Canadian Heritage Committee on March 23rd, 2023

[Allison Forsyth]

Of course.

What we're looking at, specifically, is how the board operates. Are they in the operations of the business, and are they stepping in to look at the coaches' behaviour?

It is that level of governance, but it's also about the governance within the team. One of the biggest risks we see in safe sport is head coaches or high-performance directors having way too much power in sole, discretionary decision-making. We're putting way too much power to make the decisions into one role within an organization. That's where we get lack of oversight and subjectivity. It's when coaches can make all the decisions. That's a big risk for the abuse of power.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Forsyth.

I'll now go to the Bloc Québécois for six minutes.

Mr. Lemire, you have the floor.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is for Professor Kerr.

In your opinion, what explains the fact that Minister St‑Onge always ignores calls to shed light on matters affecting athletes, in over 16 sports? Let's name them: gymnastics, water polo, speed skating, boxing, synchronized swimming, figure skating, ice hockey, soccer and so on. There's also fencing, as we learned today, in yet another revelation, which, once again, makes one's blood run cold.

Ms. Kerr, how do you explain the unwillingness to get to the bottom of things by launching a public inquiry?

[Dr. Gretchen Kerr]

Thank you for the question.

There are differing points of view on how to best move safe sport forward.

As you may know, I'm not a supporter of a public inquiry. I think it will slow down the progress being made. It will be extremely costly. Those funds could be devoted to putting in proactive solutions, like those we heard on the panel today. It also—

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

When you talk about the health and safety of athletes, does cost really have to be what matters most?

I listened to your testimony before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women and I find that, on the contrary, the issues you've raised point to the need for an independent public inquiry which will lead us to reflect even more on this issue.

You say that many studies have already been done. By the way, I want to recognize the contribution made by universities, and yours in particular. However, I have the impression that things only started to change when a motion summoning Hockey Canada to appear was tabled in Parliament. That got things moving, first at Hockey Canada and then at other national sports bodies. People felt they could come forward because there was a safe space for them to talk, namely the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. I would also like to recognize the reporters who worked to break the culture of silence and who helped to shed light on this issue.

Do we really have the luxury of not holding an independent public inquiry?

[Dr. Gretchen Kerr]

Absolutely. We will lose time and money and progress. We have the information we need to move forward.

If you're asking why more progress has not been made, it is a cultural challenge. A multi-faceted and multipronged solution is needed. It's everything from governance to funding to training and education; getting the NSOs and PSOs to sign onto OSIC, or to an equivalent complaint mechanism; getting the UCCMS filtered throughout the sport system; and, very importantly, dealing with system alignment. At the moment, there's a disconnect between the authority the NSO has over a PSO and, subsequently, the authority PSO has over community sport. That's only the sports that are within the system. Many sports are run completely independently of Sport Canada, or the PSO system.

We know enough to move forward. Let's use that information, and implement the solutions that are being talked about here at this panel.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

To repeat what Ms. St‑Onge said before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, we need to know the “when” and the “how”. It appears that one year on, there has been no movement. Despite repeated investigations, no charges have been laid in relation to the events that allegedly happened in London.

Are you involved in the development of the new Canadian Sport Policy for 2023-33, which we are still waiting for? Have you had discussions with the Minister of Sport? What recommendations did you make?

[Dr. Gretchen Kerr]

One of the challenges around your question of charges being laid is that so many of the harmful behaviours fall below the criminal threshold. Yet, that's what's causing athletes so much harm. Sexual abuse, as part of the criminal system, can be dealt with there, but the other forms that are so harmful and prevalent fall below that threshold.

Canadian sport policy needs to deal with a return to the values of sport, how can those be reflected from the grassroots to the national level, how they can be funded, and how organizations can be held accountable for adhering to those values.

Imagine a sport system that's funded, based on the health and well-being of athletes. The research will tell you that if you were to fund a sport system based on health and well-being, performance outcomes would emerge as a by-product.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I share many of your observations, but I don't agree with your conclusion, which in my view contributes to the culture of silence. That much is clear if we don't try to get to the bottom of this. I feel money should not factor into this at all.

If there were an independent public inquiry on abuse in sports, would you be called in to justify all of the subsidies you have received or explain situations where there is an appearance of conflict of interest? They could potentially put you in a compromising situation and perhaps prevent you from really fighting for the athletes.

What explains the fact that what you are saying is completely different from what all of your peers are saying? Indeed, many university researchers have already spoken to that.

