Bill C-273 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cyberbullying)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code in order to clarify that cyberbullying is an offence.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you.

I was the first in line, but it's okay, I'll go third.

I simply wanted to tell my colleagues that the approach to Bill C-273 and Bill C-394 was identical to the motion moved by Mr. Garrison. The motion was agreed to, challenged and then agreed to again. Mr. Anderson, who isn't allowed to vote, has shown up here out of the blue and raised some sort of procedural sticking point on the basis that the request has not been justified, when the motion has been agreed to and challenged before.

Since I prefer to have the chair listen to me when I speak, I will wait. I still have the floor. When you spend years at the appeal court, you fall into that kind of habit. When judges start speaking amongst themselves, you say

there's no fucking—

Sorry.

I withdraw that. He wasn't listening, in any case.

I was saying how nice you are.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

We also did it for Bill C-394 and Bill C-273, last week. We voted in favour of Bill C-273, sponsored by our Liberal colleague, Hedy Fry, so we could study those provisions thoroughly.

We are at clause 2 and we barely have an hour left. No doubt our new committee member, who has the right to speak but not to vote, has a number of questions because he did not have the benefit of hearing the various witnesses. Given that there is such interest in the topic, as we can see, and if the questions are, as they would say in English, perfectly

genuine and come from the heart,

we see no logical reason not to allow the extension, given the small window we have. December 10 is fast approaching. This isn't an unreasonable request, as we see it.

Committees of the House

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion to concur in the 15th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights concerning the extension of time to consider Bill C-273.

Justice and Human Rights

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 15th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in relation to requesting an extension of 30 sitting days to consider Bill C-273, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cyberbullying).

Bullying

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I explained the last time I commented on this bill, I am saddened by the extent to which people, especially young people, are affected by bullying.

For example, we all remember Marjorie Raymond, a young, 15-year-old girl from Gaspésie who committed suicide last year, after years of bullying at school. We also remember Jamie Hubley, another 15-year-old from Ottawa, who took his own life last year after being humiliated and insulted by classmates because of his homosexuality.

We all want to put an end to bullying. However, the approach by the Conservative Party and the NDP will do nothing to address the issue. Even if the challenge is enormous, we already see many potential solutions, both in the provinces and abroad, and the fact that we only put off everything until later without committing to any action could leave us without a solution to fight against this serious problem affecting our society.

The federal government has a role to play in combatting bullying, and here it should be noted that the previous Liberal government was active in this regard. When I was first elected to the House in 2002, the then Minister of Justice, Martin Cauchon, initiated an anti-bullying ad campaign and boasted that through the national crime prevention strategy, the government of the day was involved in over a hundred projects across the country designed to deal with the question of bullying.

One example was the then minister for multiculturalism, Jean Augustine, who spoke in the House of the program called reaching across differences, which provided information and training to elementary school children in British Columbia to increase their awareness of the impact of discrimination and bullying.

Here we must remember that bullying needs to be addressed from multiple angles, as a question of justice, of safety and health, of multiculturalism, of education, of the status of women and so on. One cannot adopt a myopic approach that treats the matter as solely something for the criminal law to be addressed after the fact. Prevention is the key.

Regrettably, how to prevent bullying is not an easy question. Many groups have studied the question and report back that it involves families, teachers, schools, communities and fostering a culture that goes beyond zero tolerance, to use a phrase from the Fondation Jasmin Roy, to 100% intervention. Many of the efforts in this regard involve items of provincial jurisdiction, such as education or realms the law does not touch easily, such as what our children see on television or even what they observe in their own homes.

That said, there exists a plethora of groups and initiatives in communities across the country that the government should continue to support. Moreover, Ottawa must collaborate with the provinces to ensure that each level of government is supported by the other to ensure maximum efficiency and that redundant efforts are not made. In short, we need a comprehensive and collaborative national bullying strategy. This is something on which we can all agree.

Unfortunately, today, we are not debating a strategy or a bill. Instead, we are debating a motion to create a special committee that will study the issue for 12 months and then write a report.

This is the main issue: if we adopt this motion, we will study the problem for 12 months, and we will create a report that will require nothing from anyone and might not lead to any bill and any additional funding to community organizations. We will only have a nice report with black ink on white pages that the government will be able to ignore as soon as it comes off the press. How will this contribute to improving life for our young people? That's what we call putting off things.

While I emphasize the need for a national bullying strategy, I am concerned about a process that gives the Conservatives a blank cheque to say what they feel is appropriate and will only result in a report to be issued in a year from now, which could easily be ignored.

Moreover, the motion itself does not define the scope of bullying to be studied by the committee, such that committee meetings on this could look at union busting, political intimidation and other types of intimidation that may not involve young people at all.

