O Canada!

Canadian parents need to be alerted to the fact that Joyce Murrary (one of their legislators) is campaigning to having spanking banned as a method of disciplining children by their parents.    Since it is assessed that over 50% of Canadian parents give their kids an occasional whack, she seems to be swimming against the tide:  but she might succeed.

The tactics of the Single Issue Fanatic is to state opinion as if it were fact, quote bad science as if it were holy scripture and use shaming tactics to try to silence the opposition.    Here in the US, anti vaccination crazies use these tactics with no avail - but the anti-abortion clique does the same with varying degrees of success:  as is witnessed by the number of doctors in Family Practice who get murdered to further the cause.

Back to the chase.

Ms Murray is on record as saying "Shockingly, Section 43 of the Canadian Criminal Code still permits this cruel form of punishment."   Which, I think you might agree, is a personal opinion being masqueraded as hard fact.   It should be noted that the Canadian Supreme Court did rule it was legal to spank a child aged between 2 and 12 with the open hand - so those poor people do have some friends left in high places..

Ms Murray does have some bad science to back her point of view - which was revealed by a study into 26 "research papers" over the last two decades which all concluded spanking was downright evil.   But it was discovered that the underlying data showed that when spankings are conditional, (that is administered caringly and under control), they outperformed every other form of child punishment known to man by a significant degree.    The anti-spanking brigade still quote the bad research:  which is only accurate when studying abusive physical punishment which is outlawed in every jurisdiction in the world.  Prior researchers had blandly assumed that a swat to the rump of a child playing with matches was equal in all respects with a beating with an electric cord whip that sent the victim to the emergency room. 

Even so, why am I advocating that should the Canadians stand firm from this unwelcome intrusion into their lives?   Well, the best data we have of what happens when a country does outlaw spanking comes from one of the world's most favorite secular nations - Sweden.   They banned the practice in 1979, and that gives us the longest window in which to see the progress that has been made.

One of the more noticeable effects is that children under 15 now commit 500% more criminal assaults on younger children than the numbers before the no spanking law was passed.   But that could be sheer coincidence, however unlikely.   However - and this is the biggie - compared with 700 kids a year in nearby Germany, 20,000 kids are year in Sweden are permanently removed from their homes if a parent should raise a hand to chastise them: and a witness reports it to the authorities.   Permanently removing a child from its home is not a cruel and unusual punishment if it is done in the child's best interests:  we are assured that bureaucrats are better equipped to make such a distinction.

Now - all together - "Spanking is not child abuse and child abuse does not come by spanking".   Please, administrators, learn the difference before you set your thought-crime police on us to make us obey your edicts.