Let me say that I'm going to be speaking from an experience that's a bit dated, but anecdotally I believe that what's happening right now in teachers colleges, in pre-service as we call it, doesn't necessarily prepare teachers to take on that task. There are a lot of things they're taught to do. This may not necessarily be something they are taught to do to the extent that we need it to happen. There are, however, organizations within each province and territory that have taken on that mantle of responsibility and work with teachers' organizations in order to help teachers understand the roles they have to play and the responsibilities.
You would see that mostly with teachers who are actually in a teaching position. They would be getting some support on that level. That's very important for us at the Canadian Teachers' Federation. We believe that education for the teachers, for the students, and for the parents is a primary responsibility. However, we don't believe that it's necessarily an either-or proposition.
Bill C-273 has some important aspects to it, I think, such as modernizing the language in the Criminal Code. Things are changing rapidly in cyberspace, and I think it's important that this be reflected.
I don't think that when we look at the modernization of the Criminal Code it's to make it the front-line tool in order to stop cyberbullying. I think everybody around this table has talked about education, about responsibilities, and about working together and forming coalitions and a national strategy, but somewhere in there I think it's important for students to understand that they're going into a society where they have to be responsible citizens, where they have to understand that they have laws to follow. I think it's something that we should look at seriously.
When a student has a bad behaviour in class, the first thing you do is that you don't ban him from the school. I mean, there's incremental discipline. You talk to the student. You explain to him why his behaviour is not appropriate. You work through different phases. It's only in the hardest cases that you get to a point where you have to do something that drastic. That type of law is not meant for most people, but it is important that people understand how bad cyberbullying is and what effect it has on people.
At the beginning of this presentation, we had a list of people who lost their lives due to cyberbullying. It's not just for adults to reflect on how serious this problem is. I think students have to reflect on it also.