Bullying In Canada

60% of all bullies have a criminal record by the age of 24. Bullying is a major problem across the entire country of Canada and the world. Bullying can lead to many things, such as self-harm. Suicide, mental illness and emotional damage. The common demographic of people who are bullied are people between ages of 11-18, bullying is most commonly found in high schools. The problem with Canadian law is that it doesn’t always protect bullying victims, it’s a grey area within the criminal code that needs to be changed. Canada’s legal System in regards to bullying, to help victims and rehabilitate bully’s.

Bullying doesn’t just effect an effect on the victim, it also has a large effect on the bully as well. Many people wonder “why do bully’s bully?”.

For example, the psychological effects bullying has on victims can lead to suicide. The bully should be charged with 2nd degree murder, but instead they are let go free. They didn’t kill them, but their words and actions did. Along with psychological effects there are also physical actions that may take place on the victim. These actions will often include hurting the victim but if they are never seen by a person of authority there isn’t anything the law can do. School are supposed to have zero tolerance for bullying, but most of the time bullying. If that’s the case anyone who bullies should be immediately kicked out of school. Furthermore, there is also cyberbullying, a new form of bullying in the 21st century. Kids are easily able to access the inter and anonymously bully others using online platform such as Facebook, Twitter and Ask FM. There needs to be laws where social media companies are required to enforce their codes of conduct 24 hours a day ,7 days a week. There needs to be constant surveillance on social media so bullying can be prevented. Over 35% of teens in a year have reported being cyber bullied over a social media platform (NoBully). Over 75% of students see cyber bullying taking place but do nothing about it(DoSomething). If the kids aren’t doing anything about then the big companies need too, to keep people safe. The existing laws for bullying

Bullying needs its own separate category within the criminal code. As of today bullying is only charged as other crimes, it doesn’t have specific charges that go with it. For example, cyber bullying can only be seen as defamation, or uttering threats. In addition to this, if a bully were to follow you home and beat you up, if no one saw the beating taking place the most that could potentially happen to the bully is that he/she would be charged with stalking. There needs to be measures in place where people will feel safer knowing the law will protect them to a bigger extent. We need laws in place where school most keep on file all bullying incidents and inform the police. A law such as the one proposed would most likely discourage bullies due to the fact a police presence would always be involved. Only 20% of school’s report to the police which makes 80% of schools “handle it themselves” (NoBullying), most incidents are brushed under the table due to the negative attention it might bring to the school. Most situations are handled with 1 on 1’s with the student and teacher when police are not involved. The only province to have something in place like my proposed law is Manitoba. Manitoba has The Safe Schools Charter (Queen’s Printer of Manitoba). This charter allows them to have full power over students in terms of what kind of punishment they receive if it is