It's probably just a trend in your area, coinboy. You may live in a smaller, less-populated province where demand for new money is less common than in Ontario and B.C.
It's quite possible that the reason why some provinces haven't been seeing very many new $5s in past months is due to the fact that the upgraded $5s were supposed to replace any old and existing $5s (up to and including 2002 issue) in circulation starting in the spring of 2007. Where I am from, possibly more than 95% of the older issue $5s were already gone from my province, thus requiring less demand for the newer $5s at this moment.
Or, there's a possibility that the current recession may be to blame. Smaller provinces may not need as much new money as they did in 2007. That's a probable reason why your region hasn't had much in terms of new $5s since September, and my region the same. Recessions stink, but that's what happens when people have to conserve their money more than ever and spend it only when they
need to and
not want to.However, it's possible that soon, seeing that the upgraded $5s may have a life span of close to 2 years instead of 1 to 1 1/2 years, there may be more activity in new $5s by the summer. And besides, smaller provinces have experienced a dry spell for shopping since Christmas (only branches with higher customer traffic may have been likely to order new $5s during the Christmas season, and the Scotiabank I deal with is not one of them), and shopping traffic will increase around Easter, so banks may be very likely to order bricks of new $5s by then. It's just that, due to the likeliness of the recession, fewer and fewer banks need to order new $5s nowadays and they need to save on delivery costs.
As of lately, the Scotiabank I go to on a regular basis hasn't seen any crisp $5s in many, many months. The teller told me she doesn't even remember the last time they saw any because it was so long ago. They didn't even get any crisp $5s for the Christmas season. I can see why there were a lot more $5s at that particular Scotiabank branch in 2007, but in 2008 they were all a rarity. There seems to be more in terms of crisp $10s than crisp $5s nowadays.
But if there's any consolation, I did manage to get crisp $10 BTT's at that Scotiabank branch back in January and in February.
EDIT: I just checked the BoC Liabilities table at the Wiki site, and it shows that the amount of outstanding $5s for 2008 were at the highest level - 203,575,600 (thousand?). Strange that not a lot of $5s in my province need to be replaced.