As I mentioned, various governments have looked at this question previously in response to a spate of teen suicides resulting from bullying. Numerous American states have changed their laws to address the epidemic of bullying, in particular, cyberbullying.

In that regard, my colleague, the member for Vancouver Centre, proposed legislation that passed in the House at second reading to ensure that cyberbullying would be caught by Canada's Criminal Code. I look forward to Bill C-273 coming back from the justice committee and being adopted by the House.

Such concrete actions are what the House should be studying and adopting rather than engaging in the exercise of study yet again. We have plenty of examples to turn to from around the world. In the U.K., for example, the education and inspections act gives headteachers the power to regulate the conduct of pupils when they are not on school premises and are not under the lawful control or charge of a member of school staff. This can relate to any bullying incidents occurring anywhere off school premises, such as on school or public transport, outside local shops or in a town centre, for example.

The U.S. state of Maryland has one of the most aggressive anti-bullying laws in the country, with students encouraged to fill out anonymous forms when incidents occur, protections for students who blow the whistle and reports of incidents published by schools are accessible to parents so they can monitor the school climate.

Simply put, there is no shortage of ideas out there for how to combat bullying and we all agree that this is a grave problem that must addressed urgently. In that regard, I do not fault the sponsor of this motion for wanting to help. We all want to help and do what we can. My biggest concern is that he proposes the committee trust the Conservative majority to come up with a solution.

As I noted at the outset, bullying is an epidemic in our country that all too often has tragic consequences. I applaud the parents, teachers and community groups seeking to make a stand and improve the lives of youth affected by bullying. I hope Parliament will also play its part for we must all work together to make the bullying of young people a thing of the past.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is such a timely motion in many ways because of the tragedy we saw with Amanda Todd, which everyone across this country knows about and is now a worldwide issue. I commend the member for bringing forward this motion.

While the Liberals will be voting in favour of it because it is a worthwhile motion, we think it does not go far enough. There is sufficient information out there with regard to bullying and all its forms. Studies have been done around the world and by the World Health Organization. We know that bullying has not only a physical toll but also a mental toll. We know that many people who are bullied get headaches, suffer from nervousness and anxiety, and can even get dizzy spells.

However, we also know that it can create depression in susceptible people and that it can create, in some instances, the ultimate tragic response of suicide. However, it is not only about suicide. There are people for whom bullying triggers a response of anger. We have seen people take a gun and go into a school and try to take out all the people who had bullied them or caused them such pain.

At the end of the day, bullying is not new. Bullying has been with us from the beginning of time. All of us understand it. All of us know about it. However, bullying used to be limited to school. It was some kid pushing, shoving or locking another student in a washroom and all of those kinds of things. It was mean girls who would call people names and treat them badly. Eventually, in the old days, the victims used to be able to grow up and leave school. They used to be able to go home to parents who could protect them and have a group of friends outside of school who could be there for them.

Bullying has changed. With the rise of electronic media, we know that bullying follows us everywhere. I remember speaking to a young woman before I brought in my private member's bill, Bill C-273, which seeks to put the issue of electronic and cyberbullying into the Criminal Code with other forms of criminal harassment, libel and spreading of false messages, et cetera. This young woman told me that she could not get away from the bullying. She said, “I go home and it is there. I turn on my email and it is there. I turn on my computer and it is there. I go away to spend holidays with my parents and family and it is there. It is everywhere”.

The new social media allow cyberbullying to reach around the world so that someone in Germany today knows what someone is saying about a person. The messages also reach through a person's lifetime and are there forever. It does not matter where we go or how old we are, somebody can Google something about us that happened when we were in grade 11 or when we were 12 or 13 years old. In fact, cyberbullying can prevent someone from getting a job. We know that happens. A boss looks a person up on Google and, lo and behold, there is something about him or her that is not even true. It is false messaging.

We know it can carry on even after death. It will always be there.

Cyberbullying has given a new aspect to bullying, not that any bullying is right. As my hon. colleague in the Conservative Party said, it is not a rite of passage. It is not something we can tut-tut and say that we know about that from when we were in school. It can have dire consequences, and it used to. Today, because of mass communications, we know of the many people who are hurt physically and mentally by bullying because it is out there for us to find. It is in the media. We can see it and hear it. It reaches beyond us. In the old days, even as long ago as when some of us were kids or before that, who knows how many people went quietly and committed suicide or hid away and became reclusive or had mental health problems as a result of bullying?

The motion is good in that it talks about a prevention strategy. However, it concerns me that there are no real concrete measures in this bill. It would ask us to study it and we have studied this many times before. Many of us can tell stories that are heartbreaking. We have heard some of them in the House today, so I will not repeat them.