[Dr. Gretchen Kerr]

It's not unlike researchers to disagree. That's how we get to the bottom of issues. Many athletes have already told us what they need to move forward. We don't need another inquiry for that. They need independent mechanisms. They need sport leaders who are trained. They need the values embedded in high performance sport. They need the system to be funded differently. We have all the information we need to move forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Kerr.

I'm going to move to the NDP and Peter Julian, but before I give Peter his six minutes, it looks as though every questioner so far has invoked the Waugh principle, which is to go over time. There we go.

Peter can get the benefit of the Waugh principle. Thank you.

You have six minutes plus.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. You've given me licence to go beyond that, and I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

It's not indefinite.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you.

I want to thank each of the witnesses here today. You've brought very important testimony to this table. This is something that members of the committee embarked on last year not knowing the destination but understanding that there were problems in Canadian sports. We now understand that there is a crisis in Canadian sports in terms of keeping athletes safe.

When our daughters and sons go into sports organizations, there has to be an understanding that they are safe, that athletes are safe, that the public is safe, that everyone is safe. So your testimony helps us, I think, to formulate what we will do eventually, which is provide recommendations to the government.

I'd like to start my questions with you, Ms. Forsyth. Words can really not express how sorry we should all be about what happened to you and what happens to far too many athletes and members of the public. You simply were not in a safe environment. You, I think, from that understood the importance of putting into place systems that will protect all athletes and protect the public.

You mentioned in your testimony that we have organizations that are basically looking at minimum levels. They're basically not obeying the spirit of putting safe sports into place but are, I imagine, putting forward more of a facade. How do you see us getting to the point in this country where all athletes are safe, where the public is safe? What are the investments that are required and how can organizations be forced to go beyond that minimum sort of facade to actually put in place a full regime of safe sports to protect everybody?

[Allison Forsyth]

Thank you very much for that excellent question. I'm honoured to answer it from my perspective as a survivor and an expert.

To start with, it has become very clear to us, and I mean this with all due respect to policy-makers and analysts in the world, that our sports system was built on a tick-the-box model. When I speak to organizations and I say clearly, because I am who I am, “What are you doing about safe sport”, they say, “We have a policy.” I say, “Does anyone know about that policy? Are you educating on that policy? If I walk onto your field of play right now and I ask a child if they know what bullying is, will they give me that answer?” What we're doing is thinking that policies prevent abuse, and that is the number one way that we are ticking the box.

The other thing that the sports system does is to say, “Your minimum standard is online training.” I will be the first to say I have the utmost respect for and have contributed to creating online training modules and I'm also the first to tell you that when I'm doing my online training of any sort, I usually look at what's left and I click my cursor as quickly as I can to get it done. That's why, when I say that we're doing the minimum standard, your online training will provide baseline, generalized information and awareness, and every organization must level that up with sports-specific and participant-specific education.

I also want to be clear to share that there is predatory abuse that we know about and then there's also, as Dr. Fowler mentioned, cultural norms abuse, which is behaviours that are ingrained in our coaches based on how they were coached. What I am sharing here is the complexity of the issue in that we need to put in a huge concerted effort to not lose faith in our coaches as people in positions of authority but rather to educate and, honestly, deprogram them out of the way sport has always been. This crisis is here right now because sport has always been this way, and we are actually getting ahead of the crisis because we're finally talking about it.

What we need, to get back to your question, is a massive investment—I know that's hard to hear—of resources around education and around policies that are not only put in place but forced to be taken off the paper and put into practice for auditing, compliance and independent mechanisms. The reality is we've only approached this issue from the top down. It is ridiculous to me. Since I started in this advocacy work four and a half years ago, I have been learning how our government works in this way, with respect to jurisdiction, and I cannot fathom why we would put in place safeguarding measures only at the national level. If I were to do it all over again, I would fight harder, to be honest.

The time is now. The children are what matter more than anything, in my opinion. I say that as a mother who sees every day issues in her children's sports still, and I just want to encourage everyone to step forward, get on the same page and play together on the playing field of preventing maltreatment. We can do it.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Poirier, if I understood you correctly, your organization receives 500 complaints a year.

Have you often referred cases to the police when your organization is not in a position to settle a complaint?

What do you do when a complaint is so serious that it should be referred to another entity, such as the police or the courts?

