Evidence of meeting #28 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was coaching.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would also like to thank the witnesses for being here. I see that you write your titles, “Dr.”, with an “e” in French, and I recall that not so long ago, when I was in university, there was a big debate about that. I understand what my colleague opposite is saying, but there was still reluctance on women's part. I think this is really about an educational process and the situation cannot change overnight.
My question is for Ms. Demers. You say you had difficulty getting statistics for your study.
In your opinion, who should have responsibility for making good statistics available and providing easy access to the data?
11:55 a.m.
Professor, Department of Physical Education, Université Laval, As an Individual
Sport Canada. Certainly the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity, CAAWS, is an ally, but it does not have the same resources as Sport Canada. It is our Canadian association, but it only has one and a half employees. That is completely ridiculous.
In my opinion, it is really up to Sport Canada. In fact, it should even be part of the evaluation process for the grant applications from each of the national federations. There should be a mandatory aspect dealing with gender equity and funding should be attached to that, and the federations should be required to provide figures. We have got to have them somewhere, and I think it should be at Sport Canada.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
At the beginning of your testimony, you mentioned that many organizations promote women on boards of directors and in sports, but they do not talk about it. What can we do to break down those barriers? There is probably no umbrella organization to get the various organizations to talk to one another.
11:55 a.m.
Professor, Department of Physical Education, Université Laval, As an Individual
I have proposed that we create an observatory on women and sport in Canada. That observatory could look after monitoring the statistics and the research. It could also promote best practices. In Quebec, there is an equivalent called the Observatoire québécois du loisir that does exactly that. It compiles the research and prepares simplified reports for the general public. You can always consult them and there are all sorts of resources.
The Conversation 2015 conference last summer enabled us to identify a lot of solutions, but also a lot of problems. At present, I am putting the final touches on a website that will be launched shortly at the Petro-Canada Sport Leadership sportif 2016 conference. That site will highlight best practices and will encourage people to participate. But I myself, Guylaine Demers, do not have an organization behind me to help me.
As well, if the Canadian government decided to consider the presence of women in sport to be an issue, because women make up 50% of our population, and created a Canadian observatory on women and sport, that would be an incredible tool, and, to my knowledge, it would be unique in the world, since I do not know of any others.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
11:55 a.m.
NDP
Karine Trudel NDP Jonquière, QC
I am going to get to the heart of the matter, because I do not have a lot of time left.
We talked about the Canadian Olympic Committee here, in June, and what forced the resignation of Jean-Luc Brassard. Did the controversy surrounding the former president of the Canadian Olympic Committee have repercussions for your members?
We also talked a lot about women role models, women coaches. That might not eliminate this kind of situation, but are there really concrete measures that could prevent it happening again?
11:55 a.m.
Professor, Department of Physical Education, Université Laval, As an Individual
Gretchen, you're the sexual harassment expert. It's about the COC, what happened, and the impact it has on our sports organizations as women. Do you want to talk about it?
11:55 a.m.
Professor, Vice-Dean, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto, As an Individual
As background to this entire discussion is the notion that sport needs to be safe for boys and girls and for male and female coaches, but there is a plethora of research on the unfortunate cases of sexual harassment and abuse of girls and women in the sport system.
I'm not sure what your question was.
Noon
Liberal
Noon
Professor, Vice-Dean, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Ideally, you have examples set at the top for how other organizations are to behave. Through all national sport-governing bodies, there are requirements for a harassment policy and for arm's-length harassment officers to deal with cases. A recent research project undertaken of these national sport organizations found that fewer than 20% were adhering to the policy requirements to have harassment officers and a publicly available harassment policy.
We have a problem there in terms of translating policy into action, not just at the COC level but across the national sport-governing bodies. We don't want to encourage more women and girls into sport if it's not a safe environment, so this has to be a consideration.
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you.
I think we have finished your three minutes, Madam Trudel.
I want to thank the witnesses for coming. I know it sounded like we were rushing you, but I think everyone got a chance to answer questions, and we were able to fill in that three-minute round.
We will break for a few minutes while everyone leaves and we get our next set of witnesses in.
Thank you very much.
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I will call the meeting to order.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this committee is doing a study on Canadian Women and Girls in Sport. We have our witnesses here today.
We have four sets of witnesses. You each have five minutes to present and at the end of that time, we will go into a question and answer and an interaction with the committee.
We have present as an individual, Dr. Penny Werthner, Professor, Dean, Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary. Dr. Werthner is on screen via video conferencing. We also have the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity. We have two witnesses, Karin Lofstrom and Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, and you can decide how you're going to split up your five minutes. From Égale Action, Élaine Lauzon, the chief executive officer, is also here by video conference. Then we have from Think Sport Ltd., Marion Lay, the president, who is also here by video conference.
