The 2006 Canadian toonie carries an inner core struck in aluminium bronze bonded within a nickel ring — a bimetallic construction the Royal Canadian Mint pioneered for circulation coinage and later licensed to other sovereign mints. The specific Churchill designation on this issue refers to a collector or commemorative variant, though the standard circulation toonie format was itself introduced in 1996 partly to reduce currency production costs, a loonie-sized calculation that saved the federal government an estimated $175 million over the coin's first decade compared to the paper two-dollar note it replaced.
The 2006 Canadian toonie carries an inner core struck in aluminium bronze bonded within a nickel ring — a bimetallic construction the Royal Canadian Mint pioneered for circulation coinage and later licensed to other sovereign mints. The specific Churchill designation on this issue refers to a collector or commemorative variant, though the standard circulation toonie format was itself introduced in 1996 partly to reduce currency production costs, a loonie-sized calculation that saved the federal government an estimated $175 million over the coin's first decade compared to the paper two-dollar note it replaced.