Justice Committee on Feb. 27th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to call to order meeting number 61 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Pursuant to our order of reference of Wednesday, June 6, 2012, we'll deal today with Bill C-273, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cyberbullying).

Before we get started, let me do a couple of housekeeping things, if you don't mind.

First of all, I will be leaving in a few minutes and then coming back again. Madame Boivin will be taking the chair, which I really appreciate. So behave.

We're having witnesses for one hour. I will introduce them in a moment. Then we will go to the clause-by-clause part. That will be the end of this meeting. Then I'll start a new meeting for the subcommittee on agenda, assuming we have time.

If for some reason the clause-by-clause part takes too long, we have agreement around the table to deal with Bill C-55 next week, starting with the minister on Monday. This is just a little heads up in case this takes longer than we anticipate, because you never know.

I have one other housekeeping item before I introduce the witnesses. I'll take a motion to approve the budget. It's $2,800 for this actual study that we're doing right now.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

So moved.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Now let's introduce our guests. From the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, we have Peter Jon Mitchell, who's a senior researcher. From the Canadian Teachers' Federation, we have Paul Taillefer, president, and Myles Ellis, acting deputy secretary general. And by teleconference, not video conference, we have Mr. Bill Belsey, the president of Bullying.org.

Each of you has approximately 10 minutes—I would appreciate it if you took less than that—to give your presentation. Then we'll go around the table asking you questions. That will last until about 4:30.

Our first speaker is Mr. Mitchell. The floor is yours.

[Peter Jon Mitchell, Senior Researcher, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members, for the opportunity to appear before you today in regard to Bill C-273 on behalf of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, a social policy think tank that conducts and compiles research on issues pertaining to the Canadian family.

Just last week another study was published in a peer-reviewed journal that linked the damage done by bullying during childhood to the increased risk of mental health related issues in young adulthood. The consequences of unaddressed bullying are severe.

As I continue to review research and engage with parents, I encounter a high level of anxiety and a sense of helplessness among parents of bullied children. Many of our attempts to stay ahead of the cyberbullying issue are akin to refereeing a soccer game from outside the stadium. As parents and caring adults, we prepare our children, acknowledging that once they enter the online world they're on their own. It is as if we are left peering at the field of play through a gap in the fence. Caring adults are largely absent in the online world of children and teens. Bullies know it, and they thrive where adults are absent.

Conceptually, enforcing the full weight of the Criminal Code on bullies appeals to the popular sense of justice, but this simplifies what is often a complex issue where many bullies are also victims. Functionally, the criminal law occupies the far end of the continuum in a series of bullying interventions among children and youth, the demographic that I want to speak to today.

The Criminal Code can protect victims and the community from escalating harm, but it is a very particular tool within limited circumstances. Before speaking to the specific merits and concerns that I have with Bill C-273, I want to acknowledge two limits to the function of the Criminal Code that should ground our expectations on what it can accomplish.

Use of the Criminal Code will not eradicate bullying.

First, applying the criminal law does not address the nature of bullying. At its core, bullying is a relational issue that requires relational intervention. Canadian clinical and developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld understands bullying to be an instinctual, social, and emotional issue. Children, like adults, instinctually connect and attach to others, forming caregiving and care-receiving relationships. This is easily observed when watching children play. Neufeld argues that these naturally forming hierarchies facilitate the drive to care for others, but where instinct should draw upon empathy, the bully, often impaired by his or her own emotional trauma, is compelled to expose and exploit perceived weaknesses. Unmaking a bully takes time and requires relational capital.

Second, the Criminal Code is limited in the ability to prevent and deter young cyberbullies. As Wayne MacKay, who chaired the Nova Scotia Task Force on Bullying and Cyberbullying, noted in his report, “...the criminal law, while necessary and useful in certain serious cases, is a limited and often ineffective tool against the social problem of bullying.”

Professor MacKay notes that criminal law has limited impact on prevention and deterrence for young people. In fact, until very recently, the Youth Criminal Justice Act omitted the principle of deterrence during sentencing, in part because of this assumption that youth are less likely to be deterred by criminal sanctions.

