Wow it's quite a luck that your friend had the idea to stash those two notes away. At least with the 0 and the 1 the 0 looks a little less suspicious than it would on it's own. My first thought was did it escape from the Bank of Canada museum or was it meant to be a specimen or something. The number 1 note suggests that it was released as part of a regular issue and your story backs that up.
I would agree that any random robber would probably just spend the other notes. Being too recent to stand out as anything special, even if the thief did notice the serial numbers they almost certainly would just try to get rid of the notes as quickly and discretely as possible and certainly not flash them around town trying to find a collector to buy them. Probably just gave them to his dealer to buy his next rock.