Canada will mark the death of its last veteran of the First World War with a state funeral, although it still has to decide if that would include one man who moved to the United States decades ago.

Lloyd Clemett, 106, John Babcock, 106, and Dwight Wilson, 105, are the last of more than 619,000 Canadian veterans of the 1914-1918 conflict that some historians say helped define Canada as an independent nation in battles such as Vimy Ridge.

Parliament unanimously approved a measure on Tuesday to mark the last veteran's death with an honor normally reserved for former prime ministers.

The vote was praised by the Dominion Institute, a group that promotes teaching of Canadian history and has complained that people were forgetting the country's sacrifices in the First World War. More than 60,000 Canadians died in the conflict.

"We're 10 feet off the ground," said Rudyard Griffiths the group's executive director, noting that even the Bloc Quebecois, which favors Quebec's separation from Canada, supported the measure.

Clemett and Wilson live in Ontario but Babcock moved to the United States in 1924 and lives in Spokane, Washington. It is unclear if he would qualify for a state funeral as a naturalized U.S. citizen, Griffiths said.

Griffiths said final wording of the measure approved by Parliament still has to be worked out. The Canadian Legion has suggested that Babcock might be honored with another type of ceremony if he is the last to die.

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