American criminologist Thomas Holt summed it up well when he argued, “It's very hard to say that any 14-year-old with a cell phone who can text is going to think about a cyberbullying law when they're communicating with their peers.”

The best response to bullying is a community-level approach that brings together parents, caring adults such as educators, and children and youth. Research demonstrates that home and school environments are key to preventing the escalating nature of bullying.

Authentic relationships between youth and adults are critical to shielding victims and unmaking bullies. Justin Patchin, a criminologist at the U.S.-based Cyberbullying Research Center, who testified before the Canadian Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, said elsewhere, “The vast majority of cyberbullying incidents can and should be handled informally: with parents, schools, and others working together to address the problem before it rises to the level of a violation of the criminal law.” But of course there are situations where the Criminal Code is necessary to protect victims and the community from escalating harm.

What are the merits of Bill C-273?

First, the bill brings the stated sections of the Criminal Code into the 21st century by addressing common tools of communication. Some have argued that the Criminal Code is already sufficiently broad to encompass electronic bullying behaviours, particularly section 264. The amendment to section 264 may be unnecessary.

Second, the modifications are modest and clarify existing sections of the Criminal Code rather than proposing new sections of untested criminal legislation.

Finally, there are some serious concerns around the implementation of Bill C-273.

First, we can expect that clarifying the Criminal Code in this manner will lead to an increase in its use. Increased use of these provisions may draw more youth into the criminal justice system, many of whom would fare best if dealt with outside the justice system.

Second, the committee should consider how the increased use of the Criminal Code will impact school-based responses to bullying. Could the adversarial nature of the criminal justice process inhibit community-based responses to bullying?

Finally, it remains unclear whether legislation reduces bullying. In the United States between 2000 and 2010, over 125 pieces of legislation were passed mostly at the state level yet the problem seems to remain as persistent as ever in the U.S.

To conclude, bullying among children and youth requires a community-level approach. On some occasions cyberbullying may escalate to a point where the Criminal Code is necessary to protect victims and the community. Bill C-273 appears to be a modest modernization of existing Criminal Code provisions, but at what cost?

Consideration should be given to the possibility that the increased use of the Criminal Code will create a chill on the community-level approach, particularly by drawing more youth into the criminal justice system.

Refereeing cyberspace is a difficult task. Our best approach is to empower parents, educators, and children and teens themselves to work together.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Françoise Boivin]

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.

Mr. Ellis and Mr. Taillefer, you have a maximum of 10 minutes.

[Paul Taillefer, President, Canadian Teachers' Federation]

Thanks very much for inviting us to make a presentation today on this growing and disturbing issue that is affecting the lives of so many of our youth. We applaud the standing committee on human rights for its work on that front.

Before I present to you our federation's recommendations, allow me a few minutes to provide you with a quick overview of our organization and our work on cyberbullying over the last six years.

The Canadian Teachers' Federation is a bilingual umbrella organization composed of 15 member organizations and one affiliate member, representing nearly 200,000 teachers across Canada. We are a member of the international body of teachers, Education International, which represents over 30 million educators around the world.

CTF began addressing the issue of cyberbullying in 2007, when a growing number of teachers started to report cyberbullying incidents in their schools. The incidents were not only devastating for the targeted students but also harmful for the entire school and the learning environment. Teachers also became targets of these unwarranted attacks, further damaging what should be a safe place conducive to learning.

In 2008, after many months of research, discussion, and cooperation, the CTF member organizations adopted a comprehensive policy aimed at addressing cyberbullying. Our definition of cyberbullying is the use of information and communication technologies to bully, embarrass, threaten, or harass another person. It also includes the use of these technologies to engage in conduct or behaviour that is derogatory, defamatory, degrading, or illegal.

Our policy's guiding principles are based on the premise that safe and caring schools should be a national priority; that we as a society all share responsibility for ensuring safe, respectful learning spaces and cyberspaces for our children; and that freedom of expression should be balanced with the rights of parents and educators who seek to ensure a positive online learning experience for students. I'm paraphrasing those guiding principles, of course.