[Vicky Poirier]

I have to start by specifying that about 500 complaints were made in Quebec since February 1 under the policy for the protection of integrity in sport.

Various independent entities are involved in the process. For its part, ALIAS acts as the Office of the Complaints Officer. The policies we apply are very clear when it comes to complaints of a sexual nature, for example, or in cases where an athlete's safety is compromised. In those cases, we work with police forces and the Director of Youth Protection.

Statistics presented yesterday at the National Assembly by the Regroupement Loisir et Sport du Québec indicated that 12% of the 500 complaints were of a sexual nature. This type of complaint has to be treated very seriously and in collaboration with the Director of Youth Protection and the police. That's exactly what we do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Poirier.

We've just abused the Waugh factor here. Thank you very much.

Now we're going to go to the second round of questions. That is going to be with the Conservatives and Kevin Waugh.

Kevin, you have five minutes, please.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Okay, it will be five minutes.

I'm glad that you are all here.

Ms Forsyth, thank you. You were a great athlete in the early 2000s. You've hit it right on, top-down.

The community associations in this country, thousands of them, don't have the capabilities for safe sport. They don't even talk to their provincial associations. My association in Saskatchewan may be different from Alberta's or may be different from Nova Scotia's, so we have a real disconnect problem with OSIC.

You can talk about the national programs, the NSOs, but we don't include the community associations in this country, literally hundreds and thousands of them, and that's where it has to start. Who is going to fund that? That's the issue we have right now as OSIC has started, because provincial government asking who is going to afford this, who is going to foot the bill for this?

What are your thoughts on that? You did mention top-down. It should be the other way: Start at the bottom and work up.

[Allison Forsyth]

I just want to add—not that you asked—that capacity is something we also need to bring into this conversation. I'll use the U.S. Center for SafeSport as an example, which was struck after the horrific Larry Nassar case out of the USA Gymnastics organization.

Why I bring up capacity is that it is essential that, if a complainant comes forward, not only will the complaint be heard in a timely manner, but also that the complainant will receive consistent and constant communication as to their complaint. When we build structures, build organizations and fund organizations like OSIC, we need to fund them to the degree that anticipates, based on experts like ALIAS in the room, how many complaints they should anticipate over a calendar year.

We are, as I mentioned in our statement, being overrun with complaints at all levels of sport. When it comes to grassroots organizations, I feel, quite frankly, that I am literally on a plane or a bus every week trying to get to every single one of them. I say that with all the respect in the world. I was just recently in the beautiful town of Weyburn, Saskatchewan in front of 50 coaches.

We need economies of scale and a commitment from our provincial governments to fund this above and beyond anything else. Safe sport is so critical that my key message when I go into a room is that you should not even have an organization if you don't have the budget that can allow for safe sport funding. The reality is that we also have organizations say to us, “But, Allison”—which I respect—“We can't even get volunteers. If we can't even get volunteers, how do you expect us to train them on safe sport?” I think any parent would say that the reality of operating your community association or your local club is that there are critical aspects that you must do in order to be operational, and minimum standards at the very least from volunteer training is a critical aspect of what they need to do.

I wish I had all the dollars in the world, which I don't, but I know we desperately need more people, more resources and more funding to get to all of these incredible clubs full of our children.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

It's happening.

I'll go to you, Dr. Kerr, because I looked at the gymnastics board minutes from September 6, 2021, of Gymnastics Canada, where Ellen MacPherson, who was the safe sport director for three and a half years, left to accept a research role with the University of Toronto—maybe with you.

So now, Gymnastics Canada has no experience in safe sport. People are being pilfered from these organizations to research, because research pays money. Can you talk about that? I don't know if Ellen MacPherson is with you or the University of Toronto, but that's been the issue with these sport organizations. When you get them up to speed, they're being pilfered by other organizations—and especially academics who look for research dollars.

[Dr. Gretchen Kerr]

I'll start by saying that Ellen is not a researcher with me, and that Gymnastics Canada has a wonderful, new safe sport officer, who comes with a broad research base of knowledge. It's really important that we have researchers in these roles so that they are making evidence-based decisions. The challenge with safe sport officers whom sport organizations are incorporating—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Dr. Gretchen Kerr]

—is that it's like putting your thumb in the dike. It's such a small step forward, and they still have to work in a culture with all of these other tensions and barriers that they're not in a position to solve. We're putting them in a position where it's very difficult to succeed.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you. I'll leave it at that with three seconds left.