A spokesman for the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has announced that a change proposed to the English wording of the national anthem has been scrapped.

O Canada, which replaced God Save the Queen as the country’s national anthem in 1980, contains the line “true patriot love in all thy sons command” and the government had suggested a more gender-neutral rewording.

However, after an outcry across the country, the decision has been made to leave the anthem as it is. “We offered to hear from Canadians on this issue and they have already spoken loud and clear. They overwhelmingly do not want to open the issue” said Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for the Prime Minister’s office.

Many people in Canada consider gender inequality to have risen under the current Conservative administration, and the move to reword the anthem has been seen as an attempt to whitewash the issue.