I will begin with Dr. Penny Werthner.
Noon
Dr. Penny Werthner Professor, Dean, Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Thank you for this initiative and for providing us with an opportunity to share our knowledge and experiences. My topic, as requested, is women in sport at the competitive level, their experiences and their needs as athletes and para-athletes, as coaches, as sport science professionals, and as women leaders in the sport system.
I've been involved in competitive sport for most of my life and it's certainly shaped who I am, hopefully for the better. I've competed for Canada. I've worked in the field of sport psychology with many of our Olympic athletes and coaches through many Olympics and Paralympic Games. I've researched and published in the area of women in coaching. Before I started my graduate program, in the early eighties I led what I think was an excellent internship mentorship program for women athletes that enabled them to move into administrative positions. That program created some of our strong women leaders who are currently in the system.
On athlete participation levels, we know that women athletes are doing very well from a numbers standpoint. In 2012, we had more than 4,000 women athletes, which comprised 44% of our Olympic teams across numerous countries. At the Paralympic Games, the increase went from 44 women and 91 men in 1960, to roughly 1,500 women and 2,700 men in 2012. That's excellent news.
However, when we look at women coaches, we're still in the 11% range across all countries. In 2012, it varies from 10% to about 16%. Certainly at the high performance competitive level, the sport science professional, so exercise physiologists, sport psychologists, medical personnel, the numbers are still incredibly low. That's what is part of the environment that high performance women athletes compete and train in.
Why should we care about this? I'm hopeful that everyone around the table does care or we wouldn't be doing this. I think there are two primary reasons from my perspective. One is the significant benefits of moving and playing, and I think we all know that. I use the example of Chantal Petitclerc who had an accident at the age of 13 and ended up in a wheelchair.
What changed her life—and she would say this—was her first coach, her high school swim coach, who got her into swimming and really changed who she was, allowed her to become a very independent, and physically and psychologically strong woman, in sport and in life in general.
However, the other reason I would argue we should care is that the environment of competitive sport is still very male dominated. While our participation rates are approaching 50%, the other categories are not. I would say it's often not a comfortable environment for our women athletes, and, at worst, it's an environment of subtle ridicule. Sometimes, as I'm sure you heard from Gretchen Kerr, it's abusive, because male skills are still seen, and the physique is still seen, as the norm in women's sport, or in sport in general.
What can we do about this? Again, from Guylaine, I think you probably heard that we discussed issues and developed many solutions around Conversation 2015, which was held in Quebec City. We had six themes there. One was around women and coaching, girls' participation, and women as decision-makers.
Briefly, to think about a couple of solutions, I would suggest, increasing the number of women in leadership positions, as coaches, as leaders in our system. If we were to create mentoring programs, and we know this works—I gave a simple example a few minutes ago—we have a prototype.
Creating learning environments, etc., that would help create a supportive environment.
I will stop there.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I hope you can finish when you get the question-and-answer period. You can raise some more points.
Now, the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity.
12:10 p.m.
Allison Sandmeyer-Graves Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity
Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, and I am the CEO of the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity, commonly known as CAAWS. I will be using that acronym going forward. I'm joined by Karin Lofstrom, the former executive director of CAAWS, and an internationally recognized expert on women in sports today.
CAAWS's vision is a Canadian sports system that is equal and fair for girls and women, in which they are actively engaged as participants and leaders. Since its founding in 1981, CAAWS has been the leading voice for girls and women in sport in Canada.
We must start by applauding the committee for initiating this study. It's a topic that we are very passionate about. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of 30 years of leading thinkers and practitioners across Canada, there is still much work to be done.
As Mr. O'Regan commented, we all celebrated the success of the women in Rio. However, it would be a mistake to take that as an indication that equality has been achieved, and we hope that it won't in fact be a distraction from that.
Unfortunately, as you can see in the report that we circulated in advance, women's participation is not improving and remains lower than men's across all measures.
As a few examples, female sport participation, en masse participation, has been falling since the 1990s. Adolescent girls in particular drop out of sports at a very high rate, which is a huge issue in fact. Their sport participation at that age is a primary indicator of their participation on a lifelong basis. Female representation, as we've heard, on boards of directors, in paid leadership roles, and in technical roles, remains stubbornly low.
Our work focuses a lot on identifying what the barriers are to this. What we've discovered is that this is not a matter of girls and women not being interested or not being capable, but rather of them having no choice but to participate and to compete in a system that often fails to address their unique needs and interests, and in which they are at times made to feel unwelcome.
The barriers are complex, and Canadian Heritage and other departments have taken some important steps to help address them with us. We believe there is more that can and should be done, and, of course, CAAWS is here to help.
