Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to discuss this legislation introduced by the member for Vancouver Centre that proposes to strengthen our ability to deal with cyberbullying.
Bill C-273 seeks to amend three Criminal Code offences: section 264, criminal harassment; section 298, defamatory libel; and section 372, false messages, indecent telephone calls and harassing telephone calls, to ensure that all three of these offences are interpreted to capture behaviour that occurs using a computer or over the Internet. The sponsor's stated goal with these proposed amendments is to target the growing issue of cyberbullying, a term that has received a lot of media and academic attention and scrutiny.
I am sure we can all acknowledge that the issue of bullying is not new. However, technology has forever changed the nature and scope of bullying, as it has changed so many other aspects of our society. The immediacy and broad reach of new technologies has made bullying easier, faster, anonymous, more prevalent, permanent and more cruel than ever before.
The member for Vancouver Centre is in good company in recognizing the increasing challenge posed by computer technology to the issue of bullying. In fact, many leading Canadian scholars and academics have been involved in work to ascertain to what extent bullying and cyberbullying is occurring in Canadian schools and on playgrounds. It is challenging to get an accurate sense of the level of bullying in Canada but many people are trying, and I think it is fair to say that the incidents of bullying are not insignificant.
For example, in her remarks upon the introduction of the bill, the member for Vancouver Centre referred to a University of Toronto survey on cyberbullying. She stated:
In a recent study by the University of Toronto, 50% of surveyed students reported that they had been bullied online....
Other reports make the same point. For example, a 2010 research report published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, which studied 33 junior high schools in Toronto, reported that almost 50% of students surveyed had been bullied online.
It is not just students who are affected by this issue. Many educators, non-governmental organizations and parents have reported that cyberbullying is one of their biggest concerns relating to schools and education today. A Statistics Canada survey conducted in 2007 of 2,162 Canadian parents with children age 5 to 24 years found that bullying was a concern to 80% of parents.
Another survey conducted in 2010 on behalf of the Canadian Teachers Federation found that 85% of Canadians felt that bullying and violence were very serious problems.
Finally, an Angus Reid poll from this year found that 88% of Canadians surveyed felt that bullying was a serious problem in elementary school and 94% felt that it was a problem in high school and middle school.
We all recognize that these are very serious issues and the government has been active in addressing the issue of bullying through several federal departments. For example, bullying is being addressed by the national crime prevention strategy, which is administered by Public Safety Canada's National Crime Prevention Centre. The National Crime Prevention Centre provides funding to organizations, including schools, to implement crime prevention. The interventions target the risk factors that are associated with future involvement in crime, including aggressive and anti-social behaviour, which are also linked to involvement in bullying.
The federal government also offers programming and project funding to help address and prevent bullying through the RCMP, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Justice Canada.
Provincial governments are also dealing with the issue through various measures. For example, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Alberta have all recently introduced new anti-bullying legislation that requires schools to implement anti-bullying policies and procedures. Ontario's keeping our kids safe in school act, which came into force in February 2010, requires, among other things, all school staff to report to principals serious student incidents, including bullying.
Quebec's bill 56, as another example, will require schools to implement an anti-bullying plan and allow principals to expel repeat offenders when it is passed by the provincial legislature.
Earlier this month, Nova Scotia announced that it would be introducing legislation in the near future to address the issue of bullying. It will likely take into account the 85 recommendations contained in the recently released task force report on bullying and cyberbullying. The task force, which was struck by the Government of Nova Scotia in 2011, released its report on March 22 of this year.
In addition to federal and provincial efforts to address bullying and cyberbullying, some municipalities have enacted bylaws against bullying. Edmonton, Alberta was the first municipality to do so in 2003. It currently has a bylaw in force that would impose a fine of up to $250 on anyone who bullies a person under the age of 18.
It is also interesting to note that other jurisdictions, including the United States, have also been addressing the issue of bullying and cyberbullying through legislative reforms. To date, 50 U.S. states have enacted legislation that address bullying or cyberbullying in some way and a few of them flow through the imposition of criminal sanctions.
As members can see, there is much work under way to address the issue of bullying. It is an issue that I take very seriously as it has affected my own family.
I would just like to raise for our consideration a few points regarding the approach this bill is proposing. I would ask members to think about the scope of the bill and the fact that it only addresses the issue of cyberbullying and not the broader issue of bullying. In my opinion, these two types of bullying are so closely intertwined that it may well make more sense to deal with both together. As well, it limits the focus to three Criminal Code offences and not to other offences that could also apply in a situation of bullying, such as intimidation, personation and uttering threats. We should consider whether the narrower approach is the right approach.
I do not want these comments to detract from the importance of this issue so, in closing, I express my thanks to the member for Vancouver Centre for bringing this very important issue before us today.