Canada's Top Court Upholds Parents' Right to Spank

Fri Jan 30, 1:49 PM ET

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By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian parents can continue to spank their children, but only if they are not infants or teens, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday.

The court said it would be more harmful to families to turn parents into criminals for applying reasonable force to discipline children from two until their teen years.

But the high court left parents open to criminal sanctions for using force outside those ages. It also said the force used must be reasonable, and striking a child with objects or slapping the head was not permitted.

The court also upheld teachers' rights to remove a child from a classroom or to secure compliance.

The case, which pitted conservative groups against those advocating an end to corporal punishment, saw the top court reject a constitutional challenge that said children's dignity was threatened by physical discipline.

"Introducing the criminal law into children's families and educational environments in such circumstances would harm children more than help them," Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote for the 6-2 majority. A ninth judge had a split opinion.

"The force permitted is limited and must be set against the reality of a child's mother or father being charged and pulled into the criminal justice system, with its attendant rupture of the family setting, or a teacher being detained pending bail, with the inevitable harm to the child's crucial educative setting," McLachlin wrote.

The case did not center on any specific incident, but the issue of spanking hit the news in Ontario in 2001 when social workers seized seven children from a conservative evangelical family that used corporal punishment.

The children were later returned home and the parents escaped criminal penalties because of the law that allows spanking, but the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies joined in asking for the section to be struck down.

"Parents can breathe a sigh of relief that they will not be criminalized for lovingly disciplining their children," Michael Martens said for Focus on the Family, one of the groups that made arguments before the court.

Cheryl Milne, the lawyer for Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law, which had challenged the spanking law, said the court had given a mixed message.

"I'm heartened by the court's attempts to narrow the defense," she told reporters. "What I'm concerned with overall is that it's still OK to hit children."

The Child Welfare League of Canada, which argues that spanking leads to abuse, said it would continue to lobby Parliament for a ban.

However, repeated attempts have failed in the past and polls have shown 70 percent to 80 percent of the public would oppose a spanking ban.

Paula Whaley, a mother who was at the court for the decision, said she tries time-outs and talk, but sometimes spanking is more effective.

"Some kids respond better to physical corporal punishment," she said.

Standing with her husband and 13-year-old daughter -- whom she said they no longer spank -- she said those decisions should be up to parents and not the government