Mr. Speaker, I am happy to share my time because it will produce some additional points on the debate.
I must admit I was driven to speak to this matter because of the member from the Bloc who spoke earlier. On personal and professional levels, I have had a great deal of experience in dealing with section 43 and the whole issue of discipline and child abuse. I want to say to the House that if we go back in history and look at where this came from, it is the spare the rod, spoil the child theory. It came out of Roman law, even before Julius Caesar.
As my friend from Vancouver has said, it was incorporated into the English common law. It adopted the same type of theory which at that time allowed for the intentional physical application of force to another individual, to put it in a technical lawyerly way. It allowed men to beat their spouses, their servants and their children. My friend from the coalition raised the point that this section is 100 years old and maybe it is time to take another look at it.
The section was brought in at that time because of the very serious abuse that was going on. There were no restrictions on that abuse. Until the end of the last century, one could literally get away with the murder of one's children in the common law system. We badly needed the section.
I am suggesting that today, a century later, we are at one of those milestones in our development as a human race. I do believe the human race does evolve and develop. We are at one of those periods as a society when we have to look with experience at section 43 and how we treat our children and say that we have evolved. It is time to say to parents that no matter what their religious persuasions are, no matter what their philosophical underpinnings are as to how they raise their children, they no longer can apply intentional physical force to their children. We have evolved as a society to the stage where we can deal with our children and raise them as good citizens of Canada and of the world without the use of intentional physical force.
We heard the argument from the member from the coalition of what to do in a situation where they are out of control. We are not applying physical force to stop them. We are applying restraints but we are not there to punish them with the use of physical force. There are ways of doing that in the existing criminal law system. In several ways it allows us to do that without using section 43. That argument does not amount to a valid advocacy position in terms of retaining section 43.
We need to look at the experience of section 43. My colleague from Vancouver referred to a couple of cases. I have to say to her that those cases were mild. I practised in this area fairly extensively earlier in my career. I think of some of the cases that I reviewed and was involved in where section 43 was used to defend people who by any standards were abusive. That is why it is important that the bill go for further review, discussion and debate. If those cases came forward and we looked at the way the section has been applied at various times, and not all times by any means, to defend people and justify their conduct successfully, I believe the House would be shocked.