By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
OTTAWA, April 29, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When Liberal Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette’s anti-spanking Bill S-209 died on the order paper last Fall due to the federal election, she vowed to continue to reintroduce it until it becomes law.
Accordingly, the bill was reintroduced in the Canadian Senate early this year and has already passed First Reading.
Bill S-209 seeks to repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada that says, “Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances.”
The bill proposes to prohibit a parent using force to discipline children except in very limited circumstances. It allows parents, teachers or other guardians to use “reasonable force other than corporal punishment, but only in three specific circumstances: preventing or minimizing harm to the child or another person; preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that is of a criminal nature; preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in excessively offensive or disruptive behaviour.”
It rules out the use of any force such as spanking as a routine disciplinary measure, defining “reasonable force” as “an application of force that is transitory and minimal in the circumstances.”
“No corporal punishment would be allowed, either by an educator, the mother, the father or someone acting for them,” Hervieux-Payette said.
The Executive Director of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada, Vicki Gunn, strongly criticized Hervieux-Payette’s anti-spanking initiative in a communiqué issued yesterday.
“Canadian parents now face the wrath of the government should they use this traditional form of discipline to correct their children’s behaviour: this in spite of the past successes of corporal punishment in training future generations and the failure of current methods of discipline to curb errant children,” Gunn pointed out.
During last year’s Senate debates on the Bill, Senator Anne Cools said that in her opinion the bill is just another Liberal attempt to micromanage private life.
“What concerns me is that ordinary parents who may slap a child as a manner of correction, and not even in excessive rage, will suddenly find themselves subject to the risk of prosecution,” she said.
Vicki Gunn condemned not only the intrusion of the government into the private lives of Canadians but the premise on which the government justifies its power to remove authority for raising children from parents.
“Whose children are they?” Gunn asks.
“Without the parents, who created the child, the state is barren to produce children. The parents were responsible for producing the children and they stand before God to account for their raising of their children.”
Gunn concluded by reminding readers that “Today is a good day to lobby a Senator and your MP to remind them that their authority is not supreme.”
See previous LSN coverage:
Anti-Spanking Bill Passes Canadian Senate
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061909.html