Funny Money in Canada

According to an article by Grant Robertson, Funny Money: How counterfeiting led to a major overhaul of Canada's money. , Canada has a  major problem with their currency. One group of individuals in Canada are responsible for the largest counterfeiting ring in the country has ever seen; they are responsible for passing more than $11-million worth of known fake $20 bills, and many more that were never discovered and are still circulating in wallets and cash registers across the country. This group of individuals was caught by chance from a tip by two armoured car drivers. Two of the men in the group were driving around buying small items with $20 bills and receiving legitimate change.  According to Robertson Canada’s’ currency is one of the highest leading forged currency in the world. So how does the Canadian government stop the printing of their colourful currency? The government has decided to replace the paper currency with polymer notes. They believe that by limiting the material used to make banknotes you can limit counterfeiting. The reason the counterfeiting boomed so quickly was because a series of bills was present too long, allowing counterfeiters to master the bill.  Canada has added a number of features to their banknotes to try to shield from forged bills, and instead of counterfeit bills decreasing, it steadily climbed. The counterfeit problem was so well known to the country many businesses stopped taking bills over $20 to protect themselves from a potential loss.  
I thought it was interesting that the article describes how the counterfeiter goes about printing money. How they decided on paper and colors, etc. One counterfeiter, Mr. Weber, is believed to have printed about $6 Million in Canadian $100 bills. At the time of his arrest he was in the process of printing $233,000 in $100 bills.  I find it amazing that by a tip from the Brinks drivers police were lead to a factory that housed over $6.7 Million dollars in counterfeit money, that they didn’t even know existed yet, because it wasn’t in circulation. How much money did this organization actually print?! The workers in the warehouse had figured out how to replicate every security measure the government had in place to stop forgery, and perfected it.
Canada has been producing polymer money and will introduce it over the next two years while destroying all their paper money.