Pubdate: Thu, 19 Feb 2015
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Marian Scott
Page: B3

CRITICS RIP SCHOOL FOR STRIP-SEARCHING TEEN

Minister vows to re-examine existing policy

MONTREAL - Joyce Shanks doesn't want to contemplate what she'd do if
her child were strip-searched at school.

"I would lose it and so would my husband," said Shanks, whose daughter
attends Grade 7 at a school in a Montreal suburb.

The debate over the strip search of a 15-year-old girl at a Quebec
City high school on Feb. 12 forced Education Minister Yves Bolduc to
backtrack on comments made Tuesday that condoned the search of the
girl, who was suspected of carrying marijuana.

On Wednesday, he vowed to reexamine the policy allowing such searches
by school staff.

"We will ask a person external to and independent of the school board
to evaluate what happened, write a report, and, at that moment, we
will see based on the facts what we should do in the future," Bolduc
said in the National Assembly.

He told reporters the day before that school officials can strip
search pupils on suspicion that they are selling drugs, as long as the
search is done "respectfully" and according to the rules. He was
commenting on a report saying staff at a high school in Quebec City
instructed the pupil to remove her clothes and checked them for drugs.

The school board that oversees Neufchatel High School said Tuesday it
will launch its own investigation. Marie-Elaine Dion, a board
spokeswoman, said such searches are "exceptional."

"In our practices, only clothes are searched, not the individual.
There is no direct contact with the student to frisk them," she said.

Parti Quebecois education critic Nicole Leger pounced on the
controversy. "All the parents of Quebec are troubled by this
situation," she said.

Using a very apt expression, she urged Bolduc to take a stand: "Mettez
vos culottes!" ("Put your pants on!")

Later in the halls of the assembly, she told journalists that Bolduc
has "trivialized" the incident by depicting it as an isolated case.
She demanded that Quebec ban the practice in schools.

Bolduc's press aide, Yasmine Abdelfadel, pointed out that strip
searches of students are allowed under the rules outlined in a
provincial police guidebook for teachers, which was based on a 1998
Supreme Court case.

The case involved a junior high school vice-principal who, in front of
a plain clothes RCMP officer, searched two students suspected of
selling marijuana on school property. The decision supported the right
to search students on "reasonable grounds," but specified that it must
be conducted in a "sensitive manner" and be "minimally intrusive."

The decision was put to the test eight days later. On Dec. 8, 1998, a
principal and gym teacher in a high school in southwestern Ontario
strip-searched 20 ninth grade boys, looking for stolen money. The
incident was widely condemned and led to a mass student walkout the
next day.

Angela Campbell, associate dean of graduate studies in law at McGill
University, said telling a student to strip naked does not seem
justified in the circumstances. "This is not a case of a person who
was carrying a weapon or anything destructive and the person was asked
to strip to completely nothing," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Matt