Our policy takes a two-pronged approach that focuses on education and protection initiatives. The policy also recommends roles and responsibilities for students, parents, teachers, school boards, governments, and website or service providers.

In our brief, you will see a reference to a national public opinion poll on cyberbullying that we conducted in 2010. I won't go through the findings today, but will highlight the fact that back then, three-quarters of Canadians knew what cyberbullying was, and one-third personally knew a student who had been cyberbullied.

Given the amount of media coverage in similar surveys, the awareness is most likely very much higher today. An Ipsos Inter@ctive Reid report released last December shows that one in five online teens says that they have witnessed someone they know being bullied on social networking sites.

It also points out that teen ownership of smartphones has increased 18 percentage points to 43% since 2012, prompting what they call a move from cyberbullying to “mobile bullying”. You can see that we're already moving into the next phase of this problem. This speaks to the constant evolution of the problem and the need for concerted action.

Today I'd like to focus on one particular issue that we need to examine very attentively: the mental health of our students. The connection between bullying and mental health issues has been identified time and time again by studies and researchers.

According to Dr. Patrick Baillie of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, there's a link between bullying and mental health. He concludes that the history of victimization and poor social relationships predicts the onset of emotional problems in adolescents, and that previous recurrent emotional problems are significantly related to future victimization

Last week a new study was released by JAMA Psychiatry, an international peer review journal. It found that victims of bullying at school, and bullies themselves, are more likely to experience psychiatric problems in childhood. Researchers have found that elevated risk of psychiatric trouble extends into adulthood, sometimes even a decade after the intimidation has ended.

Experts say that the new study is the most comprehensive effort to date to establish the long-term consequences of childhood bullying. The researchers found that victims of bullying in childhood were 4.3 times more likely to have an anxiety disorder as adults, compared with those with no history of bullying or being bullied.

Furthermore, study after study shows a direct correlation between bullying, mental health issues, and academic achievements. How can students learn effectively when in fear for their safety?

Teachers want to intervene at the earliest possible time, but they need support from the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, as well as school boards.

It is time for a national conversation to take place among governments, educational stakeholders, and private ICT providers. The industry needs to hear first-hand the issues that schools, families, and communities face in trying to address the issue of cyberbullying. Stakeholders need to hear what ICT providers are doing to address the concern and what they are prepared to commit to as part of their responsibilities. Government needs to play a role in bringing parties together and facilitating change.

The CTF has presented briefs on a number of occasions to parliamentary committees, to the Senate, and has met with Justice Canada officials urging for amendments to the Criminal Code to address online harassment, cyberstalking, and cyberbullying. We have a number of recommendations that we would like to put forward at this time.

Canadian teachers are seeking the support of the Government of Canada in recognizing the extreme impact of the misuse of technology, as manifested in cybermisconduct and cyberbullying, by developing partnerships with the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, the Canadian School Boards Association, and the Canadian Teachers' Federation, and by supporting the creation of a national strategy to address child and youth mental health issues in Canadian schools.

We are also seeking the Government of Canada's support for a public awareness and education campaign that focuses on appropriate cyber conduct and the prevention of cyberbullying; amendments to the regulatory framework for the rating of films and video games to reduce the possibility of excessively violent products being sold to children and youth; amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada that make it clear that the use of information and communications technology to convey a message that threatens death or bodily harm, or perpetuates fear and intimidation in another, constitutes a punishable offence under the Criminal Code; enacting new information and communications technology/cybermisconduct and cyberbullying legislation that protects teachers, students, and others from harm; and facilitating through regulation and legislation an incentive for a national dialogue with corporate ICT providers aimed at developing a common cause between private and public sectors in addressing cyberbullying.

That would be a large step toward putting forward an end to cyberbullying. As was suggested recently, with the release of the mental health strategy for Canada by the MHCC, the government should support the development of a national strategy in addressing bullying, including cyberbullying. A first step would be to orchestrate a national symposium of educational stakeholders and community leaders, whereby the beginning steps would be taken to ensure a consistency in approach across the nation.

