INDEPTH: SPANKING
Spanking in Canada: A timeline

CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) News Online, January 28, 2004

April 18, 2003
Former nun Lucille Poulin is released from jail after serving eight months for beating several children at a religious commune on P.E.I. Some people on the Island say they're worried that she will violate her parole conditions. She was also ordered not to live with or care for anyone under 14 for three years after being released.

November 8, 2002
Lucille Poulin is sentenced to eight months in jail and three years probation for assaulting five children who lived at a religious commune in Hazel Grove, P.E.I. During the trial, Poulin said sections of the Bible suggest using beatings to discipline children and to dissuade them from evil.

October 25, 2002
78-year-old Lucille Poulin - a religious commune leader in Prince Edward Island who disciplined children by beating them with a wooden paddle - is found guilty of five counts of assault. Justice David Jenkins says the use of "the rod" went beyond spanking, to beating the children. He said he believed the testimony of five children, who said the beatings left them with bruises and led them to pass out. Poulin said she was just doing what God told her to do.

July 12, 2002
In a second spanking case related to the Aylmer, Ont., Church of God, a family comes under investigation for its disciplinary practices. The family is called to the offices of the local Children's Aid Society for questioning. In a previous interview with CBC TV, the mother said that a strap is used only as a last resort, and that her children know the discipline is given with love.

January 26, 2002
Ontario Court of Appeal upholds Section 43 of the Criminal Code, saying parents and teachers need the option to be able to use physical force in disciplining children.

November 26, 2001
Five children taken into custody by the Children's Aid Society of Windsor are returned to their parents. The children had been beaten at their fundamentalist Christian school. The CAS says it will stay involved with the children and the school and may offer counselling on alternative forms of discipline.

November 23, 2001
The Children's Aid Society in Windsor, Ont., seizes five children from a fundamentalist Christian school. The teenage daughter of the school's supervisor said that students were being beaten with a rod.

July 6, 2001
A pastor from the Church of God in Aylmer, Ont., defends members of his church who reportedly beat their children. Four boys and three girls were removed from the family home by Ontario's Family and Children's Services, which says the youngsters must be protected from being regularly hit with belts, sticks, chains or other objects.

September 10, 2001
Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law goes to the Ontario Court of Appeal to contest the July 2000 decision of an Ontario Superior Court to uphold Section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada.

July 2000
Ontario Superior Court Justice David McCombs upholds Section 43 of the Criminal Code and says parents and teachers need the option of using some "limited" physical force in disciplining children.

2000
Israel outlaws the use of corporal punishment against children.

1998
A youth advocacy group files application in Ontario Court, General Division, to have section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada declared unconstitutional. The Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law argues that corporal punishment infringes on children's rights to protection and security under sections 15 and 7 of the Charter. The group says physical punishment is ineffective and serves only to teach physical aggression to children.

1995
American tourist David Peterson is acquitted of spanking his five-year-old daughter in a London, Ont., parking lot after she closed the car door on her brother's hand.

1979
United Nations International Year of the Child

1969
Finland outlaws the use of corporal punishment against children.

1892
Corporal punishment introduced to Canada, modelled after British law.