However, there was a young woman named Donna who attended eighth grade at a parochial school in Montreal. She and her mother travelled to Toronto to visit her grandmother who was dying from cancer. When she returned to school, a cyberbully circulated a rumour alleging that she had gotten SARS. Her friends did not want to hang out with her. They all walked away from her. She was left desolate and alone. She did not know what to do. They would not even talk to her on the telephone. That happened in Welland, Ontario, where she lived.

I think we all know the story of the freshman in Osaka, Japan, who, when his gym period was over, got dressed in what he believed was the privacy of the gym. Indeed, he was an overweight boy and some bully set up a camera and took a picture of him. Within seconds, by the time he had changed and walked out of the room, his picture was around the world for everyone to see. He had become a laughingstock, not only of the school but of the community.

We know that cyberbullying, or any kind of bullying, does not really end. We like to pretend this is something that only happens in schools, but in fact we know that people can be shunned in the workplace. We know that people can be shunned in their communities, where their neighbours will not speak to them. We know that many people who are gay, young and old, are terrified of people finding out, whether in their workplaces or in their communities. We see the impact of bullying. It is physical. It is mental. As in the case of this young lady, Amanda Todd, this weekend, it can be tragic.

It would be a nice idea if instead of studying it, when we have already done that, we look at the kind of comprehensive national strategy that we always look at when we deal with something that can result in serious harm. Public awareness and education are parts of what we have to look at. We also have to look at prevention and prevention programs, which could take place in the school, home and community. We have to look at the programs we could have for young, and older, people who have been bullied and how we could help to protect them and create some harm reduction. Eventually, we have to look at the consequences. Some of those consequences may or may not be in the Criminal Code and should be in the Criminal Code.

The Criminal Code currently deals with issues such as name-calling, false messaging and criminal harassment, which is what we saw happening to this young woman. Her bullying was criminal harassment.

We know that if it happens on the radio or if it happens on TV or if it happens in the newspaper, there has to be disclosure. In fact, the Criminal Code even deals with it when it happens by telephone. If telephone messages are being spread, the telephone company has to, under the law, disclose where the phone calls came from. However, we do not have a single way to find out who is doing the bullying from cyberspace. There is an anonymity in cyberbullying that allows it to flourish. No one knows who these people are. They can feel free to say whatever they wish.

The sad thing is that when this young woman put her story out, people were saying, “Go ahead and kill yourself”.

I do not know what society we live in but it is not just enough to talk about a prevention strategy. Some provinces have legislation. Some provinces have programs. We need to work together, using federal and provincial jurisdictions, and look at schools, communities and the workplace. We need to recognize this for what it is: an extremely important, dangerous and tragic habit. I do not know what else to call it.

However, I do want to thank the member for bringing the motion forward. We will be voting to support it.

I do believe that we need to take this issue seriously. If someone had beaten this girl and left her in an alley or drowned her, as we know happened in the past to Reena Virk in Victoria, then everyone would be liable. However, because she committed suicide, people do not believe anyone is liable.

I think it is time we put an end to this.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the motion that is before the House. I commend my hon. colleague, the member from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, for caring about this issue and bringing it forward today for discussion.

The issue of bullying should always be a non-partisan issue. It is too easy for us as politicians to take certain topics and use them as ways to attack each other. However, I can sense very strongly from my hon. colleague that is not his intent with this motion. It is to truly find ways to resolve and find solutions to the very real and very heartbreaking issue of bullying. For that, I recognize, acknowledge and commend him.

I will talk frankly for a moment about what bullying is, what it is not and the devastating effects and consequences it has, first and foremost, for the victims but also for their families, friends, school teachers and classmates.

Bullying is harassment. It is assault. It is threats as well as intimidation. It is violent and harmful. Bullying is always wrong and should never be tolerated. It is not merely childish behaviour. It is not boys being boys. It is not mean girls. It is not a rite of passage. Terms like these are attempts to lessen the severity and numb us to the impacts of bullying. Put simply, bullying should never be tolerated by any adult, teacher or parent, especially when it comes to our children.

Whether in classrooms, on the playground, during sporting or extracurricular activities, in our community centres or in our homes through social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, our children should always be protected from bullying and they should always know that there is someone who they can turn to for help.

Sadly, this past week we have seen yet another example of a young person who has taken her life believing that she had no way out of the torment of being bullied. All of us, whether as parents, educators or concerned citizens, share in the sadness and grief that Amanda Todd's family must be going through. We all ask ourselves how something like this could have happened and how we can stop it from ever happening again. All of us need to ask ourselves as adults and individuals if we are doing all that we can to stop bullying at its roots and to show by example that we truly believe that it needs to end.

It is also important to talk about what the government can do and where it can lead and show support. Therefore, I want to take a moment to talk about what our government is doing to help stop bullying.

