From LifeSiteNews

By Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

“central bank digital currency could hand incredible power to the Government and Bank of Canada to monitor financial transactions, punish whatever behaviours the government deems undesirable, and penalize those on the wrong side of government ambitions”

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms released a new report examining how the adoption of a central bank digital currency in Canada could undermine the rights and freedoms of Canadians, including their privacy, autonomy, security, equality, and access to economic participation.

Read our report, “Central Bank Digital Currency? What it is and how it could impact your privacy, security, and autonomy,” here.

Financial transactions are increasingly conducted digitally. In 2023, a mere 11 percent of transactions were conducted with cash, according to Payments Canada.

This trend is not limited to individual consumers. Government entities, including government departments, agencies, and Crown Corporations, have rapidly digitized access to, and delivery of, their goods and services over the past decade.

READ: Mark Carney has history of supporting CBDCs, endorsed Freedom Convoy crackdown

Against this backdrop, in 2017, the Bank of Canada (a Crown Corporation) began exploring the possibility of implementing its own government-issued and government-controlled cashless currency – a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

In a 2023 Bank of Canada survey on CBDCs, however, 82 percent of 89,423 respondents strongly disagreed that the Bank of Canada should be researching or building the capability to issue a CBDC. Despite these results, the Bank of Canada continues to research a CBDC for Canada.

The Justice Centre’s report critically evaluates the impact a CBDC could have on Canadians’ fundamental rights and freedoms. Absent robust legislative protections and oversight, a CBDC could allow the Government and Bank of Canada to monitor Canadians’ purchases, donations, investments and other financial transactions.

A CBDC has the potential to empower government to reward and punish the behaviours and lifestyle choices of individual Canadians, as Communist China does with its “social credit” system. Allowing the government to peer into and influence Canadians’ purchasing behaviours could have a profoundly damaging impact on their privacy and autonomy, cautions the report.

READ: Financial expert warns all-digital monetary system would enable ‘complete control’ of citizens

Canada is not the first jurisdiction to explore a CBDC. This report evaluates the Bank of Canada’s exploration within a global context, applying lessons learned from jurisdictions like Nigeria, the Caribbean, and others.

After analyzing negative outcomes of “going cashless” in jurisdictions such as Australia, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, this report advocates for the value of cash and the need for robust institutional and legislative protections for the use of cash.

Ben Klassen, Education Programs Coordinator at the Justice Centre and lead author of the report, stated, “Many Canadian politicians and policy designers would have us participate in a frantic (and global) race to digitize goods and services, including our dollar. The finish line, we are told, promises heightened profitability, convenience, and security. While the pursuit of innovation and efficiency can deliver worthwhile rewards, we must always remember the values of privacy, autonomy, security, equality, and access to economic participation. Adopting a central bank digital currency risks excluding the homeless, the elderly, the ‘internetless,’ the technologically illiterate, and the conscientious objector.”

“Most seriously, a central bank digital currency could hand incredible power to the Government and Bank of Canada to monitor financial transactions, punish whatever behaviours the government deems undesirable, and penalize those on the wrong side of government ambitions,” continued Mr. Klassen. “This issue should be framed as a contrast between a ‘digital dollar’ and a ‘human dollar’ – our currency cannot be designed without regard for the humans and human values that will be profoundly impacted by its design.”

READ: RFK Jr. warns Americans ‘will be slaves’ if central bank digital currency is established

This report was produced in collaboration with Sharon Polsky – President of AMINAcorp.ca, President of the Privacy & Access Council of Canada, and a Privacy by Design Ambassador with more than 30 years’ experience in advising governments and policy designers on privacy and access matters.

Read the full report here.

Reprinted with permission from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. 

From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

A working paper by the International Monetary Fund suggests that cash may disappear from society entirely once central bank digital currencies become mainstream.

Digital currencies like CBDCs could make cash extinct, whether by design or through market preference, according to an IMF working paper.

With widespread digital currency adoption, cash may go the way of the dodo bird, and it would be “challenging and costly” to revive it if a society were to go fully cashless, according to the IMF working paper, Could Digital Currencies Lead to the Disappearance of Cash from the Market? by Marco Pani and Rodolfo Maino.

The disappearance of cash, according to the authors, could come about either through direct policy or as a natural part of innovation and digital currency adoption.

They say that “the introduction of a DC [Digital Currency] in a diverse payment ecosystem—comprising cash, traditional payment cards, and modern electronic money—where the use of physical cash has already declined significantly, could lead to the complete disappearance of cash, even if such an outcome were not an intentional policy objective.”

READ: Financial expert warns all-digital monetary system would enable ‘complete control’ of citizens

The authors looked at how merchants and customers use physical cash and cards, and simulated how the introduction of digital currencies could either complement cash and cards or wipe them out completely.

According to the report, the introduction of a new currency can alter the market equilibrium in several qualitatively different ways:

1. It may displace one of the exiting currencies (either cash or cards);
2. It may replace both currencies; or
3. It may continue to be used indefinitely alongside the other two currencies.

