Justice Committee on Feb. 25th, 2013

[Prof. Wendy Craig]

Yes.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you.

In my experience here—I think we've had experiences with children—I agree that we need a definition of cyberbullying if we're going to develop an approach to it. I think that definition has to involve the power of the person who's perpetrating the said bullying. I think that has to be the basis of that.

One of the comments you made is that girls do this more. I think maybe in some aspects, from my experience, it's more exclusion; it's more intimidation. With boys, it can be a bit physical, and that's why I think we're seeing more suicides by girls across the country than boys. Intimidation lasts forever. Exclusion lasts forever. With boys, it can be quicker; it's dealt with and it's done and they can be friends two minutes later. With girls, sometimes it lasts a lot longer, particularly with teenage girls.

I really think that to make a real difference to stop bullying, whether it's on the playground or whether it's cyberbullying, the one thing I've always talked about is having some sort of supervision take place. Would you agree with that statement?

[Prof. Shaheen Shariff]

Yes.

[Prof. Wendy Craig]

Yes, but....

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I'm going to offer a solution and then I'll let you comment.

I think we need parents to supervise. Teachers can't supervise; they're not there 24 hours. Police can't supervise; they just don't have the resources to go through every Internet thing. Parents can supervise their own children. We have to find ways to motivate parents to do that.

I believe we have to do that through the ISPs. I think if someone perpetrates this, when it's hurting someone, there has to be a way that we can take the tools away. As Mr. Wilks said, we give them a tool they don't know how to use yet. If they don't know how to use it...you wouldn't let a child drive a car without a licence. If they're not using the tools properly, I think we should have the Internet service cut off. I think that's the only thing that's really going to send a message. If you threaten to do that to a household or to someone who's paying the bill for cellphones, I think those parents will really start watching what their children are doing. That's just one piece of the puzzle, I would suggest, if children are going to use it.

Is access to the actual use of this equipment something we should look at as we move forward in legislation?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

You have one minute to answer all those comments.

[Prof. Shaheen Shariff]

One minute? Oh my God.

I'll address the last part of your question. Censorship doesn't really work, and I'll tell you why. I'll give you an example. In Australia the ministry put in about $59 million to do just what you're suggesting. A 14-year-old challenged the minister that he could hack through any of those filters, and did so in front of media and did so again. If kids want to access the technologies nowadays, especially with the range of digital media that exist, they will access it.

In terms of a power imbalance, yes, there is a power imbalance, but it can also be reversed, because perpetrators are victims and victims are perpetrators.

In terms of a definition, I think we need legal definitions. I think we need more legal definitions because there are different legal aspects to cyberbullying. The difficulty with just defining the behaviour has been established already. It's very difficult to provide one common definition of the behaviour.

What was the other thing?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

I'm going to go to Professor Craig for 30 seconds.

[Prof. Wendy Craig]

I'm just going to suggest a couple of things. One is that, absolutely, we need to involve parents, who need the educational tools. They need to know themselves how to be effective at monitoring and supervising their children. With increased supervision, aggressive behaviour goes down.

Parents don't have those tools. Right now children are the experts. They learn technology faster. They're more effective at it. So we have to catch up; we're in the catch-up generation.

The second issue is if you take it away, that's the number one reason children don't report it. We're talking about an extremely negative behaviour, but there's lots of research—and we've done some research—to show the positive effects of the Internet. For isolated, vulnerable children, for children in minorities, it provides an opportunity to find a community online where they can be accepted and where they can explore. There are positive effects of the Internet that we need. We can't take it away, because when you take the technology away from children, you isolate them, and there are more negative kinds of consequences.

It's about skill building, competency building for the adults in children's lives and for the kids in children's lives.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay, Professor. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Professor Armstrong, for your comments.

Our last questioner for this afternoon is Monsieur Jacob, for the New Democratic Party.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I might be last, but I'm certainly not least.

My question is for Ms. Craig and Ms. Shariff.

Bill C-273 is lacking when it comes to prevention, rehabilitation and an overall strategy on bullying. We, in the NDP, take cyberbullying very seriously. I would like you to comment on two things.

First, Dr. André Grace said that young bullies are often dealing with other social problems. He hoped that the government could develop a legislative framework and could consider the communities, schools and parents as part of the solution.

Also, Finland has the KiVa program, which is thought to be one of the best anti-bullying programs in the world. Instead of expelling the bully, discussions between the bully, the victim and other children are arranged. Including the entire community is at the heart of the effort to fight bullying.

I would like you to comment on these two things, Ms. Shariff. Then, Ms. Craig could tell us what she thinks.

[Prof. Shaheen Shariff]

I agree. I think having the youth contribute to the solution is very central to everything we are looking at. Dan Olweus, the Scandinavian guru of studies on bullying, found very early on that if you give kids the chance to contribute to rule-making, it goes down by 50%, and that was a long time ago. So, yes, kids should participate.

Under the CRC, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Canada has not been doing a great enough job under participation rights, under article 12. We're repeatedly asked to engage kids more in contributing to these kinds of things, so I agree.

[Prof. Wendy Craig]

I'll just add that the health behaviour survey of children and youth that's funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada is run in 42 different countries. If we look at how Canada did in the last round on the prevalence of bullying, we're in the bottom third. That's bad, by the way. That means we have the highest rates.

The countries that have the lowest rates of bullying are much those you've described—the Scandinavian countries, Norway, Finland, Sweden. What do they all have in common? They all have a national campaign that takes a systemic approach that's designed to involve the children who are victimized, the parents, the teachers, and the communities, and to provide each level of the system with skills. These countries with low rates of bullying and victimization say that bullying is a problem that, yes, happens at school, but it's a community and a society problem. That is the effective kind of approach, and it works. They have the lowest rates.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I find you have really identified the problem. The overall strategy on bullying is very important. Suppressing it is just the start. We continue with rehabilitation and prevention, naturally.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's all I have to say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank our guests today, Professor Craig and Professor Shariff.

Ms. Palmer, thank you for joining us by video link.

The questions were very good.

Thank you, committee.

The answers were excellent. I think it was a clear indication of where people stand on this issue, so thank you very much.

With that, I remind committee members that if they have any amendments, if they could get them in by 5 o'clock tomorrow, that would be appreciated. Other than that, we have another hour of discussion with witnesses on Wednesday, for the first hour, and then we'll go to clause-by-clause.

With that, thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.