Canada’s Children Deserve Protection from Violence: A Call to Action
The CCRC is thrilled to present this webinar with Dr. Joan Durrant and Dr Valerie Michaelson in honour of April 30, which is the Day to End Corporal Punishment. We know that there are so many people and organizations in Canada passionate about this issue, and we want to draw attention to how people can act.
Join us for an interactive webinar as we discuss why Canada should repeal Section 43, and how you can act to support this work.
Dr. Joan Durrant is a Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. For 30 years, she has focused her research on understanding the drivers and impacts of punitive violence against children. She co-authored the Joint Statement on Physical Punishment of Children and Youth, which has been endorsed by more than 650 professional organizations in Canada. She was a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children and has published many academic articles on corporal punishment and its prohibition. She co-edited Eliminating Corporal Punishment: The Way Forward to Constructive Discipline (UNESCO); Global Pathways to Abolishing Physical Punishment: Realizing Children’s Rights (Routledge); and Decolonizing Discipline: Children, Corporal Punishment, Christian Theologies and Reconciliation. Joan is also the Executive Director of Positive Discipline in Everyday Life, which provides training in a child-rights-based approach to parenting that is being implemented across Canada and in more than 40 other countries around the world.
Dr. Valerie Michaelson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University. Her research is concerned with the health and well-being of children and adolescents, and the social determinants that shape their health trajectories. In one strand of her research, she focuses on social, cultural and religious norms that rationalize or normalize harmful health behaviours or attitudes, and that lead to deleterious health outcomes. This interest led her to initiate the SSHRC funded project that resulted in the writing of a Christian Theological Statement in Support of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 6, which is to repeal Section 43 of Canada’s Criminal Code. With Joan Durrant, she co-edited Decolonizing Discipline: Children, Corporal Punishment, Christian Theologies and Reconciliation and has also been involved with other research studies that demonstrate the harms caused by corporal punishment and other forms of violence against children.