Our belief is that this problem is best dealt with at the most local level, by the people who are in the core and closest to it, those who are in our schools, communities, health, education and law-enforcement professionals.

Communities and schools at the local level are in the best position to identify the risk factors in their local community. As well, they are in the best position to identify what their vulnerable children and teens have to deal with and what the solutions are, again at the local level. That is where our support is focused and where we believe funding can do the most good.

I will provide the House with some concrete examples of what our government is doing.

First, we are taking action to address bullying through the Public Health Agency of Canada, which, in conjunction with Health Canada, invests in a number of initiatives to help promote awareness and advanced action to address bullying. The Healthy Canadian website provides information on bullying and tips for bullying prevention and intervention. The WITS program, which stands for walk away, ignore, talk it out and seek help, teaches children in kindergarten to grade six to make safe and positive choices when faced with bullying, cyberbullying, peer victimization and conflict.

As well, the RCMP is very active in outreach and information dissemination on bullying related issues. For example, the force operates a website built by youth for youth called DEAL.org, which is a web-based program that offers resources to youth, parents and educators on issues such as bullying and cyberbullying.

Another way that our government is working to address bullying is through the national crime prevention strategy. Through the strategy, Public Safety Canada provides funding to organizations, including schools, to implement crime prevention projects and initiatives targeted to helping children, youth and young adults at risk.

I want to highlight that the prevention of bullying and violence in schools was recently included as a priority under the strategy in the current call for project proposals. It is concrete action such as this that demonstrates that our government is determined to work with our partners to continue developing new and innovative ways to address bullying.

We are moving forward through the concerted efforts of these organizations federally, as well as with our provincial and territorial partners. We are consulting with the provinces and territories as they develop and implement new initiatives in schools and classroom settings. We are unified in our efforts to stop bullying.

The motion before us suggests that we should establish a special parliamentary committee to examine various aspects of bullying and develop a national prevention strategy. Members will know that the other place adopted a motion last November authorizing the Senate Committee on Human Rights to examine and report on the issue of cyberbullying in Canada with specific regard to Canada's obligations under Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The committee plans to present its findings this fall and will also produce targeted publications for distribution to children, parents and teachers.

As well, the House is currently considering private member's Bill C-273, which seeks to address the issue of cyberbullying by amending three of several existing Criminal Code offences that can apply to bullying.

Yesterday,Ottawa city councillor, Allan Hubley, who sadly knows first-hand the impact of bullying, had this to say:

There is a time for action now instead of another study or anything like that.

I agree that it is time for action.

This Parliament currently has not one but two committees looking into the issue of bullying. What we would like to see is more information on how the committee that would be created by today's motion would interact with the work that is already under way.

All Canadians can be assured that we as a government and all hon. members are taking concrete action to prevent and reduce bullying. Bullying is not a part of growing up. It is not a rite of passage and it should not be treated as such.

We look forward to examining the recommendations from the two parliamentary committees already studying this issue. We also look forward to being further informed on the proposed committee and how it would interact with the recommendations and the conclusions of the committees under way.

Justice

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice]

Mr. Speaker, bullying is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. In our view, Bill C-273 raises criminal law policy concerns which may end up creating more problems than solutions.

The courts have already interpreted criminal harassment in a provision of the Criminal Code to apply to behaviour committed via the Internet. The Senate is currently looking at the issue of cyberbullying, and we look forward to receiving its report. We should let the Senate continue its important work.

Criminal Code

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The House will now proceed to the deferred recorded division of the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-273.

The House resumed from June 5 consideration of the motion that Bill C-273, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cyberbullying), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support the bill and to congratulate the member for Vancouver Centre for bringing it forward. This issue is important to her, and I share her concerns.

Bill C-273, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cyberbullying), has been brought forward to really slightly redefine criminal harassment, defamatory libel and legislation pertaining to false messages. It is a good bill and one that we should support.

This issue is especially pertinent in my riding of Burnaby—Douglas. Last year we had quite a local controversy. It was about bullying in general, but also cyberbullying. We had a number of charges of cyberbullying within our local school system toward LGBT community members in our riding. That launched a purple letter campaign by local constituent Kaitlin Burnett, which really took off. It was an effort to get all members of the community to act against bullying.

To show that this kind of bullying is real, during the municipal election we had a small political party slate form that was against this purple letter campaign and against changing any laws that would reduce bullying toward the LGBT community. Heated debates were held all the way through the municipal election campaign about this issue . I strongly support the purple letter campaign and this bill to strengthen measures against cyberbullying, because it is very real.

Most Canadians also believe in this. I have here some polling from Angus Reid showing that a vast majority of Canadians agree that bullying now extends beyond face-to-face or even written bullying to the Internet as well. This is a very real issue. It is real for Canadians and it is real for my constituents.

