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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 And more importantly, if this provision were repealed tomorrow, would Canadian parents’ attitudes toward corporal punishment actually change?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........

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