Status of Women Committee on Feb. 13th, 2023

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

It's just gymnastics. I don't have time for this.

[Jaimie Earley]

I'm sorry.

On gymnastics specifically, I think that's one thing that a light was shone on through the McLaren report that was recently commissioned. Richard McLaren appeared in front of the committee, and I understand that he's also submitted a brief. One thing that has been identified is that there does seem to be a significant disconnect between what goes on within the national organization and what goes on within the provinces and then right down to the local club.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

What I'm getting at, then, is that I would really strongly recommend that the national gymnastics body take the position of allowing parents to be at practices anywhere. They can do that. I've seen it with Hockey Canada. Their rules trickle down, so Gymnastics Canada needs to put a rule in place that provincial and local clubs cannot disallow parents from being at practice.

Would you agree with that?

[Isabelle Mondou]

I think what the minister has said is that she's going to use all of the tools and all of her power, and that includes using the national sport organization to change the sport system. I take your comment, and I think that the committee could certainly make that recommendation.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you very much.

Please take that back, because I've seen a little bit of “We're national; we're not provincial”, but there are ties that bind very closely, so we can't just slough off some of the things that might be tougher and say that it's a provincial jurisdiction or a local jurisdiction. This is why we're in national politics. We're there to lead and we're there to be good examples in making sure that those good principles are going down to the provincial and the local clubs.

I have a couple of more seconds left.

My colleague talked about OSIC. The Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada has a board, and some of those board members go to OSIC, and then they pick.... They work with.... Can you tell me how that tie works? Is there a very loose connection with the SDRCC, or is it a closer connection with OSIC than we might think?

[Isabelle Mondou]

There is one board for the organization. This organization does not recruit the people who are there and the commissioner was not recruited by the board, but they are the oversight body for the whole organization. You are correct about that.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Is the board for the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada chosen through OSIC, through the minister? Is there an application process, or are they generally chosen as CEOs and people who have had a substantial role in some of these sports organizations?

[Isabelle Mondou]

It's not a GIC appointment or an order in council; it's on the recommendation of the minister. Typically, they have represented a variety of groups, not just an NSO. There have been experts, there have been athletes and there have been evaluative people. That's the idea of a diversified board.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I'd even make a recommendation that some of these people shouldn't even be involved with sports. They should be on other career paths where they might not have that tight connection so that maybe they'd see things differently from some of these people who have been involved in those sports for their whole lives.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

I'm passing it over to Marc Serré.

Marc, you have five minutes.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for appearing today.

Obviously, in looking at the victims, we talked about action and results. You referenced the Red Deer declaration earlier, the athletes who met with Minister Duncan and all of the good work that Minister Duncan has done in the past.

Can you briefly explain how OSIC came about? OSIC has been in place since June 2022. It's been eight months. Also, if OSIC had been in place in 2019, let's say, how would that have impacted the girls at Gymnastics Canada? We've received a lot of testimony, but OSIC wasn't in place and we were looking at the past. Moving forward, how do you incorporate that with OSIC and the challenges we've had with organizations?

[Isabelle Mondou]

Thank you.

OSIC started when the minister at the time, Minister Duncan, consulted with her expert committee and also with athletes, and they all came up with two things they absolutely wanted. One was to have a code of conduct, because that didn't exist, and the other one was to have an independent mechanism.

The work started at that moment, but it was pursued by the minister responsible for sport at the time, Minister Guilbeault. What happened is that an organization named McLaren came here and looked at what the best model would be and how we could make it work in a more efficient way. The people who worked with them were athletes and organizations from a variety of backgrounds, and they came up with the criteria for an organization that would make it successful in achieving the result that athletes had asked for.

That's what led to a call for proposals. It was based on those very criteria that had been developed by all these people involved, not just by one group. Various organizations applied, and the proposal that best met the criteria was the one that got it, which was SDRCC, creating OSIC separately. That's when Minister Guilbeault, the minister for sport at the time, announced that they had been chosen, and then they started the work to implement the work.

On your question about what would have been better, it's hard to say, because it's hypothetical, but I think it's fair to say that this mechanism was not in place at the time, and if there had been a mechanism for athletes to go to for help and for sanctions to be taken, I really do hope that it would have made a difference.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

I don't know if we heard enough testimony about what we can do to increase powers to OSIC or increase their mandate, because they said two-thirds of the complaints they have received so far in the last eight months were out of their scope.

I know you and the minister mentioned your meeting with the provinces and your meeting this week. Are there any conversations or suggestions that you could provide to this committee for our recommendations on how we can increase the powers and the mandate of OSIC to make sure that we target and support every single athlete in this country?

[Isabelle Mondou]

There are really three reasons that things were out of scope and that OSIC couldn't look at them.

The first one is it sometimes has nothing to do with the code of conduct. For example, if I was not selected by a team because they didn't consider my performance good enough, that's not the right mechanism. There is a mechanism for that, but it's not OSIC.

The second one is that some organizations at the national level have not signed on yet. After April 1, that won't happen anymore, because they will all have signed.

The third one is that some cases were provincial or local cases, and that's why it's so important that the province sign on to either this mechanism or another mechanism so that we don't have that gap.

I will say it will be really great if they sign on to the national mechanism, because in the case of a registry, it's way easier to track people down across the country if you have just one body rather than 12 bodies, so we hope they will sign on. At this point, many provinces are in discussion with OSIC, and some, we hope, are close to signing on.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, the committee is finalizing the report, and now the provinces are meeting this week. Is there any way the committee could get any of that data that's being discussed this week before we do recommendations?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Perhaps we can ask the deputy minister.

Is there anything we can receive following these meetings to assist us with our report? Is there anything?

[Isabelle Mondou]

We will be pleased to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

As we're doing this, I know there were a few requests. I know that there was a list requested by Sébastien on the consultations.

Also, in our discussions we were also talking about the board. Can we get the list of the board of directors for both OSIC—if there is a board—and for the SDRCC?

Sébastien, you have your hand up there for a quick second.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm unclear on something, so I'd like some additional material.

I'd like to know how much sport organizations have to pay in order to receive services from OSIC. The service isn't provided automatically. Organizations have to pay to obtain the service and receive funding—which is a bit ironic. I'd like to know whether everyone pays the same amount, and I'd like a list of the organizations.

[Isabelle Mondou]

Madam Chair, we would be happy to oblige, but we don't have that information, so the committee would have to ask OSIC directly. I'm sure OSIC would gladly work with the committee on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

To the clerk, if you could follow that one up with OSIC, that would be fantastic. If we can we get a list of the board of directors for those organizations that we were speaking of today, that would be great.

I see no other questions.

I'd really like to thank you for coming today and providing us with content for the rest of our study. It was very much appreciated.

To our members, I have a reminder. On Thursday, we'll be doing some reports and we'll be back in camera.

Thank you very much, everybody. The meeting is adjourned.