Answers
Is the Paper Penny legal tender?
No. Plainly and permanently: the Paper Penny is not legal tender, and it never claims to be. Legal tender in Canada is defined by the Currency Act, which covers bank notes issued by the Bank of Canada and coins issued under the Royal Canadian Mint Act. The Paper Penny is neither.
It is a proposed community voucher: a paper token that participating local businesses could voluntarily choose to honour under published rules, the way they might honour a gift certificate or a loyalty note. No business would ever be required to accept one, no government backs it, and it has no connection to the Royal Canadian Mint. It also is not live: the program is a proposal, and the proposed first pilot, Owen Sound, Ontario, has not adopted anything.
Canada has a long, legal tradition of exactly this kind of voluntary instrument. Calgary Dollars has operated since 1995, and Toronto ran a paper Toronto Dollar from 1998 to 2013. Both worked because they were transparent about what they were not. The Paper Penny follows that rule from day one: community value by agreement, clearly labelled, never confused with money.
The Paper Penny is a proposed program. No city has adopted it yet. Owen Sound, Ontario is the proposed first pilot.
Paper Penny is a proposed community project by Mike Seiler (mikeseiler.ca), built on the map.ca stack. It is not legal tender, not a Royal Canadian Mint product, and not yet live in any city. The network map lives at PennyMap.ca.