What If Canada Never Sold Its Gold? The $144 Billion Question at $4,400 per Ounce.
Unveiling the Billion-Dollar Bet: How Canada Cashed Out on Gold and What It Means Today
Editorial Team (ET)January 2, 2026
Picture this: a country blessed with vast mineral wealth, a top global gold producer, yet its central bank vaults echo with emptiness where bullion once gleamed. That's Canada in 2026, the lone G7 outlier holding zero official gold reserves after a decades-long divestment spree that now sparks heated debate amid skyrocketing precious metal prices. As gold futures flirt with $4,385 per troy ounce on this crisp January 2 morning, one can't help but wonder if Ottawa's bold bet against the yellow metal was a stroke of fiscal genius or a glittering folly that's cost billions.
The saga begins in the mid-20th century, when Canada's gold holdings hit their zenith at 1,023 tonnes in 1965, valued at a modest $1.15 billion under the era's fixed exchange rates. Fast-forward to the post-Bretton Woods world, where the U.S. ditched the gold standard in 1971, and the rationale for hoarding non-yielding assets began to crumble. By the late 1970s, the Bank of Canada embarked on a systematic sell-off, adopting a formal policy in 1980 to liquidate reserves in favor of more liquid, interest-earning alternatives. The drawdown accelerated: holdings halved to about 500 tonnes by 1985, plummeted to 46 tonnes by 2000, and trickled to mere ounces by the early 2010s. The final curtain fell in 2016, when the last coins were auctioned off, leaving Canada's official stash at zilch.
