Tories backtrack on 'O Canada' review in face of public outcry

[BlackZodiac]

Fri Mar 5, 9:29 PM

By Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - O Canada, the Harper government is standing on guard for your lyrics after all.

Just two days after promising to ask Parliament to consider restoring the national anthem's original gender-neutral wording, the Tories have done an abrupt about-face. They've dropped the idea of changing the phrase "in all thy sons command" to something more inclusive of women - in the face of what they said was "overwhelming" public opposition.

"We offered to hear from Canadians on this issue and they have already spoken loud and clear," Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said Friday.

"They overwhelmingly do not want to open the issue. The government will not proceed any further to change our national anthem."

Soudas wouldn't elaborate on how the government gauged public reaction to the surprise proposal, floated in Wednesday's throne speech, to go back to the original tongue-twisting wording "thou dost in us command."

A Tory insider said Harper had hoped the issue - along with his promise to champion maternal and child health at the upcoming G8 summit - would appeal to women voters, who tend to be more supportive of the Liberals.

However, the prime minister underestimated the backlash among the Conservative party's core supporters, which the insider said the Tories gauged from the uniformly negative reaction on talk radio shows.

Tory MPs also heard from angry constituents, prompting at least two cabinet ministers - Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Industry Minister Tony Clement - to go public with their opposition to any change in the lyrics.

University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan, a former chief of staff to Harper, said the idea to tinker with the lyrics likely came from the prime minister himself. He noted that throne speeches are written exclusively by the Prime Minister's Office.

"My guess is that while Stephen was out swanning around Vancouver for the Olympics and a lot of women were doing great there and winning a lot of medals and probably some feminist got to him and said, 'We ought to revise the national anthem,"' Flanagan said in an interview.

"He's always looking for things that can reach out to other constituencies without alienating the Conservative base. So I'm not surprised that he might have seen it in that light, say(ing), 'Well, here's something we can do to show that we're open toward women, particularly women who vote.'

"And maybe he didn't think through or forsee the reaction that would draw from rednecks like me."

Flanagan applauded the about-face. He said national symbols, like the anthem and flag, should "arouse a sense of awe and mystery" and that stems from the fact that they are enduring symbols for the ages.

"Things that we're constantly tinkering with don't engender the same sort of respect."

Andrew Cohen, president of the Historica-Dominion Institute, said a cabinet minister told him on Thursday that the anthem change was "D.O.A." - dead on arrival.

According to the minister, the problem was not so much a backlash as the fact that the anthem change was dominating news coverage of the throne speech, trampling on the government's more crucial messaging about its economic agenda.

"I think it just took up too much oxygen," Cohen said.

Politicians have been proposing a rewording of the anthem since at least 1990, but every proposal has been shot down as political correctness run amok.

[Kaizer Soze]

Ha ha, wow. In a desperate bid to get more women voters, Harper ends up shooting himself in the foot. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unless of course suddenly a huge feminist movement comes up and they want it changed, but even then, don't change it.

It's a national anthem, man. Leave it like it is.