Thank you, Madam Chair.
Just to put this in perspective, today at the justice committee we were supposed to be starting our study on anti-Semitism. That is an issue that is front and centre in Canadian society today, given the noisy, disruptive and even violent protests and encampments celebrating the atrocities of Hamas against innocent Israelis on October 7, 2023, and denying Israel's right to defend itself against an enemy dedicated to its destruction. That's a very important study and I thank Mr. Housefather for bringing that motion forward.
Instead today we are continuing our study on a private member's bill that would repeal the section of the Criminal Code that says teachers and parents can use reasonable force in limited circumstances to restrain, control or express symbolic disapproval of bad behaviour. This is not corporal punishment, as we heard from several witnesses, but that's what the topic is.
We would have finished this study, I think, at our last meeting if the Liberal members hadn't dropped a bombshell on us at the last minute by saying they would be introducing yet another bill which will be designed, apparently, to correct the deficiencies in the bill that is in front of us right now. They're recommending, I believe, that we approve this flawed piece of legislation and that they will fix it later. We don't know how much later or how they are going to fix it. I think they're just saying, “trust us.”
Madam Speaker, I, in good conscience, cannot support flawed legislation based on a promise that maybe things will get better in the future. The Conservative members of this committee have put forward what, I think, are some common-sense amendments to fix the flaws in the bill that is before us right now. We are supported in our proposed amendments by credible witnesses such as Daniel Zekveld and John Sikkema of ARPA, who gave testimony last week. Their recommendation was basically to codify the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada decision that upheld the constitutionality of section 43 of the Criminal Code. That court decision also gave further guidelines for teachers and parents, and our amendment is trying to capture that.
We also heard from Ms. Heidi Yetman, president of the Canadian Teachers' Federation, who stated that while her organization fully condemns any form of corporal punishment, it does not support the proposed legislation that is before us today in unamended form. She was worried about “the risk of unintended consequences that could make classrooms more unsafe.”
We also heard from Dr. Lisa Kelly, law professor at Queen's University. She looked at this issue more from a parent's perspective. She started her remarks, as the other witnesses did, by stating that she shared the goals of the bill, namely to “end the practice of physical punishment of children and to promote their best care at home and in school”, but, having said that, she expressed concerns and she gave a hypothetical example of a mother striking a child twice across the shins, instructing the child to sit in the car seat and be tied into the car seat for safety. She worried about what the consequences would be in a hypothetical situation like that if police were to be involved, and she said that in an acrimonious divorce or a difficult family situation, one parent could weaponize criminal law against the other for extraneous purposes. That's why she was saying that section 43 needed to remain.
I think it's helpful to quote just one sentence from the Supreme Court of Canada decision. This is what Chief Justice McLachlin said about section 43, the section that this private member's bill would repeal. She 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”.
That brings me to our amendment, Conservative motion number 1. It is essentially, as I said, a codification of this Supreme Court decision, something Parliament, in my opinion, should have done 20 years ago. Maybe that's what the Liberals' new bill is going to address. I would say, rather than wait for a future bill that may or may not come, I would urge all the members of this committee to vote in favour of Conservative motion number 1.
Thank you.