in unrefined gold, but, in 2006, the Mint opened a new, state-of-the-art silver refinery that finally allowed it to refine silver. The silver is first upgraded in an oxygen converter and then refined by electrolysis.
It was not until the Great Depression that the Ottawa Mint negotiated its independence from the British Royal Mint. In 1931, the Ottawa Mint was renamed the Royal Canadian Mint and began reporting solely to the Department of Finance. Although the Mint continued to rely on the Royal Mint to produce the master tools required for the creation of its punches and dies, the Mint was finally under Canadian control. In 1969, the Government of Canada reorganized the Mint as a Crown corporation. As such, the Mint was no longer a branch of the Department of Finance. It would operate like a corporation with its own board of directors and increased decision-making powers.
In 1979, the Royal Canadian Mint building in Ottawa was designated a National Historic Site, on the grounds the building is representative of the federal government's approach to using the Tudor-Gothic architectural style to create a distinctive identity in Canada's capital, and of the patriation of control over Canada's currency from Britain.The Mint's facility in Ottawa is responsible for producing collector and commemorative coins, bullion in the form of coins, bars, wafers and grain, medals and medallions. This is also where the master tooling is done to create the dies that strike coin designs for both circulation and commemorative issues. The Mint's gold and silver refineries and assay labs are also in Ottawa, as is a full-time Advanced Engineering Research team dedicated to R+D projects.
The last surviving member of the Mint's original staff was Owen Toller. He started in the Mint as a Junior Clerk and retired as an Administrative Officer. He retired after 45 years of service on January 6, 1953. Toller died in November 1987 at the age of 102.Canadian circulation
The Mint's core mandate is to produce and manage the distribution of Canada's circulation coinage and provide advice to the Minister of Finance on all matters related to coinage.
Recently, up to two billion Canadian circulation coins are struck each year at the Mint's facility in Winnipeg. While the effigy of the reigning monarch has appeared on every Canadian coin produced by the Mint since 1908, reverse designs have changed considerably over the years. The Mint often introduces new commemorative designs which celebrate Canada's history, culture and values.
Since 2000, all of Canada's circulation coins have been produced using the Mint's patented multi-ply plated steel technology except for the $1 and $2 circulation coins, which started using this technology as of April 10, 2012.Foreign circulation coins
Many foreign countries have had coinage struck at the Royal Canadian Mint, including circulation coins, numismatic coins, and ready-to-strike blanks. In 1970, Master of the Mint, Gordon Ward Hunter, relaunched the Foreign Circulation division. A contract for Singapore was won in January 1970, to produce six million rimmed blanks in a copper-nickel alloy.  This was their first export contract since a contract for the Dominican Republic 32 years earlier. The second contract came in April 1970 with the Central Bank of Brazil. The RCM produced 84 million blanks for the 50-centavo piece. In August 1971, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen placed an order for 2 million five-fil pieces. This was followed by an order from Iceland for 2.5 million one-crown pieces.
In October 1971, the Bank of Jamaica asked the RCM to produce a commemorative ten-dollar coin in sterling silver, and a twenty-dollar gold coin of proof quality. Also in 1971, the RCM made coins for the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Iran, and the Isle of Man. An order for 100 million general circulation five-centime and ten-centimo coins for Venezuela was received as well. By 1973, orders totalled 65 million coins, and seventy million blanks. By 1974, the Ottawa facility produced a total of 1.2 billion coins (foreign and domestic), a facility record.Part of the Winnipeg Mint's legacy is its role in producing the circulation currency of other nations. 50 million units of the 20¢ Australian coin featuring a platypus were minted in 1981. These have included centavos for Cuba, kroner for Norway, fils for Yemen, pesos for Colombia, kroner for Iceland, rupiah for Indonesia, baht for Thailand, and a thousand-dollar coin for Hong Kong. Other client nations include Barbados and Uganda.
More recently, the Mint has produced coins for a variety of other countries such as New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.In 2005, the Mint was awarded a contract valued at US$1.2 million to produce 50 million toea coins for Papua New Guinea. The circulation coins were produced in denominations of 5 toea, 10 toea and 20 toea, and were manufactured at the Mint's facility in Winnipeg.In 2008, the Mint produced over three million coloured 50-toea coins for Papua New Guinea. These were the world's first coloured coins to circulate outside of Canada. In addition to adding a painted design to more than three million coins, the Mint was required to identically orient the design on every coin. To accomplish this, the Mint, in collaboration with Canadian robotic equipment manufacturer PharmaCos Machinery, developed its own robotic arm to "pick and place" each coin on the painting line, creating a new technical capability unique to the Royal Canadian Mint.The Mint has also supplied 230 million low-denomination coins to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in 2006. The Reserve Bank chose to reduce the size of its existing 50-, 20- and 10-cent coins and manufacture them using the Mint's multi-ply plating technology.
The customers have included governments, central banks, and treasuries. In 2005 alone, the RCM manufactured 1.062 billion coins and blanks for 14 countries. From 1980 to 2005, the RCM has manufactured approximately 52 billion coins for 62 countries. These coins are manufactured at the Royal Canadian Mint's facility in Winnipeg.
The Mint produces circulation and numismatic coins, ready-to-strike blanks, medals, medallions and tokens for customers around the world. They also offer dies, die coatings, master punches and tooling, plus roll and wrap and other coin packaging. The Mint has the capacity to produce over 2 billion circulation coins or blanks per year for foreign governments.Numismatic coins
The Mint makes collector coins and related products for collectors and enthusiasts in Canada and all over the world. Several of these coins have earned international industry awards and in 2010, the Mint sold out the entire mintage of a record 25 collector coins.Made of base and precious metals, several of the Mint's numismatic coins are enhanced by special technologies including holograms, enamelling, lasering and embedded crystals. The Mint also produces medals, medallions and tokens as part of this business line.
The Mint produces a great number of military decorations for the Department of National Defence including: the Sacrifice Medal, the Canadian Forces' Decoration and Clasp, the General Campaign Star, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Bars, the General Service Medal, the Special Service Medal, the Operational Service Medal, the Memorial Cross and the Canadian Victoria Cross. It also produces military decorations for Veterans Affairs Canada, as well as long-service medals for the RCMP and artistic achievement awards for the Governor General of Canada.The Mint also produced the athletes' medals of the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games and the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. The Mint produced 615 Olympic and 399 Paralympic medals at their headquarters in Ottawa for the 2010 Winter Games.The Mint also designed and produced the 4,283 medals for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am games.Notable coins
Bullion coins
In 1979, the Mint began producing its own branded bullion coins, which feature a maple leaf on the reverse. Since 1979, the fineness of the gold used to strike the gold maple leaf (GML) coins has increased from .999 to .9999, and finally, to .99999 (for a special series from 2007 to 2009). In addition, GMLs are produced in sizes that are fractions of a troy ounce: 1 oz, 1⁄2 oz, 1⁄4 oz, 1⁄10 oz, 1⁄15 oz, 1⁄20 oz, 1⁄25 oz, and in sets that combine some or all of these weights. Special-edition designs have commemorated the tenth anniversary of the GML (1989), the 125th anniversary of the RCMP (1997), and the 25th anniversary of the GML (1994). A three-coin set was released to commemorate the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games (2008–2010), and a fractional GML set was issued in 2011 to commemorate the centennial of the Mint's gold refinery. Renowned for its unrivalled purity, the Mint's gold maple leaf remains one of the world's most popular bullion coins.
place of work office location employment site workplace job site