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OTTAWA — Liberal MP Mauril Belanger is losing his own singing voice but that’s not stopping him from trying — for a second time — to change the English lyrics to O Canada to make the national anthem more gender neutral.

The veteran Ottawa MP, whose vocal chords have been weakened by Lou Gehrig’s disease, is determined to end the song’s inference that patriotism is something felt exclusively by men.

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When traditionalists go to war with progressives over public symbols, they typically enjoy two major advantages.

First, traditionalists enjoy the advantage of incumbency. Fresh thinking may be all well and good when it comes to tax reform and health policy. But when it comes to public symbols — heraldry, anthems, oaths, titles, license-plate slogans and so forth — Canadians tend to be sentimental and conservative (which explains, among other things, why I can’t get any traction for my twinned campaigns to abolish the monarchy and the Order of Canada … but I digress).