As part of Canada’s commitment to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, every youth, regardless of where they live in Canada, deserves the right to live in a community and attend a school that is a safe place.

Canadian teachers believe in healthy learning and teaching environments; however, we need support from the political arena to make it happen.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Françoise Boivin]

Thank you very much, Messrs. Taillefer and Ellis.

Mr. Belsey is now online.

We're listening.

[Bill Belsey, President, Bullying.org]

Good afternoon, honourable members and guests. It is an honour to speak to you today from my school, Springbank Middle School, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Calgary.

I apologize in that I have a bit of a cold, and I hope that my voice is acceptable and that everyone is able to hear what I have to say.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Françoise Boivin]

No problem here.

[Bill Belsey]

Thank you very much.

First of all, before I begin my presentation, I will say that I am not an academic. I'm a dad; I'm a father. I have a teenage daughter and a son. I am also a middle school teacher. I've taught for many different years in different parts of Canada. Having teenagers at home and teaching and working in a middle school, issues around kids, especially, of course, issues like cyberbullying, are a huge part of my life. You have already heard from learned academics, and I greatly respect the work of the other folks who have presented today. I respect and admire their work, and I'm proud that the Canadian Teachers' Federation has seen fit to include a little bit of my work in some of their publications. With that as a bit of a backdrop, I'll continue.

My presentation is called,“Cyberbullying: What we know, What Should Be Done”. My history around the issue of cyberbullying goes back to 13 years ago when I created and launched the website, bullying.org. It was in response to a horrific event that happened here in Alberta at a high school where a young man went into the school and took another young man's life. It turns out that, unlike Columbine which was not actually about bullying, in this case bullying was a significant issue. I just felt as a dad, as a teacher, and as a citizen I needed to do something. So I created the website bullying.org as a safe place where kids can go to find help, support, and information. Basically, it's a place to share your voice through stories, poetry, artwork, music, video. We actually had people uploading video to our site before YouTube was invented. We read all the submissions and all the replies.

Over a decade ago, not long after the website went online, we began to read about young people reporting stories about being bullied online. This came from parts of the world like Asia, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom. The reason is that their smartphones or their phones were far in advance of what we had in Canada at the time. I thought, okay, this is something quite new and different. So I borrowed from the Canadian science fiction writer named William Gibson, the one who coined the term “cyberspace”, and I simply thought, if this is bullying and it's happening in cyberspace, I can put the two together, and I coined the term “cyberbullying”.

I proposed this definition years ago and it's held up fairly well, although I know academics are constantly arguing about some of the nuances. But what makes it bullying in any form is that it's deliberate, repeated, and there's an intention to harm others. What happens here, though, is it happens to be in cyberspace and it's using various information technologies. That's when I came up with that particular definition.

I thought what I'd do is summarize this, if you will, in terms of tweets. I'm sure most of you are familiar with tweets, which are short messages. You can post up to 140 characters. So I thought about some of the main points I could make in the form of tweets, if you will.

I think we need to rethink bullying as an issue. We need to really look clearly at what cyberbullying actually is. We need to understand that there needs to be a strong family focus to this. We need to understand, from my point of view, that prevention is the priority. This law, the proposed bill, will likely create ripples in the adult world, but I believe its effect in the world that I live in, that of teenagers, will be modest at best. So I think that prevention needs to be our priority.

I think we as adults need to understand that there's no B chromosome. People aren't born bullies. Bullying is a behaviour. It's learned. We adults, myself as a dad, as a teacher, as a citizen, need to become much more aware of and conscious of our own actions and behaviours, because children and young people don't necessarily learn what we tell them about or lecture them about. They much more readily emulate the behaviours that we present in front of them. That means in person and online.

We need to train teachers. I'm a proud member of the Canadian Teachers' Federation, and the Alberta Teachers' Association, but I will tell you that the vast majority of teachers in Canada, when they go to university, do not get training about bullying. It's like having nurses and doctors who aren't trained to help the public with the flu, which is unthinkable today. Not only was that the situation when I graduated from a great school, a four-year teacher education program, unfortunately it is still true for many young people who are getting ready to graduate now. That needs to change.