I hope members on the other side of the House will join with us and support this important private member's bill.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with the growing popularity of social media comes the growing problem of cyberbullying. Those who have been bullied on the Internet can attest to the anger, shame and powerlessness they feel when personal information or a photo taken without their knowledge is posted online.

In 2002, Ghyslain Raza, a young boy from Trois-Rivières, saw a video of himself posted on YouTube without his consent. That video was viewed by millions of people around the world. The young boy, who was 14 at the time, suffered a deep depression and had to be hospitalized.

Bullying, defamation and harassment should not be tolerated because they can cause serious harm and irreparable damage. Using email or social media to commit these acts does not make them acceptable either.

What is the definition of cyberbullying? Education expert Bill Belsey describes it like this:

Cyberbullying is the use of information and communication technologies, such as email, cellphone, pager text messages, instant messaging, defamatory personal websites and defamatory online personal polling websites, to support deliberate, repeated and hostile behaviour by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others.

Cyberbullying therefore includes all of the elements involved in the usual forms of bullying, but transposes them to an online and highly public environment.

On social networking sites like Piczo, Facebook and MySpace, bullies often focus on chat rooms because they are very popular. Messages, photographs and videos can have a devastating impact on victims because they are seen by thousands or even millions of people and because the bullying can go viral.

According to a Statistics Canada survey, approximately 7% of adult Internet users are bullied over the Internet. The risk is higher for some people, including young adults, where the rate is 17%. It is also likely that young people who are already experiencing integration problems or being harassed at school are more likely to be cyberbullying targets. People perceived as different are also targeted: homosexuals, people with a physical or mental disability and immigrants, for example.

In 2009, University of Toronto professors Faye Mishna and Robert MacFadden carried out a study of more than 2,000 students in the greater Toronto area. The results were alarming. Over 21% of students—one in five—said that they had been victims of cyberbullying.

The Montreal police force also conducted a survey of young people, which indicated that 27% of young people aged 9 to 17 say they have been victims of bullying or harassment on the Internet.

Kids Help Phone also conducted a survey of young people in 2007. The responses are heartbreaking. The young people said that the bullying often involves students who already know each other. For example, one young person confided:

I was playing Habbo Hotel [an online game] and the person (since I'm black) made fun of my race. They called me bad words and names.…

Most of the time the people bullying me online were the same people that were bullying me in real life, but used technology to escalate it and make the pictures/rumours spread faster and farther.

So it is important not to underestimate the psychological impact that cyberbullying can have on young people.

Another girl confided:

About six months ago my friend or my so-called friend had a hate page on her website and I was on it there were many names that just weren't necessary to say. I felt like she betrayed me I felt angry I couldn't help it, then people started making fun of me at school and I had no self-confidence so I started to hurt myself and everyone found out then I was just so scared of what they were going to do to me that I almost committed suicide.

As a teacher, I saw students faced with cyberbullying problems a number of times, and I can attest that the effects are devastating and that young people feel completely lost and destitute.

The bill introduced by the member for Vancouver South aims to amend three sections of the Criminal Code in order to include cyberbullying. In fact, it is proposing amendments to sections 264, 298 and 372 of the Criminal Code. They deal with criminal harassment, defamatory libel and false messages, respectively.

Amendments to section 264 of the Criminal Code would mean that repeated communication using a computer or similar device, or a threatening attitude causing a person to be concerned for his safety, would be considered harassment. The amendment to the other two sections serves the same purpose: to broaden the scope of the code to include the use of a computer in the commission of a crime.

The spirit of this bill is worthy. It aims to eliminate any grey areas or ambiguity in the law to ensure that cyberbullying, when a crime is involved, is penalized.

We obviously agree with the spirit of the bill. We do, however, have misgivings about the implementation of this legislation when it comes to young people. We are afraid that the bill will lead to the criminalization of behaviour among young people that could be modified through education and awareness building, in other words, through more prevention.

The many studies conducted by Professor Belsey, the founder of bullying.org, led him to the conclusion that bullying is a behaviour that can be influenced and therefore changed. He observed that the best way of addressing such behaviour is through education and awareness building. When consulted about Bill C–273, Professor Belsey said the following: “Bullying is a behaviour and is therefore very fluid. Should a child be threatened with expulsion every time he behaves in this way? If that were the approach, there would be no children left at school. Since bullying is an acquired behaviour, it also means that with a little bit of help and support, these behaviours can be changed.”

When it comes to education and awareness building, Canada could draw inspiration from a Finnish program called KiVa, considered one of the best in the world. The objective is to influence “witnesses” of acts of bullying and encourage them to intervene. Instead of expelling the culprits, a dialogue takes place between the bully, his victim and other student witnesses. The program has really helped to rekindle young people’s interest in school and to make students more motivated and successful. After just one year, victimization and harassment had dropped markedly, and KiVa won the European award for crime prevention.

