The Canadian government is selling off its gold reserves in the recent weeks. The country has mainly sold their gold coins, as reflected in the records of Bank of Canada and the Finance Department. This looks like a conscious effort on the part of the government to distance itself from the yellow metal as a government asset.

According to CBC News, the country possessed $19 million worth of bullion as of last Monday. Through the end of 2015, the International Monetary Fund's International Financial Statistics showed that Canadian gold reserves weighed 3 tons, of which the country may have sold 1.3 tons in recent times. They sold 41,106 ounces of gold coins in December and another 32,860 ounces in January, as recorded by Finance Department. The decision to sell was made by the government, or more specifically, Finance Minister Bill Morneau.

"The decision to sell the gold was not tied to a specific gold price, and sales are being conducted over a long period and in a controlled manner," Finance Department spokesman David Barnabe explained in an emailed statement.

The latest statistics, as per Global News, reflect that gold reserves now show 0.62 ton, which does not even comprise 0.1% of the country's total reserves of $82.6 billion, including bonds and foreign currency deposits. By comparative analysis, this throws up a drastic difference from the US reserves at the end of 2015 when it recorded 8,133 tons of gold (261.5 million troy ounces), comprising 72% of its total international reserves.

Canada first minted its gold coins between 1912 and 1914 in denominations of five and ten dollars, represents RCI. But these were taken off circulation almost immediately for fear of foreign invasion during World War I. Post this, almost 250,000 coins have remained stashed in government vaults for years. The highest amount of gold ever held by this country would be over 1000 tons way back in 1965.

By 1985, the reserves had dwindled to 500 tons and have been on a steady decline ever since. In 2013, the government offered the collectors 30,000 gold coins in an attempt to balance the records before melting the rest. The five and ten dollar coins were made up of 90% gold, weighed 8 and 16 grams respectively, and fetched between $1,000 to $1,750.

Although it's known to be one of the biggest gold-mining nations, Canada has not indulged in buying the bullion in any form over the years, which is not very surprising in the current economic scenario. These days the governments hardly use the yellow metal as the benchmark for valuing or backing their currencies.