When we're looking at what cyberbullying is actually like in terms of kids, and we're thinking about what impact legislation might have, we have to understand what the mindset is of kids when they're involved in these things. I do understand that adults have been impacted by cyberbullying as well, but I'm a dad and a teacher, so my focus and my sharing will be around young people.

I call it the perfect storm, the idea of “net-izenship” or what it means to be a digital citizen, and the corporate world needing to be part of the solution, and what I call wheel alignment.

I will try to speak to these things quickly. I do apologize if I go fast. I have two decades' worth of thinking to present in a short time, so I'll do the best I can.

With regard to rethinking bullying, we need to understand that bullying is not a normal part of growing up; it's not a rite of passage. We need to rethink bullying not simply as a school issue, as we have done often in the past, but as a community health and wellness issue. Cyberbullying really illustrates this point because most cyberbullying, the research tells us clearly, happens away from school. We need to be very clear that cyberbullying is bullying, and I always appreciate how hurtful this is. They didn't grow up with it, but it is incredibly harmful.

Cyberbullying is not so much a technology issue. Technology is an amplifier. It amplifies the best of who we are as human beings and, unfortunately, the worst, including things like cyberbullying.

From my point of view, after thinking and working on this issue for over a decade, cyberbullying is actually about people and relationships and choices. A hammer can be used to harm someone, but a hammer can also be used to build beautiful edifices. It's not the hammer, the Black and Decker or Stanley hammer, that's the issue, or whether it's a cellphone or Facebook. Those are tools, incredibly powerful tools, but it's what we choose to do with them that's really the issue.

When we look at addressing cyberbullying appropriately, we need to have a family focus. We, as parents, myself included, need to become much more aware and engaged in our kids' online activities and behaviours. We would never think of giving our kids the keys to the car and telling them to go for a drive on the Queensway or the 401, yet every day parents line up at the local mall to include their kids in cellphone contracts and hand their kids cellphones. The cellphone, in my opinion as a technology teacher for many years, is the most powerful communicative tool in the history of mankind. It is literally bringing down governments, yet we blithely give our kids these incredibly powerful tools without really appreciating that very much.

We need to focus on prevention through education and awareness. Laws and policies have their place, but they tend to be mostly reactive and punitive. In a way, it's almost like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound: the damage has already been done. I'm sure it would be no surprise to you that as an educator I think it's much better to focus our time, energy, and resources on prevention through education.

We, as adults, need to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. I am a social studies teacher. I'm not making a political point here; I'm making a behavioural point. When we begin our social studies class we talk about the news. One day one of my students came in and said, “Mr. Belsey, what is this all about?” As a teacher, I'm rarely lost for words, but I truly was lost for words in trying to explain how it was that our political leaders were doing this to one another. We wonder why it is that kids are cyberbullying. Again, bullying is a behaviour and it's learned. All of us as adults, myself included, but leaders at the highest levels, including in the House of Commons, our leaders in Ottawa, need to understand that kids are aware of these sorts of images. Youth remember and emulate what adults do, not so much what we say. That is critically important.

What can be done with regard to education? We need to train teachers. I've made this point already, so I won't go over that again. Most teachers are not trained, and they need to be.

What is to be done? First of all, I have a couple of quick words about what not to do. We shouldn't use a fear-based approach. Too many times the police, who have an incredibly difficult job, or the RCMP, who I respect very much, get invited to go into schools to talk about these issues. Unfortunately, if you go into a high school or middle school and talk about how awful the Internet is and how terrible cellphones are, you get the dreaded rolling of eyes. We shouldn't give the FOG, fear of God, speech. We need not address this through fear.

We also shouldn't chase technology. Right now schools are struggling to decide whether to allow cellphones in the classroom. In my class, it's something that happens all the time; we use our cellphones like hand-held computers. But a lot of schools are really struggling with this. Google has already launched the Google glasses so we'll have wearable computers.

On the idea of chasing down websites or chasing technology, we, as adults and teachers and others, don't have the time to do this, and there are no quick fixes. You can put a filter in your school system or in your home, and you can throw a boulder into the Ottawa River, but just as with the digital world, the water will find a way around it.