Here, too, prevention programs are beginning to appear. The RCMP and the Canadian Teachers’ Federation have joined forces to design presentations that target students from grades 4 to 12. They are teaching youth how to recognize, respond to and prevent this behaviour.

In Quebec, several police services have joined forces to create “Vous NET pas seul”, a program to prevent cyberbullying. The program's objectives include inviting young people and their parents to be vigilant when surfing the Internet. There are two components—one for teenagers, which aims to inform them of the dangers of careless surfing, and one for parents, which demystifies the Internet and gives advice on safety and monitoring.

Sites like WebAware explain the various forms of cyberbullying and its legal consequences and provide young people and parents with tips on how to protect themselves.

The Sûreté du Québec is working with several school boards to increase awareness about the problem among youth. In my riding of Beauharnois—Salaberry, Isabelle Pépin, a school psychologist, is intervening in this area at Edgar-Hébert secondary school. In order to be successful when it comes to this issue, she believes that everyone needs to get involved: governments, parents, teachers, students and the general public—basically society as a whole. We must say no to all forms of bullying and cyberbullying in particular.

Perhaps the computer gives us a degree of anonymity that prevents the development of a feeling of empathy towards the victims because there are no direct links between the bully, the victims and the witnesses. But we must remember that real people are hiding behind the aliases.

I hope that this bill will help to make people aware of the dangers of cyberbullying. But my colleagues and I believe that amendments could be considered when the bill is studied in committee. Young people should not be put in prison. They and their parents should be made aware of the problem. By giving ourselves proper tools, we can change behaviour and prevent cyberbullying.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak at second reading debate on Bill C-273, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cyberbullying).

I would like to thank the member for Vancouver Centre for introducing Bill C-273 and for giving us the opportunity to discuss this very current issue of cyberbullying.

The issue of bullying and cyberbullying is an important issue for Parliament to discuss. I can say with certainty that those of us on this side of the House stand with those who have been bullied. We are concerned with the issue of bullying and cyberbullying. In fact, as I am sure members are aware, the issue is currently being studied by the Senate committee on human rights.

Despite my concerns relating to the issue of bullying and cyberbullying, I will not be voting in support of Bill C-273 as I think that criminal legislative reform, if indeed any is needed, should await the outcome of the Senate committee review. Further, should the Senate committee recommend criminal law reform, reforms may well be very different from those proposed in Bill C-273. This is, of course, why we are having the Senate review. It is incumbent upon us to get the best advice possible before we proceed with any legislative changes.

I would like to add that my opposition to Bill C-273 should not be interpreted to mean that the government is not interested in the issue of bullying or cyberbullying. It is. The government takes the protection of Canada's youth very seriously, and has been very active over the past few years in areas related to bullying. I am going to speak to a few of those.

Specifically, the National Crime Prevention Centre and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police run a number of programs that target youth who are at risk for bullying-type behaviour. The NCPC has funded approximately 30 projects since 2007, which have addressed primarily youth violence and bullying. Additionally, the NCPC has developed resources for the Canadian public on evidence-based interventions to effectively address bullying.

The RCMP run seven outreach initiatives and program activities which address the issue of cyberbullying. One such example is deal.org, a for youth, by youth web initiative to inform youth about youth crime and victimization. The website also contains a cyberbullying fact sheet, an online interactive cyberbullying game and various blog posts on the topic of cyberbullying.

The RCMP also partners with several national organizations with respect to bullying and cyberbullying. In December 2011, in collaboration with PREVNet and researchers at the University of Victoria, the RCMP began piloting the WITS programs for the prevention of peer victimization and bullying, including cyberbullying. WITS stands for walk away, ignore, talk it out and seek help.

Through this partnership, RCMP members have already engaged in many schools and with children in the program's activities. The provinces and territories are also very active in developing and implementing anti-bullying initiatives. Many have also introduced amendments to their education or schools acts in an attempt to more effectively manage what appears to be a growing challenge. Bullying behaviour, as a social phenomenon, has been around for a very long time. The previous speaker mentioned that any of us who have been in school or who have kids in school are familiar with issues of bullying. We have all witnessed this taking place.

It is the relatively new phenomena, though, of cyberbullying that has grabbed the attention of the public, the media and now, today, our Parliament. Over the past number of years we increasingly heard more about it, and this is primarily because of the social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. According to the Nielsen Company in the United States, 22% of the average Internet user's time on line is spent on social media. In fact, a 2008 Reuters news article reported that social media is the top online activity. It is clear that social media is a popular way of connecting people, but it also has its risks.

