Oh, Canada: you could soon get a gender-neutral anthem

[Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger, who lives with Lou Gehrig’s disease, defends his proposed changes to the lyrics of “O Canada” in the House of Commons on Friday, May 6, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS]

In all of us command but do many of us care?

Members of Parliament voted this week in favour of changing the lyrics of the national anthem to replace “in all our sons command” with the gender-neutral phrase “in all of us command.”

“O Canada” should be officially all-inclusive by the time the country rings in its 150^th next year.

But despite what is a fairly monumental change, the anthem debate hasn’t exactly lit up the Canadian public.

A few years ago, a New Brunswick school principal received death threats after he stopped daily renditions of the national anthem.

Social media erupted in February when singer Nelly Furtado delivered a somewhat less-than-stellar rendition ahead of the NBC All-Star game in Toronto.

But on the gender-neutral bill? All is relatively quiet on the Twitter front.

Maybe because it’s 2016?

It took less than two hours Thursday for the House of Commons heritage committee to study the legislation and pass it without amendment.

Chris Champion, editor of the historical journal The Dorchester Review, was the only witness to address the committee.

Champion called the change a “mistake,” arguing that in the tradition of the English language from Shakespeare to the Bible, “sons” does not refer exclusively to men.

“It should be common sense that you simply don’t change heritage, because it’s heritage. You don’t change heritage on a whim because, watch out, somebody else can come along with another whim,” Champion told committee members.

“Once the tinkering begins, who can say we will not wake up and find there is a new national anthem every time we open our daily newspaper.”

But Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin rejected that argument.

“What am I going to tell my daughters when I go home today about what we’re proposing and the discussions that we’re having here in Parliament today, in 2016, about our national anthem?” she responded.

“What do I tell them about the fact that a historian came to Parliament and testified today that in order to honour our history we need to exclude them?

“How do I explain to my daughters that their true patriot love is not relevant to their country?”

A poll conducted earlier this month by Mainstreet Research found that 62 per cent of 2,027 Canadians surveyed supported changing the anthem. Nineteen per cent disagreed.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.18 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

It’s a complete turnaround from a similar poll conducted by Ipsos-Reid for the Globe and Mail/CTV 15 years ago, when 77 per cent of Canadians rejected changing the lyrics.

Library and Archives Canada has pointed out that the original lyrics were gender- and religion-neutral.

There were many English versions of what was originally a French-language song before Robert Stanley Weir wrote the best-known in 1908. This, too, has been amended several times over the years, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.

The current version was officially adopted as Canada’s national anthem in 1980.

The anthem amendment bill will go to third reading likely this fall.

Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger, who brought the private member’s bill forward, said he was delighted after MPs rose for an in impromptu rendition of “O Canada” following the vote Wednesday.

“It is encouraging that we are moving forward to an inclusive national anthem in Canada,” he said in a statement.