Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 15th, 2022

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses who are here today. I appreciate it.

Mr. Nicholson, I'm going to read a statement from the Cromwell report:

Now Hockey Canada has adopted an informal approach that would see claims run first through the NEF, then the reserve sub-fund in the IRS Fund, then to the Legacy Trust, and finally to the remaining funds in the IRS Fund. To our knowledge, the Legacy Trust was not designed with the IRS Fund in mind and no formal policy exists to govern how Hockey Canada is to respond to claims.

You have made some statements that you wish you could go back. Does this leave you, as a CEO, saying that you missed something here, with that statement in this report?

[Bob Nicholson]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks for that question. It's a really difficult one for me to answer.

As I stated earlier, we had an insurance department. We had committees that dealt with all of that. I oversaw that as the CEO who would have to bring any of those changes to the board for final approval. When I look back, I think we should have had more policies. We should have had more of a role in how all of that information went.

That's as deep as I can get into that. I'm sorry, Martin. I can't give you more information.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

All right. It's one of the challenges. When there are no policies in place, things go sideways. I think that's what you're experiencing and what you're saying.

There were 21 claims, but 10 of them were not sexual in nature. Were there not NDAs for those other agreements for injuries when you were there? Did they go through a similar process? Do you know?

[Bob Nicholson]

I am not 100% sure on that. It probably isn't right for me to comment. Those were probably done within our insurance group and were not brought to my desk. If they were brought to my desk, I can't honestly tell you if there were NDAs or not.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

It would have been funded, though, past the insurance you had because these were above the insurance policies, so they would have gone into these funds. You're not aware of those, then.

[Bob Nicholson]

I'm not aware of all those, no.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

When you talked about the AGMs and the in camera, one of the things you had hoped was that people understood what you were doing, yet there were no line items for several of these funds in your financials. How would they have known about it if there are no line items for some of these funds? How were they explained if there were no line items? How would people know about them?

[Bob Nicholson]

We used to have what we called financial forums. We had the branch presidents, as well as their people who were involved in their day-to-day operations of the finances, as well as risk management. I'm assuming that all that detail happened at that time. I can't tell you. I didn't sit in at all of those meetings, but there was a lot of detail and a lot of flow of information that went back between our CFO and our financial committee, and then to our 13 members.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

After an AGM and an in camera meeting with no line items, the 13 members you're talking about would be in a very difficult situation if they were only hearing an oral explanation possibly. Isn't that right?

[Bob Nicholson]

I can't disagree.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Okay, thank you.

Then there is the $1.7 million for the external review, the report. That's the number that's there, $1.7 million for this governance report.

[Pat McLaughlin]

Mr. Shields, is that for me?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Yes.

[Pat McLaughlin]

I just wanted to touch on this. Mrs. Thomas also asked about the Cromwell report. Justice Cromwell himself, in the terms of reference, also certainly weighed in and provided his input with the terms before we moved forward with his work.

To answer your question, my understanding is that it's $1.7 million. It's an investment in the organization's future. We're making significant transformational changes and we needed that work to be done. It's certainly not a competency that we have within the organization and we're appreciative of the work that was done.

It comes as an expense, but I look at it as an investment.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Also, you have another $3-million expense for Longview. Longview's involved in—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

What's Longview doing for you for $3 million?

[Pat McLaughlin]

We've invested at this point about $6 million in total. Longview is a piece of that. There's other work that's been done too. We made an investment in OSIC. We certainly expanded our safe sport department. There are a number of things, Mr. Shields, that are within that $6 million that aggregate to be that investment we're making to move ahead—

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

What's Longview doing?

[Pat McLaughlin]

Longview helped us early—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

I think the time is up, Mr. Shields. Thank you very much.

I now go to Ms. Hepfner for five minutes for the Liberals.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to thank our witnesses for their testimony today.

I'd like to start my questions to Mr. Nicholson.

You said in your opening statement that we didn't go far enough on off-ice conduct, and that you wanted a culture where everyone feels safe and welcome in hockey. But you also seem to still support the existence of these reserve funds. I'm wondering if you agree that when you have a fund that pays off victims so that perpetrators don't have to face any consequences for sexual assault, you are not only condoning that behaviour, but you are enabling it, you are institutionalizing it.

Do you agree?

[Bob Nicholson]

When I look at the situations that I was involved in at Hockey Canada, and those individuals, and there were a couple of them, they were convicted in the courts. We had those discussions with the victims and I felt that we protected the victims in those situations as much as possible.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

You were in charge of Hockey Canada in 2003, which is when we had some of these allegations, so what do you say to the women who were victims of what we're hearing was a culture of gang rape among junior hockey players? What do you say to the women?

[Bob Nicholson]

That's not acceptable. Find the courage to come forward.

As I've stated, the 2003.... We're just hearing about that now. I hope that the investigations, and there are ongoing investigations, will be able to come forward. If these rumours are true, there will be severe circumstances for the individual players.