Bélanger’s O Canada bill gets a second chance

The House of Commons might get the chance to vote on ailing Ottawa MP Mauril Bélanger’s bid to tweak the words of Canada’s national anthem sooner than expected.

Last Friday, Conservative MPs ran down the clock on the first hour of debate on his proposal to make a small but significant change to the lyrics of O Canada by replacing “in all thy sons” with “in all of us.”

Although entirely within the Commons rules, by putting up multiple speakers to argue against the bill, the Conservatives effectively blocked it from going to a preliminary vote next week and bumped it back down to the bottom of the private members’ business priority list.

While that would doubtless be frustrating for any MP, for Bélanger it could very well have ended his dream of seeing the bill make it through the Commons.

Last fall, he was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — also known as ALS, or Lou Gehrig ’s disease — and his condition has degenerated swiftly since then.

Earlier this spring, he was given the rare honour of serving as temporary House of Commons speaker.

But while the Conservatives joined the standing ovation that greeted him when he entered the chamber as part of the speaker’s procession, they were apparently unwilling to go along with the informal agreement reached by the Liberals and the New Democrats to let the O Canada debate collapse within the first hour of debate, which would have allowed it to go to a vote this week.

However, thanks to the generosity of a newly elected Liberal colleague, Bélanger’s bill will make it back to the floor of the Commons on May 30, with the vote set to take place on June 1.

That time slot was initially

If I don’t give him the chance (to debate the bill) on May 30, the next time, it would be Sept. 19.

reserved for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles MP Linda Lapointe, who agreed to swap spots with Bélanger on Tuesday night.

She told the Citizen that she initially got to know the veteran Ottawa Vanier MP through his work on the official languages file, and when she learned she had the chance to help him get his bill back to the top of the House to-do list, she was happy to cede the floor to Bélanger.

“It was very important to me to let him discuss his bill,” she said.

She says she was “surprised by the lack of the empathy” in the House last week, which is why she agreed to the trade.

“If I don’t give him the chance (to debate the bill) on May 30, the next time, it would be Sept. 19, and I don’t know how his illness will be.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, she also supports the proposed change to the anthem.

“As the mother of four children — two boys and two girls — it is very important to me that the national anthem should be (gender neutral).”

Presuming it passes on June 1 — which is a fairly safe assumption, given the support it has among both Liberal and New Democrat MPs — Bélanger’s bill might make it to the Canadian heritage committee just as members are preparing to rise for the summer.

It could, of course, be passed at all stages at once with unanimous House consent, but given what happened last week that seems distinctly unlikely.

Meanwhile, Lapointe will now have to wait until the House returns to make the case for her proposal to cap credit card fees for merchants.

“You don’t choose to be sick, and this is not a good illness,” she pointed out.

“We never know what’s going to happen in our lives, but at least I want to give him the chance to get it through.”