Abolish spanking: Senate

By DEBORAH GYAPONG

OTTAWA (CCN) -- An all-party Senate report on children's rights that recommends creating a children's commissioner and abolishing spanking has raised concerns among some traditional family advocates.

"A children's commissioner could never replace a pro-active and comprehensive family policy," said Michele Boulva, director of the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF). Boulva would like to see Canadian families supported in their "irreplaceable role and mission" through tax

Recommendations raise concerns among family groups

policies and other government programs. "Today, we find Canadian families are treated as an afterthought."

"I think the best commissioners for a child are mum and dad," said Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, an Ottawa-based think tank.

Entitled Children: The Silenced Citizens, the 296-page report by the Senate human rights committee aims at bringing Canada more in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Canada in 1992.

The report's recommendation that Canada eliminate corporal punishment has sparked the most controversy. The report also seeks to protect children from bullying, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violence, all considered positive steps.

However it leaves one gaping omission: the protection of the unborn.

"The whole idea that you've got some fundamental right to know who your biological parents are and be reared by them is not mentioned at all," said Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law.

The report also recommends that adopted children have access to their biological parents' identities and medical information, and that Assisted Human Reproduction Canada examine the regulations around sperm donation and identity to best serve children's interests. The recommendation arises from concerns that children of sperm donors might inadvertently marry blood relatives without this knowledge.

Somerville said that no concern is raised about whether even creating this kind of circumstance is ethical or in the best interests of children. She also noted that medical information is only part of what children need. Studies have shown children have a deep longing to have "at least some contact with those people from whom they came."

The report's recommendations fail to address what she described as a "deep human need and longing" that "may spring from a primordial feeling of connection."

Somerville testified before the committee last year as it conducted two years of hearings on children's rights. She had also recommended that children have the right to be born from one sperm and one egg. She also recommended these sperm and gametes come from living adult parents, not be harvested from the dead or from fetuses. None of these recommendations are mentioned.

The report has been criticized not only for not going far enough on behalf of children, but also for recommendations that could undermine the role of the traditional family and see the state encroach on the parents' responsibility for children, something the UN Convention stresses states should avoid.

"The state needs to recognize and respect the fact that parents are the first educators of their children," said Boulva. "Their role is irreplaceable and inalienable; it cannot be usurped by others."

"Perhaps the publication of this Senate report is a good occasion to reflect on the fate of other `silenced citizens,'" Boulva said. "An inconceivable juridical void in our country has allowed for the free elimination of approximately 3 million future citizens of Canada over the past 36 years."

"Today, abundant scientific evidence confirms the humanity of the unborn," she said. "We cannot expect children's rights to be respected if we do not begin by respecting the first of all fundamental rights: the right to life."

Quist does not want to see the provision in the Criminal Code removed that permits spanking. "Spanking is definitely not abuse. Abuse of children is not acceptable in any way at all," he said.

He pointed out that countries that have abolished spanking have not had the results they had hoped for. The Swedish government has seen higher levels of youth violence and youth aggression since they introduced the non-spanking clause in that country, he said.

"Parents need to have parental authority in the raising of their children," he said. "The idea that the state can instil values and morals in children waters it down to a point that it becomes the lowest common denominator."

"As soon as the state starts to be responsible for the values of our children, I find that worrisome," he said.

According to figures in Reginald Bibby's 2004 The Future Families Project available through the Vanier Institute for the Family, 65 per cent of Canadians say spanking should be legal, but 60 per cent also say it should be discouraged.