We would like to put forward a few recommendations that you, as a committee, ask Canadian Heritage to take action on as priorities that would help to bring about this equitable sports system we are all aiming for.
We recommend that sport organizations funded by Canadian Heritage receive clear criteria to meet and are held accountable. There is a commitment to gender equity through the women and sport policy of 2009. However, there are no targets, nor are there any consequences for failing to address persisting inequality. This ultimately conveys the impression that the Government of Canada is indifferent.
Sport organizations need a business case for change. Accountability introduces an effective motivation for finally taking action on this issue.
As a second measure, we recommend measuring and publicly reporting on the status of women and sport in Canada. The data we have is fragmented, unreliable, and inconsistent, which is an obstacle to establishing a benchmark against which progress can be measured. We recommend that Sport Canada require that all funded organizations provide their data on a gender basis so that we can see, for each measurement they are tracking, how many women and how many men there are. That then becomes the basis of a report that could be delivered on a recurring basis to help provide key insight to the sector and draw the necessary attention to this issue.
Finally, we recommend that there be increased support for sport organizations to rise to the occasion and successfully implement gender equity measures. We know, from our long experience working with sport organizations across the country, that they all need better access to education, training, and guidance to build their capacity to create quality sport experiences for all girls and women—including further under-represented groups—and to create conditions that will help foster the pipeline and the achievement of women in leadership roles.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
12:15 p.m.
Élaine Lauzon Chief Executive Officer, Égale Action
Good afternoon.
First, I would like to thank you for the opportunity offered to me to discuss the question of the place for women and girls in sport with you. I am speaking to you today as the chief executive officer of Égale Action, which, since 2001, has provided provincial leadership in Quebec in relation to everything having to do with girls and women in the world of sport.
The information I will be providing to the committee relates exclusively to sport. I will also be happy to answer your questions about how Égale Action operates.
In the last 100 years, many breakthroughs have been made in terms of participation by girls and women, but they are still poorly represented in sport.
Why should we be concerned about girls and women? We know that before the transition from elementary to secondary school, there is a dramatic drop-out process that continues into adulthood, and this phenomenon is much greater among girls.
In 2006, a study was done in Quebec that showed that women represented barely 14% of coaches, 28% of officials — about 15% fewer than how things looked in Canada in 1998 — and 25% of board members in sport bodies, including 18% of presidents and vice-presidents.
Women hold paid decision-making positions in sports federations, but account for only about 25% of those positions. Access to decision-making positions in sport is still difficult in Quebec, but also in Canada.
In 2001, 63 woman out of 420 athletes and founders, or 15%, were inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, a very low percentage.
What are the determining factors for ensuring a presence for girls and women in sport? First, I think we have to support measures that promote women's participation, and this means understanding the issues surrounding their participation and raising awareness on the part of the largest possible number of decision-makers and actors. Expanding women's participation will call for political leadership, but that responsibility must be shared with the Canadian sports bodies and the roles of each entity in the equation must be clearly identified.
Second, we have to encourage participation by making decisions. The cultural and historical context, coupled with the Canadian model put in place for the sport system, has meant that we have tried to insert participation by women into a framework put in place by a male sports culture, one that is not suited to women, the result being the few results seen.
I think that to increase women's participation, we have to start by simply deciding to do it. We are not talking about robbing Peter to pay Pauline; we are talking about balancing everything, and that can mean practising positive discrimination, to get there.
We also have to think about developing favourable environments, in terms of both the social and physical and the administrative and financial aspects. In social terms, obviously, we are talking about attitudes and behaviours in the person's entourage, whether it be their spouse, parents, friends, coaches, decision-makers or peers, who have a strong influence on the practice of sport and involvement in sport. We are only just beginning to have a slightly better understanding of the major impact of social influences on girls' and women's participation in sports.
12:20 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Égale Action
In terms of the physical and administrative environment, the limited number of facilities and adequate sports equipment makes practising sport difficult for all participants. If we add to that safety, accessibility and discriminatory management, we get bigger barriers to break down in order to encourage women to practise and get involved in sport.
In addition, the financial environment is an unavoidable issue. In order for there to be real improvement in women's participation and involvement, we have to invest financially and the money has to come from government, partners or collaborators, in addition to seeing a change in mindsets and responsibilities for granting budgets on the part of the organizations and groups that are directly involved with this clientele.
And last, we have to encourage excellence in coaching. I think this is the cornerstone that guarantees an excellent experience. It is entirely in the interests of the people doing the work on the ground to understand girls' behaviour and know how to communicate with them and act in dealing with them. To do that, we need massive investment in training all of these people and the decision-makers.
