Canada embroiled in debate to make national anthem gender-neutral

While America has been busy arguing over gorillas and Donald Trump, Canada has been embroiled in a controversy over a proposed change to its national anthem. 

It would alter just two words in the song, but even that modest proposal has ignited debate in a country that's just now recovering from an errant elbow by its prime minister. 

What's the proposed change?

Last week, Canada's House of Commons voted overwhelmingly, 219-79, to approve a minor change in the anthem that would actually have a big impact: it would make the song gender neutral. The line "in all thy sons command" would be changed to "in all of us command" in the English-language version.

The bill was was originally proposed in December 2015 by Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger who's been battling ALS since last November and is no longer able to speak. When he stood for the second reading of the bill last week, he had to use a speaking device.

It was such a big deal when it passed the same week, members of Parliament broke out in song. 

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The bill got the support of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, too.

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What's the controversy?

The anthem has a fairly long and interesting history but it's notable that the anthem has been changed before. In fact, at one point the anthem already had "us" but was changed to "sons" in the early 20th century (it was also neutral in terms of religion). Still, "sons" was in place when the song was (finally) officially adopted as the national anthem in 1980. 

The gender-neutral change has come up before, including in 2010 and 2015 but has never come to pass. And a poll in 2013 suggested that the general public was against a change. 

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Bélanger has also been at the center of the controversy: there's a suggestion that his liberal colleagues are trying to get his bill passed due to his deteriorating health but conservatives want more time to consider the bill and have pushed back against the narrative that they're "blocking a dying MP's bid." 

Conservative MP Peter Van Loan made the case that the process should involve Canadian citizens. According to the National Post: 

“It is tragic that this is being done in a fashion where Canadians are being shut out. Their national anthem is being changed. They have been singing it for decades, millions of Canadians. It belongs to them, it is not a plaything of us,” Van Loan said at committee Thursday, after a prolonged battle with Liberal MP and committee chairwoman Hedy Fry.

“We are telling Canadians, ‘Guess what, you don’t have a say in your national anthem. It belongs to us as politicians… for us to deliver our world view to you and impose it upon you.’”

Liberal MP Christine Moore took up the other side of the argument, saying, according to the Ottawa Citizen, “We are in 2016. The Canadian population will understand why we want to make the change. It is not a big change, and there will not be a big difference in the national anthem, but the difference is significant for women all across Canada."

Are there any hot takes?

There have definitely been enough opinion pieces to keep editorial boards across Canada busy. 

In a pro-change editorial for the Globe and Mail, Elizabeth Renzetti points out the previous changes to the anthem, saying, "There is nothing immutable about the English-language lyrics of O Canada anyway. They change like Spinal Tap’s drummers."

She continues: 

Change is hard. I get that. I wish that the Silver Rail still existed in Toronto so I could get a cocktail that wasn’t served in a mason jar. But the world doesn’t turn on the axis of our personal desires. It does, ideally, embrace new realities.

For centuries, we women in this country have resigned ourselves to being invisible in the public sphere, to never seeing statues that looked like us in town squares or our faces on currency or our existence acknowledged in the national anthem.

On the flip side, though, is Candice Malcolm, whose hot fire take titled, "National anthem rewrite is an insult to women," appeared Tuesday morning in the Toronto Sun. Malcolm decries the "political correctness" and "feminist edict" of the change, saying, "We don’t need a bunch of self-righteous politicians in Ottawa to make women feel included. Women are already included."

But if we start tinkering with our anthem now, what else will politicians decide has fallen out of fashion? Will we remove references to God, as Switzerland recently did?

Perhaps it will become unfashionable to ask citizens to “stand on guard” or to say “our home and native land,” as Toronto City Council once declared.

There is no stopping where this politically correct obsession will take us.

As for the Canadian citizens themselves, that's still up in the air. One recent poll claimed a majority of Canadians support the change, but that particular poll was commissioned by the pro-change group Sing All Of Us. 

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What's next?

The bill is due up for a third reading after liberals used their majority to pass the bill out of the Heritage Committee without amendments, according to the National Post. 

It stands to reason the bill is likely to be approved on a third reading by the House of Commons, given the House just approved it. But it still faces challenges in the Senate and the bill likely won't pass both houses before the legislative sessions end this month, meaning it would sit until the fall session gets underway in September. 

So, for now, the "sons" remain. 

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