Senator Miville-Dechêne: What I understand from the history of this type of bill, because this is not the first time that this section of the Criminal Code has been called into question, is that the education sector’s reaction has always been that, sometimes, it is necessary to go to those lengths.

I understand that the Supreme Court has said that educators have very little room to manœuvre when intervening. However, in that situation, just as for parents, what concerns me is the issue of restraining a child so they don’t hurt themselves. It is very difficult to have absolute and general legislation to govern human beings.

You’ve all seen your children have a temper tantrum or meltdown, and sometimes we don’t know how to deal with it. However, in my opinion, we should not confuse calming down a child, even clumsily, and using unreasonable force.

That is a good question. In reading up on this issue, I realized that it’s not as simple as it seems. Yes, we have a provision that talks about reasonable force. In 2023, it is symbolically very difficult to use words like that because people always think the worst. But if we eliminate that clause, what does that mean? Are we going to have to build up jurisprudence to determine what’s acceptable and what’s not? There will always be situations that will be a bit of a grey area.

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