There is this idea that I like to talk about called the fallacy of control. It used to be that only the kids in schools who had pocket protectors, known as nerds and geeks, knew what a proxy server was. Now, the average high school student knows exactly what a proxy server or a circumventor is. They know how to get around all these filters. We pretend to do our due diligence, but we're kind of fooling ourselves. We have to get real when we deal with this issue.

When we're thinking about a bill and what—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Françoise Boivin]

Mr. Belsey, your 10 minutes are up, but I'm sure you're going to get a lot of questions around the table. We will start with Mr. Goguen.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to ask Mr. Belsey a question.

In the past decade, bullying and cyberbullying have contributed to a number of suicides, and that's definitely regrettable. To name some, and certainly not the least of them, they include: Amanda Todd of British Columbia, Jamie Hubley and Mitchell Wilson of Ontario, Jenna Bowers of Nova Scotia, and Marjorie Raymond of Quebec. It's a tragedy that continues and continues, and I guess it's a testament to the severity of the effects of cyberbullying.

With respect to targeting cyberbullying, our Conservative government is already addressing the issue through non-legislative initiatives that include, for example, the national crime prevention strategy and bullying prevention programming, as well as through funding offered by the RCMP, Public Health Agency of Canada, Industry Canada, and Justice Canada.

Lianna McDonald from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection with our Conservative government's support has expanded Cybertip.ca to address instances of youth-transmitted sexual images, whether they're through texting or the Internet. These measures are in addition to others under way at the provincial level. For instance, there is Ontario's Bill 13, Accepting Schools Act, 2012; and Quebec's Bill 56, An Act to prevent and stop bullying and violence in schools, introduced on February 15, 2012. That's not long ago. These all address bullying in schools.

Mr. Belsey, in one of your interviews, you stated that bullying is a behaviour that can be shaped and formed, and you were noting that the best way to deal with such behaviours is to educate and inform and not to punish.

Could you expand on this, please?

[Bill Belsey]

I'd be pleased to, and if you don't mind, that actually leads into the next point I was going to make in my presentation.

If we're thinking about how a bill might potentially impact these behaviours, we need to understand the mindset of a young person. I call this the perfect storm. You may refer to the handout you may have in front of you, for what we know about the teenaged brain.

All of us, when we're young people, live in the moment. We live in the sort of instantaneous moment. We don't make very good connections between cause and effect. Psychologists call it disinhibition. When people cyberbully, they don't see the face of the person they're hurting online. If you think about it, there's a teenage brain that is very much living in the moment, and we have what are called synchronous technologies, the favourites of young people, for texting and instant messaging, with cursors that flash “send, send, send”.

I would humbly and respectfully suggest to the committee that while this proposed bill may have its impact in the adult world, when a kid is living in that moment with the teenaged brain that is not making good connections between cause and effect and is using synchronous technologies, technologies that are of the moment, it's not a surprise that often good students, and typically great kids—because most kids are pretty great—often may end up doing things online that they would never think of doing in real life. I really don't think that a 14-year-old girl who's been jilted by a boyfriend or whatever, between period one and period two of classes, who's incredibly hurt and angry, will actually stop in the middle of that very harmful post or text and think, “Oh, wait a minute, there's Bill C-273. Maybe I'd better not do this.”

To speak to your question, we need to think about what is actually going on in the minds of teenagers. I do realize adults are engaged in cyberbullying, but my world is kids, and that's where kids are in terms of their mindset. I applaud the government for what it has done so far, but really, we have a long way to go, and we have to understand the reality of where cyberbullying lives and what it looks like.

I hope that addresses your question to some degree.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

It does.

One of the basic elements of a criminal act, of course, is intent, and you use the term “living in the moment”. Am I to take it that basically the youth that you teach, who are living in the moment, don't have the maturity to realize or reflect upon how hurtful and how destructive comments can be?

[Bill Belsey]

I thank you so much for that question, because it actually speaks to what I was saying a minute ago about the teenaged brain. We know from research that our brains do not fully develop until we're often into our early twenties.

