Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here.
We're talking about a private member's bill, Bill C-273, that would ban corporal punishment by repealing section 43. We heard in earlier testimony today that section 43 is a codification of the common law of defence for parents and teachers who would discipline their children.
Mr. Zekveld, in your testimony, you quoted from paragraph 62 of the Supreme Court of Canada decision of 2004, which actually upheld the constitutionality of section 43. I'm just going to reread one sentence from there and ask you to comment on it. This is what the chief justice said: “The reality is that without s. 43, Canada’s broad assault law would criminalize force falling far short of what we think of as corporal punishment, like placing an unwilling child in a chair for a five-minute ‘time-out’”.
To use the example from the lively exchange between my colleague Mr. Caputo and the sponsor of the bill, Mr. Julian, a gentle slap on the wrist would be criminalized given the broad wording of section 265 of the Criminal Code. Can you comment on that? Are we casting the net too widely by eliminating the section 43 defence altogether?