Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak to this bill which is an act to amend the National Anthem Act with respect to gender. The bill proposes a simple change in the English lyrics only. It proposes that “True patriot love in all thy sons command” become “True patriot love in all of us command”, therefore replacing only two words, “thy sons” with “of us”.
There are all kinds of reasons that we would want to sing “in all of us command”. We love our country and all of its people. Our anthem is important to us, and we want to clearly include every Canadian. All of us are proud to sing O Canada, and O Canada should embrace all of us.
These two words that we want to reintroduce in O Canada are small, yet meaningful. We would ensure that more than 18 million Canadian women are included in our national anthem. After 1908, Judge Robert Stanley Weir amended his poem in 1913, 1914, and 1916. By 1913, he changed the second line of the poem to “True patriot love in all thy sons command”. Many believed the change was in response to the events leading up to the First World War, in which men and women from Canada proudly took part. We do honour the Canadian men who fought for liberty on those battlegrounds. We honour them and all who died. We honour them in our anthem. However, Canadian women also served in the First World War, not as soldiers, but in other functions, especially as nurses, and many died. We have commemorated them in Parliament's Hall of Honour; however, we have not commemorated them in our anthem.
In 1927, the 60th anniversary of Confederation, the government authorized Judge Weir's song for singing in schools and at public functions, but kept the second line from the 1913 version, not the original 1908 gender neutral version. Incidentally, other words were changed in 1927 and again in 1980, when it was enacted by Parliament. The National Anthem Act was introduced, passed and given royal assent on June 27, 1980. The speed with which this was done did not allow sufficient time to deal with the outstanding concerns, such as the lack of inclusiveness of the English version.
A lot has changed since we began commanding true patriot love from our native sons in 1913. Women were first granted the federal right to vote in 1918 by the government of Sir Robert Borden. Canada held its first federal election in which women were allowed to vote and run for office in 1921. It was the year that Agnes Macphail was elected to the House of Commons, making her Canada's first female member of Parliament.
There was the 1929 Persons Case, where the Famous Five succeeded in having women recognized as persons and thereby eligible for appointment to the Senate. A few months later, in 1930, Canada's first female senator, Cairine Wilson, was sworn in. Less than a minute into 1947, once the Canadian Citizenship Act came into effect, the first born Canadian citizen, Nicole Cyr Mazerolle, a woman, joined us.
The Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston started admitting women as students in 1980. Now, women serve as soldiers and just recently a woman, Ms. Christine Whitecross, was promoted to the rank of major-general.
The adoption of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 has led to the gradual and rigorous implementation of equality between men and women, which the charter guarantees. We would be taking a very important symbolic step by ensuring that our anthem respected our charter.
Let us remember and celebrate the fact that our Canadian women won more medals than our men during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.
In 2013, the Restore Our Anthem campaign was launched to change the English words from “thy sons” to “of us”. The list of the campaign's endorsers is impressive. Former prime minister Kim Campbell, internationally renowned author Margaret Atwood, Senator Nancy Ruth, and former senator Vivienne Poy have lent their support to this campaign. Hon. Belinda Stronach and Jacquelin Holzman, a former mayor of Ottawa, sing “all of us” already, as do I and a number of members of the House.
Even CFRA talk show host, Lowell Green, told the member for Ottawa—Vanier that he supports the change. Maureen McTeer, Canadian lawyer and author, wife of the Right Hon. Joe Clark, has sent the member a note supporting the initiative. Former MP and leader of the NDP, Ed Broadbent, also confirmed his support, and former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal is onside.
We have come a long way. The strides made by women in our society have been significant and should be fully recognized. Our anthem should not ignore the increasingly important contribution of 52% of our population. There are Canadians everywhere in this country in support of the change being advocated with this bill.
We know this because we have the numbers. The results from the survey of Mainstreet Technologies are very different from the numbers cited by the government's poll of October 2013, because accurate language is used. The questions and answers provided by more than 5,000 Canadians show solid support for a change in the lyrics from “in all thy sons command” to “in all of us command”: 58% of Canadians approve or strongly approve this change, and only 19% disapprove or strongly disapprove; the margin of error is 1.35%, 19 times out of 20. The poll questions and results can be seen on www.singallofus.ca.
Last week, my hon. colleague from Ottawa—Vanier asked the government how it justified basing its position on the results of a question that misrepresented the current lyrics of O Canada. As usual, we were treated to a disrespectful non-answer.
The often-cited poll from Forum Research, in 2013, is the point of contention. When asking Canadians if they supported a departure from the existing lyrics, Forum got the original lyrics wrong. Even the Toronto Star, in reporting these numbers, did not catch the fact that the existing lyrics are “all thy sons command”, and not as was stated in the poll, “all her sons command”, as both organizations would have us believe. Wrongly, the Forum poll asked the sample of Canadians its view on changing the anthem from “all her sons command” to “all of us command”.
Today as we engage in the second hour of debate, and on the Wednesday April 29 vote on the bill, let us hope that a majority of MPs will vote to amend O Canada to include “all of us”. It is the right thing to do.