David McLaughlin is former Conservative party chief of staff at the federal and provincial levels.
Can something that is both yours and mine be changed by either of us?
If it belongs to all of us, are we not within our rights to see in it what we want and change it to suit our purpose?
The significance of a Canadian singing group unilaterally amending Canada's national anthem to make a political statement goes well beyond any perceived righteousness of their words and cause. Sadly, to have sang such doggerel in support of the obsequious slogan of 'All Lives Matter' truly beggars the mind. The deed will be remembered long after their words are forgotten.
No, the problem was not what they said or sung, actually. It is that they did it at all.
You see, the anthem cannot be changed. It is not theirs to change, even if, as Canadians, it is their anthem too.
The very power of national symbols is that they evoke such reactions and confused allegiances. It is why protesting them or using them as a means of protest is itself powerfully symbolic.
Our individual response to each is tested by our collective response to the symbol. O Canada has proved a reluctant symbol as far as national statements go. It became the country's official anthem only in 1980, 100 years after first being performed in French. The English version would follow (four versions actually) from 1907 on.
Not as old as the country it honours, O Canada's power is in its history. Its growing acceptance and status mirrored Canadian steps to national assertions of sovereignty. The English version has been officially amended exactly twice; the French version never. The latest was the controversial reworking this spring of the passage "in all thy sons' command" to "in all of us command".
It was right to be controversial. The sway of tradition is as valid as the argument for modernity. We should not amend or adjust our national symbols lightly. Or often for that matter. But Parliament was the right place to do so, in the open. Under the glare of public scrutiny. That too is a symbol of our democracy.
Not just anthems but flags. When the former Newfoundland and Labrador premier took down the Canadian flag in his heated political dispute over Equalization with the Liberal government of Paul Martin, national controversy broke out. It was not his flag to do so. It is ours, even if it too is his.
To arrogate to oneself as a citizen, the authority to adjust symbols of citizenship for personal purposes misconstrues the collective value we draw from the symbol. It cheapens it. Which is why we react so viscerally to such episodes.
As Canadians, we should be comforted by such strong responses. It is how we collectively protect our culture and identity from individual acts of political theft and cultural vandalism. It is how we esteem that symbol, reinforcing its meaning and value.
These Canadian Tenors – now just called The Tenors – were more than off-key in their singing of O Canada at the start of Major League Baseball's All-Star Game. They were tone-deaf to the very symbolism of what they were actually doing.
To debate or decipher what they were trying to say both obscures and distracts from this central point. In fact, it plays into their very act of protest, giving it credence and stature beyond the banality of their actual message.
The act itself was wrong. What they said – or sung, to be precise – is immaterial.
And no Canadian should say 'sorry' for well, saying so.