Canada’s Liberal senators seem to have a lot of time on their hands these days.

Never mind the global food crisis or the war in Afghanistan or that skyrocketing fuel costs are causing untold financial woes to the average Canadian.

This lot of Grits, it seems, has other more important things on their collective unelected minds.

In an intrusive quest to interfere with how you should raise your child, our Liberal senators want you to stop spanking your kids.

Heading into their summer vacation, the senators convened in their tradition of august ambiguity and quietly passed Bill S-209, which proposes that you spare the rod never mind the child.

Supported by a Liberal majority despite objections from the Conservatives, the bill proposes to eliminate Section 43 of Canada’s Criminal Code, which states that: "Every schoolteacher, parent or person standing in the place of a parent is justified in using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child, as the case may be, who is under his care, if the force does not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances."

The move to criminalize parents for spanking their kids now heads to the House of Commons to be approved.

According to reports from the hill, Liberal Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette introduced the bill in December 2004, shortly after the Supreme Court denied a challenge to Section 43 and upheld the right of adults to physically discipline children between the ages of two and 12.

Undeterred by the rebuff from Canada’s highest court, the hyphenated senator from Quebec joined forces with the activists – yes, the same ones who fought to legalize sex with a 14-year-old boy – to reignite the anti-spanking movement.

The Bill is being tabled in the wake of a controversial and inexplicable decision by a Quebec judge who overturned a father’s grounding of his 12-year-old daughter. The girl repeatedly disobeyed her dad and posted provocative pictures of herself on the Internet. The court ruled that dad had no right to ground her and cancel her Grade 6 camping trip.

In Vancouver now, the board of education plans to enforce a ministry policy that prevents parents from pulling students out of classes that deal with gay-friendly lessons. Religion and family values cannot be used as an excuse to not be part of the gay curriculum.

While our senators, judges and bureaucrats think we need lessons and legislation on how to raise our kids, parents are increasingly being held accountable for their children’s misdeeds.

Big retailers are going after the parents of juvenile shoplifters, insurance companies are targeting parents for their kids bad driving habits and Ontario even has the Parental Responsibility Act, which allows victims of property crimes to sue (up to $10,000) the parents of a child for the loss or damage they cause.

If parents are to held responsible for their kids behaviour, then let them do what they think is right to raise them.

Many of the social ills plaguing our youth today can be blamed on the decline of parental authority.

Most parents know what is the appropriate level of punishment.

If there is abuse, there are enough laws in our criminal code to deal with that.

For parents to have parental authority, spanking, grounding and withholding benefits must remain a real option.

We don’t need busybodies from the senate or the bench to tell us how to raise our kids.

Hervieux-Payette says she will keep introducing the anti-spanking bill, if it does not pass the House of Commons.

She is not unlike a disobedient child who needs some discipline.