{"id":2927,"date":"2014-02-26T01:49:38","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T09:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=2927"},"modified":"2025-01-08T18:15:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T23:15:06","slug":"pennies-saved-long-ago-pennies-earned-for-feds-trying-to-balance-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/02\/26\/pennies-saved-long-ago-pennies-earned-for-feds-trying-to-balance-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennies saved long ago pennies earned for feds trying to balance books"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"index\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo: phandroid.com<\/p>\n

OTTAWA – When it comes to balancing the country’s books, it’s the equivalent of finding loose change under a couch cushion.<\/p>\n

But each penny surely counts for a Conservative government desperate to press every bit of cash into paying down the deficit.<\/p>\n

Federal coffers got a $7-million boost over the last eight years, all without a single tax being raised or any spending being cut.<\/p>\n

So what’s behind this modest windfall? Long-forgotten bank accounts.<\/p>\n

If a bank balance goes untouched for 10 years and no one can find the account owner, the money is transferred to the Bank of Canada.<\/p>\n

The central bank holds on to amounts of less than $1,000 for another 30 years, while it keeps amounts above $1,000 for 100 years.<\/p>\n

If no one steps forward to claim the money after all that time, the money is transferred to the Receiver General and goes into the consolidated revenue fund.<\/p>\n

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The government can use that money as it sees fit.<\/p>\n

Spreadsheet data from the Bank of Canada, released to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, offers a glimpse at the sources of this unlikely manna.<\/p>\n

Some accounts date back more than a century, while others are more recent.<\/p>\n

The amount of money in the accounts ranges from as little as a penny to almost $1,000.<\/p>\n

The account holders come from just about every town and city in Canada, and all over the world.<\/p>\n

In 2006, the federal government took in $3.9 million from more than 60,000 dormant accounts.<\/p>\n

That number fell sharply the following year after the Conservatives passed legislation that gave people more time to claim their balances.<\/p>\n

“Starting in 2007, the time period was extended to 40 years after the last transaction date,” Bank of Canada spokeswoman Josianne Menard said in an email.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

“As a result, outstanding balances less than $500 will need another 20 years of inactivity before they are transferred to the Receiver General.”<\/p>\n

The legislation also increased the threshold to $1,000 from $500, she added.<\/p>\n

Last year, Ottawa received just under half a million dollars from 661 inactive accounts.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Personal details have been scrubbed from a copy of the list, so it’s difficult to learn about the people behind the forgotten dough.<\/p>\n

But it’s only natural to wonder about their stories.<\/p>\n

Like all those people who left just a single penny in the bank. Could they just not be bothered to close their accounts?<\/p>\n

Or people who left hundreds of dollars in their accounts more than a century ago. A savvy investor might have made a small fortune over all this time.<\/p>\n

Whatever the case, every penny saved \u2014 and then forgotten \u2014 is a penny earned for Ottawa.<\/p>\n

While the amounts may be small, there’s potentially half a billion dollars up for grabs.<\/p>\n

The Bank of Canada says at the end of December, it had about 1.4 million unclaimed balances, worth $532 million, on its books.<\/p>\n

The bank adds that it paid out $14 million last year to account holders who came forward to claim their cash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: phandroid.com OTTAWA – When it comes to balancing the country’s books, it’s the equivalent of finding loose change under …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":2928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[585],"class_list":["post-2927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","tag-pennies","mauthors-steve-rennie","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281185,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions\/281185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}