I'll give you an example. In my classroom with my social studies students, we have a blog, and my students post a lot of their assignments, their writing, and their thinking online. We do television shows about Canadian history. We do all kinds of really creative things with technology. I try to model that in positive ways as often as I can. When the students are blogging, their assignments are posted before they go live. I will call them over to my desk and they'll look at their posting in the draft form. There have been many times when even though the students all knew that I was going to see what they'd written, they have posted something—perhaps something got the better of them—and when I have called them over and asked if they really wanted something to go live, they have looked at what they had posted in the draft form and have told me they were really embarrassed and that they just hadn't been thinking.

Now this is not to let kids off the hook, but we do need to understand the nature of teenaged brains. They're not fully formed, and the kids don't make really great relations in terms of causality, that connection between cause and effect. That doesn't happen until we are in our young adulthood, and even then we don't always do a great job. We need to understand that very well.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Françoise Boivin]

Thank you Mr. Belsey. I've been trying to find when your voice slows down a bit, because you can put a lot of words into one sentence.

It's now Mr. Morin's turn.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Mitchell.

Thank you so much for stating that we need to put emphasis on prevention rather than criminalization. I do agree that the civil communities across Canada need to have a big role, and parents especially. They need to be at the heart of the solution, because they can be part of the problem sometimes.

Do you agree that the government should gather all the best anti-bullying practices and disseminate this information to Canadian families, as well as support the local organizations in the several communities already doing good work on the ground regarding bullying and cyberbullying?

[Peter Jon Mitchell]

That's a great question. To some extent I think the government does that. There are various government websites that give tips for parents. Particularly at the legislative level, we see most of the legislation at the provincial level, not at a federal level. I think legislation works best when it's empowering the local community and helping them to find the creative solutions for their own particular community.

I think there's certainly some merit to that, as long as it's empowering communities. I think there's a particular challenge when there's a lot of directive given. Then it becomes very difficult to facilitate. I'll give you an example. In the province of Ontario about $150 million was spent between 2007 and 2010 on safe school initiatives. The Auditor General in his report in 2010-11 said that although there was this money that was spent in this initiative, the money was spent ineffectually and they couldn't track the effectiveness of this particular approach.

There is certainly a risk of government being overly involved and cumbersome, but I think there are things government can do in a limited way to empower families.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for Mr. Belsey.

Do you think Dr. Fry's bill to further criminalize or modernize the language used is a good thing? Should we emphasize various preventive measures instead and help the communities to help themselves across Canada?

[Bill Belsey]

You might imagine my response as an educator. There was a long-time maxim about how many thousands of dollars it costs to send somebody to university for a year versus the $100,000 plus it costs to deal with somebody who's been incarcerated.

My feeling is that you can't bully a bully into not being a bully.

What we need to do first of all is draw upon the strengths we already have. We need to not reinvent the wheel. I was so very honoured to come to Ottawa and present to the Senate on this issue. We need to not be reinventing the wheel here.

They invited not just me, but many excellent people who work on this issue and have done for years. We have researchers through PREVnet. We have action-oriented organizations like Bullying.org. There's also the organization of the family—I'm sorry, I've forgotten the title—in Ottawa. They're doing great work.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Belsey, I'm going to cut you off.

You mentioned the Senate. The number one recommendation for government was to create a coordinated national strategy on cyberbullying. Do you agree with that?

[Bill Belsey]

I would say not on cyberbullying particularly. We need to have a national strategy on bullying. The reason is that those countries that have taken such leadership by having a national strategy.... I believe there was support for this by Monsieur Morin, a member of Parliament from New Brunswick. I think that having a national strategy on bullying is absolutely critically important, and even having something like a national child advocacy office that world work with them. Because those counties that have done that have seen reductions in bullying.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Yes, thank you. I just want to point out, I love this MP. He's doing great work in Parliament.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Goguen mentioned that the federal government does give money to local organizations. The federal government funded the SNAP program in Ontario, but decided to cut off their funding at the beginning of April.

What do you think of that? Do you think it will help or will it make things worse?