In an official statement, the Bank of Canada (BoC) has stated they are looking at building contingency cash which will be a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
In the statement they said:
The Bank is therefore implementing a portfolio of initiatives designed to prepare for the future of money and payments and to be ready for different possible scenarios that we cannot currently predict
They then went on to say:
building, as a contingency, the capability to issue a cash-like central bank digital currency (CBDC) to the public, should the need ever arise
Later in the article, the BoC add they are not planning to issue the new currency as of yet but they want to be ready straight away if the need arises. There are some scenarios where the central bank will issue the CBDC:
- If the use of bank notes were to continue to decline to a point where Canadians no longer had the option of using them for a wide range of transactions; or
- One or more alternative digital currencies—likely issued by private sector entities—were to become widely used as an alternative to the Canadian dollar as a method of payment, store of value and unit of account.
As always there are caveats to the CBDC and the BoC said any decision to launch a CBDC would require the full support and approval of the Government of Canada and acceptance by the Canadian public. It seems they think that the economy might go cashless one day and the rate of change in the technology needs to be investigated and the BoC are adapting.
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