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This may seem cruel, but if Liberal MP Mauril Belanger had not been publicly wasting away from the cruelty dealt by Lou Gehrig’s disease, his quest for a gender-neutral national anthem would have likely failed.

It had been sought before — unsuccessfully — but never before had it been a respected politician’s dying wish.

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The question now: What’s next?

Now that “all thy sons command” has been excised from the lyrics, is the anthem’s reference to God also headed for the dumpster?

After a couple of procedural moves to stonewall any debate from the Conservatives in the Upper Chamber, the Senate voted Wednesday to alter the lyrics to meet Belanger’s gender-neutral proposal, and now the change to “in all of us command” waits only Royal Assent to be law.

And therein lies the slippery slope.

As Newfoundland Sen. David Wells noted, the debate on this lyric-changing legislation surrounding our nation’s anthem, which first passed through the House of Commons unanimously in June of 2016, was more about the man behind the legislation than the legislation itself.