OTTAWA—The Liberal government plans to repeal a law that protects parents who include spanking in their disciplinary toolkits, which child advocates say would send a strong message that physical punishment — even when well-intentioned — is harmful to children.

“Laws can either support public-health messages or laws can undercut public health messages,” said Ron Ensom, a social worker who is a consultant and researcher in the field of child protection.

A spokesman for Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould confirmed Monday the government is including the repeal of Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada, which protects parents — and to a lesser extent, schoolteachers — who use “reasonable” physical force against children as part of its greater pledge to implement all 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“However, at this point, we cannot speculate on potential legislative or policy approaches to address this issue,” spokesman Christian Girouard wrote in an email Monday.

Those who have been pushing the federal government to repeal Section 43 — a move they say would bring Canada in line with its responsibilities under the Untied Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — welcomed the plan as long overdue.

“It is not a radical thing to say that in a society where we don’t hit people, we also don’t hit children,” said Mary Birdsell, executive director of Justice for Children and Youth, a non-profit legal aid clinic in Toronto.

Ensom said the research has been clear for some time now there is no obvious distinction between corporal punishment and physical abuse when it comes to the long-term effects on children.

“It’s associated with unforeseen, unintended and decidedly unwelcome consequences — for many children, their first experience with bullying,” said Ensom, who co-led the child abuse program at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) for two decades.

The Supreme Court of Canada nonetheless upheld the “spanking law” in 2004, ruling that physical force could be used by parents and schoolteachers on children between the ages of 2 and 12.

It also defined the protection more narrowly for teachers, saying they physically remove a child from a classroom or “secure compliance with instructions” but could not use force merely as punishment.

It also limited the type and degree of force that could be used and that it could be used as a defence only for “minor corrective force of a transitory and trifling nature.”

Even then, said Birdsell, the law has been used to defend against charges that are more than trifling.

“Since the Supreme Court of Canada tried to restrict the circumstances to a certain extent by defining as reasonable certain things, we continue to see cases where people are found not guilty on the basis of Section 43 for things that are quite aggressive and violent, in my opinion . . . and much more than just a spanking to the bottom,” Birdsell said.

The Liberals cannot expect, however, to get this change through Parliament without fierce opposition.

Cathy McLeod, the Conservative critic for indigenous affairs, said in an interview last week that the TRC recommendation on corporal punishment is one that should not be implemented without widespread consultations from Canadians nationwide.

Andrea Mrozek, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada expressed concern the law could criminalize well-meaning parents, even though she believes spanking is not the best — and should not be the first — technique parents use to discipline their children.

“The question is around where the state should enter into the family home and generally we only want that to happen in egregious case of abuse and not where you have loving parents who have a sense of what is good or bad for their own kids,” said Mrozek.

Heather Smith, president of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, said she would be open to Section 43 being repealed so long as it was replaced with something that specifically protected educators who may feel the need to use physical force — as narrowly defined by the 2004 Supreme Court decision — in the course of doing their jobs.

“There is a high threshold of accountability for teachers . . . I see it as protecting children, but it protects teachers against frivolous allegations,” said Smith.

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Those who oppose Section 43 argue the de minimis principle would already protect parents and teachers against prosecution on trivial charges.

In other words, even if someone called a child welfare agency after witnessing a smack on the bottom, an investigation would be unlikely to go forward if there were no other signs of maltreatment, never mind reach the police and the courts.

“This criminalizing of parents is a scare tactic,” said Ensom.

Paul Schabas, one of the lawyers who argued to repeal Section 43 before the Supreme Court, said allowing the law to remain the books sends the wrong message to parents and society.

“It suggests it’s acceptable to hit kids and it’s not,” Schabas said.