Anti-spanking bias reflects state control

Denouncing last week's forcible removal of seven children from their southwestern Ontario home, the director of a family advocacy group said Canada is becoming an Orwellian state.

"It does not appear that there was any abuse," said Brian Rushfeldt, executive director of the Canada Family Action Coalition.

"In this case, bureaucrats swooped into the home and dragged the kids out against their will simply because the parents refused to stop using the form of discipline they'd chosen. Now that's a dangerous mind-control game."

On July 4, child welfare authorities removed seven children aged 6 to 14 from their Aylmer, Ont., home after their parents refused to promise they would stop spanking their children. The parents have reportedly used a strap to discipline the children, following the Bible's teaching not to "spare the rod."

Similar cases have ignited legal skirmishes in the past.

In 1995, American tourist David Peterson was found not guilty of assault after spanking his five-year-old's bare bottom in the parking lot of a London, Ont. restaurant.

That same year, a London man who spanked his common-law wife's eight-year-old son with a wooden stick was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

Rushfeldt added that a religious Nova Scotia family had two of their three children removed last year because they were spanked.

He said such removal of children can itself violate the Charter right to religious freedom:

"There have been several cases like this across Canada and it's almost exclusively families with a religious belief on disciplining their children."

The Aylmer family belongs to the Church of God denomination and argues that spanking is a form of discipline condoned by the Bible.

The case has reignited the debate on corporal punishment. A generation ago, spanking used to be a common and accepted form of child discipline, but today it appears that attitudes towards child-rearing are changing.

Dallas Miller, a lawyer for the Homeschool Legal Defence Association, says he does not believe this reflects a change in society itself, but rather reflects a bias within the child welfare establishment. He points out that most Canadians believe parents should be allowed to use reasonable disciplinary force.

In fact, a 1995 study by Joan Durrant of the University of Manitoba found that 75 per cent of Canadian parents spank their children. A Justice Department study also revealed that 67 per cent of Canadians would oppose a law banning spanking.

Countries such as Sweden, Finland, Norway, Austria and Denmark have banned parental use of corporal punishment.

Cheryl Milne, legal counsel for the Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law, led a legal challenge in 1999 to Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which allows parents to use "reasonable" force to correct their children's behaviour.

The challenge was rejected last year, but Milne plans to appeal the ruling at the Ontario Court of Appeal on Sept. 10.

"We have a growing body of evidence that links corporal punishment with psychological harm to children,"she said.

"People are starting to learn. We've progressed in society. ... It's the 21st century."

But Rushfeldt argued that the anti-spanking bias is based on a liberal academic agenda that is not based on human nature. "There's a view that somehow the government knows better how to raise children," he said. "That's a frightening form of state control."

Milne, however, said that officials need to be able to act proactively in order to prevent children from being harmed.

She added that all of the facts about the Aylmer case are not known and that children are seldom removed for spanking alone.