Programmable digital currencies like Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) cannot operate without pegging every user to a digital identity.

What’s more, these programmable digital currencies can be controlled remotely, so that taxes and fines could automatically be taken out of accounts, or so that restrictions could be placed on what you could buy, where you could buy it and when.

Last year, the IMF published a policy brief acknowledging that CBDCs could be used for state surveillance while posing risks to privacy and cybersecurity that could undermine trust in central bank money.

According to the November 2024 IMF brief, Central Bank Digital Currency: Progress And Further Considerations:

CBDC, as a digital form of central bank money, may allow for a ‘digital trail’—data—to be accessed, collected, processed and stored.

In contrast to cash, CBDC could be designed to potentially include a wealth of personal data encapsulating transaction histories, user demographics, and behavioral patterns.

Personal data could establish a link between counterparty identities and transactions.

While the IMF acknowledges the risks to privacy, the potential for government surveillance, and how public and private entities could leverage user data for nefarious means, it is still plowing ahead with a CBDC Handbook for central banks and governments to follow during their rollouts.

READ: International Monetary Fund ‘working hard’ on a global Central Bank Digital Currency platform

The IMF consistently says that digital currencies should be complementary to physical cash and to not replace it, but all signs point towards the erosion of cash over time, whether through convenience or coercion — carrot or stick.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy Development last year, Central Bank of Bahrain governor Khalid Humaidan told the panel “Open Forum: The Digital Currencies’ Opportunity in the Middle East” that one of the goals of CBDC was to replace cash, at least in Bahrain, and to go “one hundred percent digital.”

"We're probably going to stop calling it central bank digital currency [CBDC]. It's going to be a digital form of cash, and at some point in time hopefully we will be able to be 100% digital": Central Bank of Bahrain Governor Khalid Humaidan to the WEF https://t.co/Pspr0M1Uuq pic.twitter.com/N5aOkCpzh1

— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) April 29, 2024

“If we think cash is the analogue and digital currency is the form of digital — CBDC is the digital form of cash — today, clearly we’re in a hybrid situation; we’re using both,” said Humaidan.

We know in the past when it comes to cash, central bankers were very much in control with all aspects of cash, and now we’re comfortable to the point where the private sector plays a big role in the printing of the cash, in the distribution of the cash, and with the private sector we use interest rates to manage the supply of cash.

The same thing is likely to happen with CBDC. Yes, the central bank will have a role, but at some point in time — the same way we don’t call it ‘central bank cash’ — we’re probably going to stop calling it central bank digital currency.

It’s going to be a digital form of the cash, and at some point in time hopefully we will be able to be one hundred percent digital.

"Is it [digital euro] going to be as private as cash? No. A digital currency will never be as anonymous and as protecting of privacy in many respects as cash, which is why cash will always be around": Christine Lagarde, BIS Innovation Summit, March 2023 #CBDC pic.twitter.com/BLMVOPax6a

— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) April 11, 2023

While the IMF advises to not eliminate cash altogether, central banks and governments are already moving in that direction.

Furthermore, a WEF Agenda blog post from September, 2017 lists the “gradual obsolescence of paper currency” as being “characteristic of a well-designed CBDC.”

If cash were to go extinct, the latest IMF working paper warns, “reintroducing cash in a non-cash system would be challenging and costly.”

Therefore, the authors conclude:

To safeguard the continued utilization of cash and to uphold the equilibrium of the payment system, the study advocates for a proactive policy approach and for the implementation of measures aimed at ensuring the sustained relevance of physical currency, especially in scenarios where the introduction of new digital currencies might inadvertently lead to the extinction of traditional cash.

The IMF working paper Could Digital Currencies Lead to the Disappearance of Cash from the Market? was published on the IMF website in March 2025; however, the paper was first published in the International Advances in Economic Research journal on February 19, 2024 under its original title, Could CBDCs Lead to Cash Extinction? Insights from a ‘Merchant-Customer’ Model.

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable. 

Note from LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac: This article is a must-read and view for all readers because of the profound personal impact a digital economy would have on every individual and every family.

The great Catherine Austin Fitts has strongly recommended that every citizen use cash as much as possible for purchases. She says that if millions did this, it would delay, if not stop, a forced digital economy. She should know. Fitts emphasizes, “In a highly leveraged financial system such as we have, a single individual counts for a lot.”

See her article, I Want to Stop CBDCs – What Can I Do

The increased use of credit and debit cards, including phone and other digital payment systems, is tempting because of their convenience. Still, it is also your cooperation in building your economic prison and total control of all that you say and do, where and when you travel, what you buy or subscribe to, and so on. We are facing a totalitarian control that has never before been experienced in human history. It is beyond frightening.

Carrying and using cash for purchases, and refusing to purchase anything from shops, restaurants or other services that do not accept cash or checks, is inconvenient and requires a little effort, commitment and some degree of courage.