In conclusion, with the phenomenal results our women achieved at the last Olympic Games, in spite of the limited and deficient supports provided by the system, we have to realize the enormous potential of our women in sport. However, if we settle for the minimum, the results will continue to be sporadic and we will continue to deprive our girls and women of the opportunities for growth that sport offers.
Thank you for your attention.
12:20 p.m.
Marion Lay President, Think Sport Ltd.
Thank you very much.
I really am privileged to be here today and I appreciate the opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you.
My background briefly is that I am a past Olympic athlete, having competed in the 1964 and 1968 Olympics. I also coached an athlete to our 1976 Olympics and I'm a founding member of CAAWS. Actually, my whole career, not on necessarily the money side but on the commitment side, has been in the area of gender equity and benefits for girls and women in physical activity and sport, so thank you for asking for my thoughts.
I wanted to take a slightly different approach, because I think you'll hear from many of your witnesses about the statistics and a number of the problems. I wanted to look at a practical approach to how we might move our agenda forward from where are today.
We've had government involvement from the federal side—and I'd like to thank you for that—for over 50 years for women in sport. We've had policy papers and recommendations from not only the governments but also a number of conferences, whether provincial, national or international, on women in sport. I think it's fair to say we have a plethora of things we could do, but we've had a very difficult time even under the leadership of CAAWS to get the resources we need and to get an approach that helps us implement those recommendations in the area of girls and women in sport. I think that due to the number of associations that we have in our system as well as the different levels of government, it's often hard to get coordinated approaches. We've made significant progress and I think Rio is a place we could take as a launching block as we move forward here to try to bring about continued, sustainable, long-term change.
I'd like to talk about a couple of statistics. Some of them were mentioned, so I'll be very brief. One statistic from the Canadian mental health survey, which I think is really important, is that only 9% of children and youth as of 2012-13 spent 60 minutes in physical activity—not even rigorous sport, but physical activity. ParticipACTION is taking this on, and it's going to be part of what they do and really try promote for their 150th birthday. I think we need to realize that we have a very small base of people who believe that physical activity and sport are part of how we identify ourselves as Canadians and who understand how important they are for the health of our youth.
CAAWS, of course, has a number of stats—and you'll be able to read those, and Penny Werthner mentioned the numbers around the coaching. On the boards of PSOs and NSOs, and those that are delivering our sports systems, we have probably only 25% to 30% women.
I would like to see us really look at those opportunities where we feel we can really lever change. One of the best has been Canada Games. Canada Games has been funded on a long-term basis through commitments both by the federal government and by the provincial government, and we have seen change because of those commitments. They have a board that is totally committed, they have an affirmative action program called women in coaching, they have targets for what they're going to do, and they have to publicly report back their findings every year.
We need leadership; we need focus; and we need to be able to lever what's there to really measure whether we can, in a specific area, take a platform and bring about real change. I think we've seen the same things with Own the Podium. It was always considered that women were not as competitive as men. I think that myth was shattered in Rio. However, that takes an organization that puts the equity of women and men in sport right at the top of the agenda. If you perform, if you're on the pathway of performing, you will get funded. We need to have that kind of gender equity criterion in the things we do.
I would like to say it takes focus, it takes leadership, and it takes sustained funding. If we have those, I think we have the recommendations that we can pick and choose from. I would say we need three things that will start to bring about long-term change: gender equity at the governance level of NSOs, gender equity in our resource allocations—and we can do that by writing those things into our bylaws and having snap audits to make sure those amounts not only are in the budgets but actually are being spent on girls and women—and gender equity in our national coaching staff.
It's quite simple if you look at how Canada Games and how Own the Podium have gone about it. They have criteria. The criteria are very clear and very focused. If you don't meet the criteria, you cannot receive full funding. I think if we did the same things in those areas for gender equity, we would see real change.
I also would like to ask—
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Marion.
Now we begin the question section. This is a seven-minute section, and it includes both questions and answers. You'll get an opportunity to say what you didn't say in your presentation, but we need to be concise.
We begin with Mr. Breton for the Liberals.
October 4th, 2016 / 12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to thank our witnesses. Your testimony is really useful for the study we have begun.
I am going to get straight to the point. With the first group, we spoke very quickly about the role of education when it comes to sport and women's choices to engage in sport. Ms. Lauzon, you also talked about that earlier.
I have questions about the balance between the male and female models for girls. All children, so that means all girls, go to school. Girls have male role models as physical education teachers, teachers who take on the role of coach at noon and after school for extracurricular sports activities. At least, that was 100% the case for my daughter. The teachers and coaches who were her role models were all male role models. In a more competitive context, in swimming, she had only male coaches. I wonder about this balance, and about the role of schools and sports education programs.
In your opinion, what is the school's role in this?