The passing of Queen Elizabeth II will bring about sweeping changes across the globe, including new coins and banknotes for the 33 Commonwealth nations that feature the face of reigning British monarchs on their currency.

Canada will be getting new currency bearing the visage of the new King Charles III, but if you're expecting to see the new coins and bills rolled out overnight, you might be in for a much longer-than-expected wait.

The Royal Canadian Mint hasn't printed a secret stash of currency with the new King's face, nor has it even produced the tooling required to strike coins bearing the new monarch's large-eared likeness.

Though blogTO's request to the Royal Canadian Mint for details of the inevitable rollout of King Charles currency has gone unanswered as of writing, a representative of the Mint told the National Post in 2017 that none of the work involved was being done under the presumption of who would be named monarch.

"Since choosing which effigy appears on future Canadian coins goes beyond our mandate, the Mint has not produced any advance tooling depicting a future, anticipated monarch," the Mint representative told the newspaper.

There are several reasons for this. There was really no guarantee that Charles would be crowned king, and though it was a safe bet, you don't invest public resources into even the most educated of hunches. Even if the Mint guessed correctly, his title was still undetermined at the time of the Queen's passing.

But according to the National Post, technological advances allow the Mint to go from drawing to production in a matter of days, meaning the main hurdle in the process is the Royal Family's approval of the portrait.

And portraits have indeed been vetoed in the past.

The Mint could be turning around coins bearing the portrait of the new King very quickly, but The Bank of Canada (BOC) produces new $20 bills on a five-year schedule.

The last $20 bill design was issued in 2018, with the BOC stating in the months before its release that it would produce its future banknotes in around five years with whoever was monarch at the time.

With that five-year window closing, it is unknown if this new design has already been finalized, or if a new banknote could soon appear depicting the new monarch.