To this end, the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights has been conducting a study on the issue of cyberbullying, in part to address Canada's international human rights obligation under article 19 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is to protect children from all forms of neglect, abuse and exploitation.

The committee hearings are ongoing, and it has heard from a number of child advocacy stakeholders, as well as persons who have been affected by cyberbullying. The committee must table this important report no later than October 31, 2012. I believe it would be wise for Parliament to await this report before undertaking any criminal law reform in this area.

With regard to this bill specifically, there are two concerns that relate to the amendments proposed to the criminal harassment and defamatory libel provisions. One, the amendments are not needed, as courts have already interpreted these two provisions as applying to behaviour committed via the Internet. Two, these amendments to only some of the applicable offences may lead to interpretation difficulties with respect to other unnamed Criminal Code offences.

I will delve into this second issue a little further. The Criminal Code already possesses a number of offences that are applicable to bullying behaviour, including those amended by the bill, but others as well, such as intimidation, section 423; uttering threats, section 264.1; and robbery, section 343, among others.

As mentioned, Bill C-273 only proposes to clarify that criminal harassment and defamation can be committed using a computer. Not clarifying that the other offences can also be committed using a computer may lead to those other offences being interpreted to only apply to behaviour that is not committed using a computer. In other words, by mentioning via computer in one section, this could signal to the courts that Parliament's intent is to exclude behaviour committed via computer from other offences.

In closing, I would like to take another opportunity to thank the hon. member for Vancouver Centre for raising this important issue of cyberbullying. It is an issue that I believe deserves Parliament's attention. However, we should also consider the issue when we have the benefit of the report from the Senate committee that is currently vested with this review.

I know that, while all of us in this House oppose bullying and oppose cyberbullying, this is not a motion; this is a bill, and a bill has a consequence in law. It is our responsibility, as legislators, to make sure that, when we pass a bill into law, it has the effect we want it to have. Unfortunately, this bill would not be Parliament's best effort.

We should await the Senate committee review and take the advice that comes from that review. We know it is actively hearing from witnesses. We know some of those witnesses include people who have been cyberbullied. We look forward to the report.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this evening's debate. I enjoyed my hon. colleague's speech. I know that there were other speeches made the last time the bill was debated in this House. All members in this House agree that it is important to combat cyberbullying.

I would also like to thank my hon. colleague from Vancouver Centre for introducing this bill in the House. This is an important issue in every region of the country.

It is somewhat ironic that we are speaking about cyberbullying legislation on the day that the Ontario legislature passed Bill C-13, the provincial government's anti-bullying legislation. Of course, there are fundamental differences between these two pieces of legislation. Bill C-273 is certainly not as controversial as the Ontario bill seems to be, but it is an extremely important piece of legislation on an extremely important issue. Bill C-273 would clarify the existing law in the Criminal Code as it applies to cyberbullying by amending the code.

This issue affects many families in Nova Scotia, as well as in other provinces and territories. There are way too many examples of it. Who of us has not experienced or witnessed bullying when we were in school ourselves? When I was in school, we certainly did not have the added concern of being exposed to bullying on the Internet with people talking anonymously about us and posting disturbing pictures. There are many things that happen today.

I heard from a parent in my riding whose daughter has been bullied since last October. The incidents started in school, there were incidents in class that were addressed by the school, but then they continued in the hallway. Kids would giggle as she walked by and so forth. The impact on this child, of what may seem to us as not that serious as adults, was truly tragic.

For instance, she does not want to go to school now. She refuses to go, if members can imagine. She is obviously very unhappy. She is at home and angry about the situation she is in. This is a case where bullying has affected the entire family. Her parent feels the pain of not being able to help or protect her daughter and her siblings have to deal with her behaviour.

It is clear that teenagers, at the most difficult time in life in many ways, find this kind of abuse difficult if not impossible to ignore and very hard to cope with. Since we have all been teenagers, I think we all have a pretty good idea of what that sort of thing feels like and what a difficult and emotional time it can be.

Despite the impact it was having on her at the time, the daughter did not tell anyone. She did not want to tell anyone that she was being bullied because she did not think that there was anything that could be done about it. She was afraid that telling would make it worse. She perceived that she would be with those kids for the rest of the year, spending a lot of time around the children who were bullying her, and the fact that they would have been told to stop or punished in some way would not have had any long-term effect in helping her.

We have had other examples of this in Nova Scotia, unfortunately, and some have been well publicized.

There was a young woman named Jenna Bowers-Bryanton of Nova Scotia who took her own life on January 17 of last year after being harassed at school and through a social networking site.

In recent weeks, if members can imagine, a person on Facebook has purported to be a leader of a group called Libya Torial, whatever that is supposed to be, that allegedly drove three Nova Scotia girls to kill themselves. It is hard to imagine that anyone would want to claim credit for that, to say that they are the group that bullied these poor kids to the point where things were so awful for them that they wanted to kill themselves.

