Carleton’s clubs and businesses are adapting and responding to the penny’s phasing out that began this month.
“We will still accept pennies,” said Blake Brooks, manager of Oliver’s Pub on campus. “We’re still treating them as currency, so if you want to use them, we’ll take them.”
Rod Castro, business operations manager for the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA), said that while businesses still plan to accept pennies as currency, they will not hand them out.
“After receiving them, we would bring them to the bank to deposit, where I’d assume that they have some plan to dispose of them,” he said.
According to the federal budget passed in the summer of 2012, all cash transactions are rounded after taxes to the nearest multiple of five. This has been in effect since the date the Royal Canadian Mint stopped circulating the penny, Feb. 4, 2013.
Castro said that changing prices to remove the need for rounding would be challenging.
“To make wholesale changes to an entire menu or slew of items at the convenience stores would be a huge undertaking,” Castro said. “It would be one of those situations that if we were to do so, it would be an ongoing process. It wouldn’t be something that we could do from one day to the next,” he said.
Brooks said Oliver’s prices have been adjusted to the nearest quarter for the last couple years.
According to the Federal Currency Act, businesses may reject payments consisting of over 25 pennies.
“Any transaction that is paid with more than 25 pennies, we may or may not accept, but anything over 50, especially if it’s not rolled, absolutely not,” Castro said.
“The time to count it would just be counter-intuitive, and it just isn’t courteous to other customers waiting in line,” he said.
Several clubs and events, such as Relay for Life, have begun using penny drives to let people get rid of their extra change to promote their cause.
“With our drive, we’d be doing a small penny drive, in which we’ve got a small container telling people that they can get rid of their pennies, and help Relay for Life, “ Genevieve Labranche, third-year Carleton student and head of the Relay for Life committee said.
“They’d be going towards the Canadian Cancer Society, along with all the proceeds from the cupcake sale.”
