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The debate over the repeal of Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which authorizes the use of “reasonable force” to correct a child, has resurfaced periodically in Canadian politics for two decades. It enters the House of Commons, disappears from view, then returns. Canada’s international position is nevertheless clear: civil society, Indigenous communities, pediatricians, and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child all support abolition.
Why then does Parliament remain on the sidelines? And more importantly, if this provision were repealed tomorrow, would Canadian parents’ attitudes toward corporal punishment actually change? This last question is rarely asked. Yet it is central.
Parental attitudes that resist change
More than 30 per cent of Canadians still consider corporal punishment acceptable, a figure that has remained stable for about a decade, despite Canada’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991 and three decades of awareness campaigns.
Nearly one in three Canadians continues to view physical force as a legitimate disciplinary tool. In other words, legal norms and public campaigns alone are not enough to shift practices and beliefs.
A recent analysis of the World Values Survey for Canada suggests that one factor plays a particularly structuring role: citizens’ trust in the justice system. Where this trust is high, parental values of autonomy – fostering children’s capacity to think for themselves rather than merely obey – translate more readily into rejection of corporal punishment. Where it is low, these values remain largely theoretical.
When trust in the justice system becomes a key factor
Why the justice system, rather than another institution? The analysis distinguishes three pillars of institutional trust – the police, the government, and the justice system – assuming they would play a similar role.
The data tell a different story: only confidence in the justice system appears significantly associated with attitudes toward corporal punishment. This result is likely explained by the very nature of the courts.
For a parent wondering about acceptable discipline, the police are associated with emergency situations, while the government provides a general framework. The justice system, by contrast, intervenes in concrete situations where family and social norms are tested: separations, custody disputes, child protection interventions.
It is in this space that legal norms become part of lived experience. Otherwise, they remain abstract.
Justice as lived experience for families
For a parent, the legitimacy of the law is not decided solely in legal texts, but in their experience of the institutions that apply it. When a parent feels that the courts are accessible, that they listen, represent their community, and understand their reality, the legal norm becomes anchored in their moral world.
Conversely, when justice appears distant, opaque, or inequitable, the law remains external to family life. Social psychology research speaks here of procedural legitimacy: the idea that it is not only the verdict that grounds an institution’s authority, but the manner in which decisions are made and perceived.
An issue already central to Quebec’s reforms
Trust in the justice system is not merely a sociological abstraction. It is built through concrete institutional choices, already underway in Quebec.
The unified family tribunal, enacted in April 2025, aims to simplify access to legal remedies for families. Mediation in youth protection, deployed in six regions, offers a space for dialogue before judicialization. Free legal aid for minors ensures access regardless of financial means. Specialized training for child representatives brings judicial decisions closer to lived experience.
These levers all contribute, in their own way, to strengthening procedural legitimacy: accessibility, transparency, listening, representation.
The federal government and the risk of incomplete reform
At the federal level, no comparable investment is currently being deployed alongside any potential legislative change. A standalone repeal of Section 43 would risk reproducing a pattern already observed in other public policies: the law does not precede citizens’ relationship with the institutions tasked with applying it; it follows from it.
In other words, even when the law changes, attitudes evolve only when the institutions that embody it are perceived as legitimate.
For the repeal of Section 43 to have a real effect, it should be embedded in a coherent set of measures: improving access to family justice, strengthening procedural transparency, and addressing the representativeness of the judiciary.
It should also be accompanied by universal positive parenting support programs grounded in evidence – such as Triple P, Nurse-Family Partnership, or Parent-Child Interaction Therapy – delivered through proportionate universalism: accessible to all, but intensified where needs are greatest. These programs should be designed in partnership with the communities they serve, never targeted at a specific group.
Beyond repealing the law: rethinking the norm’s ecosystem
Trust in the justice system is built slowly. But the federal debate over corporal punishment cannot wait for it to be fully secured before moving forward.
The Laurent Commission’s progress report has just been made public. The Grandir en confiance strategy is entering its implementation phase. The follow-up to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action is progressing. And the federal debate over Section 43, dormant since the 2004 Supreme Court ruling that restricted its scope without abolishing it, is becoming politically possible again.
The lesson suggested by the data is not one of modesty, but of precision.
Canada will not shift its citizens’ attitudes toward violence against children through law alone, nor through values and awareness campaigns alone. Change will happen where legal norms are upheld by a justice system perceived as accessible, fair, and legitimate in the daily lives of families.
