New $100 bill a fake foiler
Bank hopes to restore faith in C-note
Security features hard to duplicate

RACHEL ROSS
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Don't just count your cash. Touch it, tilt it and hold it up to the light.

The Bank of Canada unveiled a new $100 bill yesterday, in an effort to restore faith in the high-value note.

The new version has several additional security features to help consumers spot a counterfeit bill without the aid of special technology, such as the ultraviolet lights used by some retailers.

"In a quick transaction, you can authenticate a number of security features," Bank of Canada spokesperson Mike Stockfish said yesterday.

At first glance, the new $100 bill looks much like the old note, including its brown colour. It gets a lot more interesting, though, when the bill is tilted or properly lit.

When viewed at an angle, a colourful, holographic stripe of maple leaves and numerals appears on the left-hand side of the front of the bill.

Hold the note up to the light and you'll see the ghostly image of Sir Robert Borden, who served as Canada's eighth prime minister from 1911 to 1920. The watermark can be found to the right of the larger Borden portrait.

A solid metallic stripe appears on the face of the bill as well. The stripe changes colour, from green to gold, when tilted. Backlighting also reveals extra numerals indicating the value of the bill. This detail can be seen on either side.

To help the visually impaired, the new bill includes raised dots, large, high-contrast numerals, and codes that can be read by a portable electronic reader distributed by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Stockfish said this is the first time such features have appeared on a Canadian bank note.

"I'm pleased with the Bank of Canada's effort in addressing the problem," said Sergeant Moshe Gordon, counterfeit co-ordinator for Ontario for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "These are high-quality security features that are very, very hard to duplicate."

The bank notes will also include some older security features, such as raised ink.

The challenge now, according to bank officials, is to get Canadians to check for these features habitually.

"There needs to be a behavioural change and an attitude change that it's okay to check your bank notes," Stockfish said. "It should be a routine part of a cash transaction."

Gordon said checking for security features is especially important now because counterfeiting is on the rise.

The number of Canadian bank notes passed and seized rose 65 per cent from 2001 to 2002, according to statistics released by the RCMP.

The value of those bills actually dropped during that period, Stockfish said, partly due to a major bust of a $100 bill counterfeiting ring in late 2001. Once the Windsor counterfeiters were shut down, there was a significant drop in the number of phony $100 bills produced, he said.

The first of the new $100 notes will be issued on March 17. While the old $100 note will remain legal tender, old-style $100 bills returned to the Bank of Canada by institutions will not be reissued.

The Bank of Canada plans to issue new $20 and $50 bills with their own security features later this year. It has previously reissued the $5 and $10 note.

The decision to revamp the $100 bill before the $20 or the $50 was made before the big counterfeit bust in 2001, Stockfish said, when counterfeit versions of the high-value note were still relatively common