This is a plea, of sorts, to end the most insignificant and simultaneously overblown debate to occupy both houses of Canada's Parliament in recent memory.

For over a year (actually, it's been longer than that, but over a year for this round of debate), the stewards of our democracy — the great leaders of our nation — have grappled with the question of whether to change two words in our national anthem, a modification that will have precisely zero effect on the lives of the people for whom the decision is ostensibly being made.

Perhaps that's not entirely true: surely a few Canadians will experience an ephemeral sense of satisfaction or pride or anger when and if O Canada's lyrics are changed from "in all thy sons command" to "in all of us command." That fleeting rush of emotion will last roughly until the next commercial break, by which time it will be obscured by the next great national source of outrage (Hey, wait a minute — was this ketchup bottled locally?!?).

An 'inclusive' anthem

The proposed change has been lauded by supporters as a win for inclusivity — a great victory for Canadian women and girls — and derided by critics as an affront to our heritage: an insult to tradition and the (mostly) men who served in the First World War.

It is neither. It is a symbolic change to a song most of us recite by rote, without conscious acknowledgement of the actual words we are singing. The anthem is hardly a sacred text — indeed, the song has been amended several times since the first version was written over a century ago, and it is also hardly the source from which young girls will derive any meaningful interpretation of their place in Canada. It is a song.

Nevertheless, many Canadians, when asked, profess to care deeply about this proposal. (When not asked, I suspect, the status of our national anthem never enters the minds of most Canadians.) Symbols matter, they say, and changing or not changing the anthem will embolden Canadians who are obsessed with political correctness and/or are stubbornly clinging to outdated gender norms.

In that sense, this debate isn't really about the anthem at all: it's about drawing partisan lines, sticking to allegiances and making a point about that group of people who have just gone too far this time. Is anyone else exhausted?

The Liberals tried to expedite the passage of legislation through the House last year so the late Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger, diagnosed with ALS, might live long enough to see his private member's bill become law. The Conservatives accused the Liberals of trying to fast-track the change without properly consulting Canadians, banking on the nation's sympathies for a dying man. It was a fair point.

Mauril Bélanger died before he could see his private member's bill become law. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

The Liberals accused the Conservatives of needlessly holding up the bill even though it was inevitable that it would be approved in principle and move on to the Senate. That was a fair point also. Now the same charade is happening in the Senate, with Conservative senators blatantly trying to delay the process before Canada's 150th birthday on July 1, using amendments that have basically no chance of approval.

Senators say their efforts stem from a deep fidelity to our national anthem. I remain unconvinced. Once it is changed —and it probably will be changed — chances are Canadians promptly move on and go back to arguing about where our ketchup is made.

This is about winning a fight, not preserving a lyric. So with that in mind, why don't we just agree to scrap the whole thing and, say, replace it with the theme song from Cheers? Everyone already knows the words and as far as I can tell, it won't feed into obvious ideological divisions.

Anything, really, to end Canada's most unnecessarily prolonged, ultimately fruitless, immaterial debate over our national anthem.

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