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OTTAWA — With the Queen now in her mid-80s, outspoken NDP MP Pat Martin says it’s time for Canada to consider severing ties with the British monarchy and suggests his private member’s motion to strike her out of the citizenship oath is a small first step.

The Winnipeg MP resurrected Wednesday a motion he first tabled two Parliaments ago that seeks to “amend the citizenship ceremony” so that new Canadians swear an oath of allegiance to Canada rather than “the Queen and her heirs and successors.”

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After attending a recent citizenship ceremony in his riding and watching 80 new Canadians from 21 countries swear an oath to the Queen with “no mention of their loyalty to Canada,” he concluded the issue was still relevant.

“It’s just so fundamentally wrong. These people are from all over the world — Paraguay and the Congo and the Philippines and Vietnam. Why are they swearing loyalty to some colonial vestigial appendage from the House of Windsor? It’s bizarre really,” he said.