Mint Demands $48,000 For Toronto’s One Cent Coin In Ad Campaign
Never mind a penny for your thoughts – these ruminations may cost you $47,680. You may remember a few months ago we told you about the City of Toronto launching its ” One Cent of the GST Now!” campaign, designed to pressure Ottawa to give struggling municipalities across the country a single penny from all the money collected on the GST to help their cash crunch.
And in a response that can only be akin to adding insult to injury, the feds have finally responded. Or at least one of their departments has. The Royal Canadian Mint is seeking compensation from City Hall for using the penny in its advertising blitz, an image that belongs to the money manufacturer.
The cash controllers claim Toronto never asked their permission to use the reproduction of the coin, didn’t pay the $350 application fee, ignored royalty payments, and never paid up for using the phrase “one cent” in the campaign.
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Now the city has responded to the bizarre request by putting its own two cents in.
“The penny is a public domain,” notes Don Wanagas, a spokesman for Mayor David Miller. “We were not using it for any sort of financial gain. There was not a for-profit aspect of it. So, you know, this is a coin that a lot of people will see one on the street. They won’t even bother to bend over and pick it up. So I mean, you know, let’s be real here.” The city also notes even the ad space was donated, making it anything but a commercial venture.
The Mint claims it must scrupulously guard the images it owns and took the action to protect its rights, even as it ponders getting rid of the expensive-to-manufacture coin altogether. The city disagrees and the campaign remains in effect. “One government should not be seeking payment from another government for the use of words and an iconic image in a not-for-profit public education campaign,” it defends in a statement.
But Toronto Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong thinks he knows where the real blame lies for all this penny pinching. “It doesn’t make sense for one level of government to be arguing with another level of government in this instance. But what I would also add to this is this really is another example of incompetence on behalf of the city’s part.”
Does the public have a ‘cents’ of outrage about this ongoing war of words and pennies? “I think they’re being a little ridiculous,” opines Nancy Pacitto. “That seems like an awful lot of money just to show the image but at the same time the city of Toronto should ask for permission ahead of time.”
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“They do a lot of stupid things,” adds Raoul Oliveira.
Matt Wise thinks the whole thing is worth less than a red cent. “I don’t think the city should have to dish out money for an image that’s pretty much public property … The whole claim is far fetched.”
The lawsuit is distracting some from the original goal of the campaign. It’s estimated Toronto could reap an extra $400 million every year if it could wrangle one of those disputed pennies from a share of the GST. And for a city on the edge, that would be pennies from heaven.