All of us, whether as parents, parliamentarians or individuals of society kind of want to say to a young person, especially a teenager who is going through that kind of difficult time, “No matter how hard it gets, you can handle it, and no matter had bad it gets, it will get better”. Those are two very important messages that we have to give to young people. However, they are not the answer. That is not how we address the problem. It is just one small step to try to support the person who is going through this kind of difficulty.

Another person from Nova Scotia who was targeted was Courtney Brown, who very sadly committed suicide. In Ontario, in June of last year, there was a 16-year-old girl who was violently attacked at school by two other girls while another student videotaped the attack and later posted it on YouTube. That is just awful.

Bullying is why a young fellow, Travis Price of Nova Scotia, founded the Pink Shirt Day, after a fellow student was bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school. Thank goodness that does not happen to us here because lots of us like to wear pink shirts. They look good. Interestingly, I heard a presentation from a folklorist in Nova Scotia, Clary Croft, who is an expert in costume and clothing over the centuries. He talked about how a hundred years or so ago when pink first came into public awareness, it was a man's colour and blue was considered a woman's colour. My colleague from Winnipeg North says it still is.

Travis was so concerned about seeing the bullying, he started Pink Shirt Day, this movement across the country where one day each year kids in schools wear pink shirts to say they are against bullying.

It is important that all of us as adults, and everyone in society, say that bullying is wrong. We need to send a message to people who are perpetrators, whether in a moment of dislike, on the Internet when they are anonymous at home and are able to put something up very quickly, or whether it is more deliberate. We want to say to people that this is wrong and they should think about what they are doing and the pain they are causing.

One of the things about the Internet is that so often the perpetrator does not see the impact of what is happening. We know one of the values, for instance, of healing circles, which the aboriginals in our country have used for so long, is that the person who has committed some harmful act is forced to confront the person who has been harmed by it and to consider the impact. That is why restorative justice has been very valuable.

The problem here is that sometimes it is impossible to identify the perpetrator because there are websites where they can post things anonymously. With YouTube they can use a false name, or they can impersonate someone. In fact, they can impersonate the person they are bullying. That is a form of bullying.

This is not easy, but it is very important that governments do what they can to address this, that we enable police to get access to information about who is doing what. I am not endorsing what we have heard before from the Minister of Public Safety, but I think we all recognize that there is a need to take measures to try to stop this kind of thing.

We have a case in Nova Scotia where a young person was bullied, on Facebook I believe it was. That person is going to ask the court that his or her name remain confidential when the bully is sued. I know the media does not like that. Some members of the media have actually opposed this request. I understand their reasoning. However, in a case like this when we consider the harm of cyberbullying, it is important to protect that person as much as possible and not compound it. How else are they going to have an answer to this?

Mr. Speaker, I see you rising, which tells me I am at the end of my time. However, I want to congratulate my colleague for Vancouver Centre for bringing forward this bill on this important issue. I look forward to supporting it.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise again today to speak to Bill C-273, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cyberbullying). In the little time I have left today, I will focus primarily on good examples of action taken by the community in my riding of Drummond to fight bullying and cyberbullying.

In my riding, the Sûreté du Québec is very committed to the fight against violence and bullying. Officer Daniel Jutras visits schools and gives presentations to raise awareness. Mr. Jutras does an excellent job. He has made several presentations this year, at schools in Saint-Cyrille-de-Wendover and Saint-Germain-de-Grantham among others, as a result of the hard work of parent and citizens' committees.

In Saint-Germain-de-Grantham, the Groupe de soutien d'aide aux victimes d'intimidation, a parent-run committee in the town, organized an evening presentation on bullying. It was a great success: many people attended, and young and old alike showed keen interest.

Bullying affects society as a whole. It is very important to adopt a preventive—rather than a legislative and punitive—approach to bullying. Our work must really focus on prevention. There are a lot of people doing just that in my riding. For example, there is a parents' committee of the Des Chênes school board that had as its guest Jasmin Roy, the founder of the Jasmin Roy Foundation, and an anti-bulling advocate. He came to Drummondville and gave an excellent presentation. Once again, both young and old were interested in his presentation. Everybody had questions or comments on the issue. As a society, this issue concerns us all.

I think that it is important that all levels of government get involved in the fight against bullying and cyberbullying. Not only is it a hot button issue, it is an age-old societal problem that must be addressed, so that we can live in a better society.

If time permits, I would also like to say that it is important to understand bullying in order to address it. Human beings need to learn to live together with all their differences; the great riches of humanity are to be found in its plurality and diversity. I think that this fits in well with our goal of combatting bullying and cyberbullying through prevention. That is the first step, and everybody needs to get on board.