Pat Martin thinks the venerable penny isn't worth … well, one red cent. And so, the NDP MP has introduced a private member's bill, calling on the government to stop minting the one-cent piece.

"It costs more to produce than it's worth," he says.

Yes, he told reporters, there are billions of pennies still in Canadian change jars, "but it's just not money anymore so we think the time has finally come to do away with it altogether."

• IN DEPTH: Save the penny or leave the penny?

But a penny for your thoughts, Mr. Martin: How's a Canadian to pay $1.98 for a coffee without a few of those copper-coloured pieces?

"What other countries have done is introduce a rounding system that any purchase you make that arrives at say $19.97 gets rounded down. If it's $19.98, it gets rounded up."

But that can't make (ahem) sense, can it?

Won't a shopkeeper lose two pennies when rounding down and the customer lose two on the way back up? That would negate the latest GST cut on that $1.98 grande bold.

Buying three of those coffees would add up to six extra cents a day. Do that 250 days a year and you're out $15.

"Other countries that have done this, the experience has been revenue neutral," Martin said. And besides, it would only be for cash transactions. Pay with your credit or debit card and you still get to add up the cents.

But think of life without the penny: Your pockets — or purse — might feel a little lighter, but there'd be nothing to drop into the tip jar. And haven't we always been told that a penny saved is a penny earned?

What about charity boxes at the grocery store? Or donations to children's piggy banks? Surely, that's where the penny drops.

And then there's penny candy? Or is that perhaps, like the penny, a piece of nostalgia no longer in custom?

Thoughts about your penny

The Royal Canadian Mint says it costs 0.8 cents to produce a single one cent piece — a good deal on the face of it. On the other hand, the Desjardins Group gives us its two cents and estimates it costs more than $130 million to keep the slight coin in circulation.

The government produces about 816 million pennies a year and the Desjardins Group says there are about 20 billion pennies in circulation — a heckuva lot of coin by any calculation.

But, as Pat Martin points out, polls have shown the majority of Canadians don't even use pennies. They hoard them in change jars or toss them into wishing wells.

Still, according to the mint, 58 per cent of Canadians asked say they still need the penny. Seventy-one per cent said the penny — despite being "dirty, smelly and germ-ridden" — think the little coin is a part of Canada's heritage.

• COMMENT: Add your two cents

"There's kind of an emotional attachment people have to the penny," Martin says. "But, you know, they'll get over it.

"Heck, we used to have halfpennies."

And he's right – at least in Britain and British North America in the 19th century. Since adopting the dollar as its currency in 1858, Canada has never issued a coin worth less than one cent. The British halfpenny went out of circulation in the 1960s, about the same time it was becoming impossible to find a halfpenny-worth of anything.

Is that where we are today? Can you buy anything for a penny any more?

Pat Martin doesn't think you can.

And so, he says, it's time for the penny to drop, one last time.