Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the sense or the desire of the subamendment to try to balance the need to achieve both focuses, but I believe the committee mandates, or the references from the minister of both the legislation and of this particular sorry and sad situation, don't have a date for reporting back. Unless I'm mistaken, it is the choice of the committee as to which is a priority and what the intent back was. I understand that, even in the original motion on the number of witnesses, there was no reporting back date, although the chair in the last meeting hinted at some sort of desire to do that.
This is a serious issue that is urgent, because we're seeing and have seen cover-ups in junior hockey and sexual abuse. We all know about the Sheldon Kennedy case and those issues that we thought had led to change, but have apparently not changed the attitude of a lot of—or some elements or number of—junior players.
I played hockey at competitive levels all my life and understand the locker room sort of mentality that seems to develop, but it doesn't excuse anything that has gone on. Eight players, shockingly some of whom are in the NHL now, were involved in this alleged incident. There must obviously be a little more to it, or $3.55 million of Hockey Canada dollars wouldn't have been used to try to keep this from going public, I assume, especially when NDAs are signed. The primary purpose we see of NDAs is apparently to keep these types of things from going public.
There's a lot of work that needs to be done that the minister has asked for on this important issue. I don't think the committee should be restricting its time frame, or the likelihood is.... Maybe it's not the parliamentary secretary's power to adjourn this committee early, but it certainly is when the House adjourns, and there's a lot of time that will be required, obviously, for clause-by-clause of C-11, which I don't believe really has a time limit on when it has to be done. It is not a time-sensitive bill. The committee can take as much time as it needs to continue the committee's study and the amendments, while this issue obviously is one that is very current and should be considered sensitively and with some transparency.
When these kinds of things happen, we've seen NDAs used in some very famous cases in the United States to try to keep criminal behaviour quiet, whether it was Bill Cosby or perhaps even some of the NDAs that former president Trump has used to keep his antics quiet.
While we don't know whether the audit has started, there is accountability for a governance organization that oversees all of our peak levels of amateur hockey to come before Parliament.... After all, it does receive public funds in some way and thus should be held accountable as to why, when we thought that some of these issues had been dealt with from a governance and an overall education and management perspective as a result of the Sheldon Kennedy case, this kind of incident apparently still happens.
I would ask the committee to consider that there is some urgency to this. Reject the subamendment to the motion so that we can consider this fairly urgent request and unanimous consent motion from the House to look into this quickly. We can't let the exposure or the chance that this will happen again.... It shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Certainly, there's some urgency to this. If the committee were not able to complete this study or to even look at this issue before the summer because the House chooses to rise, or to rise early, I think that would leave a lot of young Canadians very exposed to future situations that may or may not occur. It's too far to go—till perhaps next October—if the House were to rise before the minister's request on this gets dealt with.
It's a challenging situation, and I would urge the committee to reject this amendment and to get back to Ms. Thomas's amendment so that the minister's request to study this difficult situation gets treated with some urgency and sensitivity.
Thank you.