Evidence of meeting #61 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was hockey.
A video is available from Parliament.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
11:15 a.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you.
You cited the meetings of Canadian heritage committee on July 26 talking about Sport Canada not having “a process that allows it to verify that the NSOs abide by the obligations set out in their contribution agreement.” You quote a member of the committee saying that “[as] long as an organization says it did everything it was supposed to, it gets the funding”.
What is your opinion of the importance of the federal government actually playing its key role of oversight and verification with national sports organizations, including Hockey Canada, so that they have to put in place and implement these policies?
11:15 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
I think you're a bit modest, Mr. Julian, because I think it was you whom I referred to in that passage of the report.
As I mentioned, of course I was not there studying what would be the best regulatory model for sport in Canada at the governmental level. I did try to set out the existing legal context and also set out some of the information we had about what was coming.
The role of government as a regulator in sports is a very complex legal issue in a federation, as you would appreciate. It also has a lot of resource implications. I can't really offer you any specific advice other than to say that we heard from various sources in the course of our work that there was a real interest in Sport Canada having a more robust regulatory role.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
Thank you.
We'll move on now to the Conservatives and Mr. Shields.
11:15 a.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll take some of the time, but I'll split it a little bit with you. I know you're substituting in the chair today. I will give you a little time at the end of my time. Thank you.
Thank you, Justice. I really appreciate your being here today and for the obvious extensive knowledge of what you've written about.
On page 201, you've written:
There is no doubt that Hockey Canada has been served by directors who are passionate about hockey, deeply committed to the organization's mission, vision and values and who donate large amounts of time and energy—often unreasonably large amounts—to the organization's governance. However, confidence is not only a matter of objective fact, but of reasonable perception and there is an overwhelming perception on the part of important stakeholders that the leadership of Hockey Canada does not deserve their confidence.
You made a statement. You talked about looking for facts. However, you've made a judgment here about what people were contributing to an organization and that their contribution, though you suggested it was “unreasonable”, went astray.
Can you give me some of the judgment analysis that you made to make that kind of statement?
11:20 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
Certainly.
Number one, there was a lack of robust policy framework for many important areas of governance of the organization. I think we set that out in quite considerable detail. Those are the kinds of larger-picture governance issues that I think need a great deal of attention in the organization.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
It's critical in the sense of when you're talking about culture. Culture is sometimes hard to define in fact. A lot of it is the perception you get when you're interviewing people, talking to people and talking to stakeholders.
Can you go a little bit more into what you found in that perception of the culture?
11:20 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
I don't really feel I'd be comfortable trying to talk about culture. There's the old saying, “Culture eats policy for breakfast”, so I don't want to ignore it in any sense.
What I was trying to say in the passage you referred to was that I feel that people were doing their best as they saw it at the time. With the benefit of hindsight some of the [Technical difficulty—Editor] wrong and the approach to governance needed to be made more robust.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
In a sense, the culture then was maintained. What you heard from stakeholders and from the people you were talking to was that in the culture that was developed by this board, they lost the confidence that people had, so the perception became the reality.
11:20 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
Yes. The only slight nuance I'd put on your statement, if I might, Mr. Shields, is that I don't think it's fair to say that nine people created the culture of hockey or any other sport in this country. That's why, at the beginning of the report, I made what you could call a plea for all of the folks to work together to try to solve this very tough systemic problem.
I don't think it's fair—and perhaps you didn't mean this—to suggest that all of our problems with culture in hockey and other sports rest on the board table.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
I would probably agree with you, and that's not what I was suggesting in the sense that, as you did a tremendous in-depth job in a very short time, you found some other situations that led to people's lack of faith because of the culture of a particular board and the structure they were operating under.
11:20 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
That's correct.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
The recommendations that you work throughout your report would suggest that there are things they should do and could do.
What was the most critical thing that you believe needs to be done so that a new board will say, “We have a new piece of paper here that we've just reviewed, 200 pages. Somebody spent an incredible amount of time getting us a really good document as an agenda moving forward”?
What's the number one thing a new board, which is going to be drinking from a fire hose as a whole group, really needs to pay attention to in your thorough analysis?
11:20 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
I'd like to say two things that I think are critical.
One is who is around the table. As you know, we made a lot of recommendations about the nomination process. Ultimately it's the decision of the members as to who is around that table. I don't want to usurp their role, but we made a lot of recommendations about that. That's critical.
The second is to have a much more robust policy framework that's transparent and will contribute to consistency of decision-making.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
Thank you, Mr Shields.
We'll move to the Liberals for five minutes.
MP Coteau, the floor is yours.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Cromwell, for being here with us today.
To get this report done in a couple months is quite the accomplishment. I think you were engaged in August—it said in the report—and you delivered it in early October, which is just an incredible feat.
In the middle of this organizational crisis specifically related to an issue outside of the governance structure, it was an issue that the entire nation was paying attention to. Why do you think, in the middle of such a crisis, there was value for the organization to do a governance review?
11:25 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
As I tried to express in the report, my view is that governance is the foundation of everything else the organization can do. I would be the first to concede, of course, that you need more to have a successful organization that's carrying out its public interest mandate than a sound governance framework. I do make the claim and truly believe that it provides the foundation for everything the organization does.
It also became very clear that there were some important governance issues that the organization needed to address, so my hope is that our work will be a very good investment for the future health of the organization.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
There was a history of different reports and recommendations to the organization over the years. From your review of those recommendations and reports—I know there are a couple of pages just listing reports way back to the turn of the century—did you find that there was an alignment between the recommendations either the board or third parties made and where the board was today from a governance perspective? Were there lost opportunities?
11:25 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
Frankly, I didn't try to assess the success or failure of previous efforts. I did study them in the hope that they would enlighten me in terms of possible recommendations.
I think it's fair to say that the first significant review that I was aware of was focused on the new not-for-profit corporate legislation that was coming into force. That was very much focused on those kinds of issues. I think it's fair to say that the reviews that I looked at were very much more in line with a normal consultant-board relationship, whereas what I was tasked to do was to provide an independent assessment simply to provide advice.
We certainly did have a look at earlier work and tried to take into account any insights that had been developed in the course of that work.
December 13th, 2022 / 11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
One of the roles of a board is to look for ways to mitigate any type of potential risk that comes to the organization.
Over the years, we've seen complaints come in stemming from a range of issues, including instances of sexual assault but also allegations of racism. Boards need to respond by putting in place good governance structures that allow for the processing of those complaints and to minimize the risk to the organization but also to do what's morally correct.
Do you believe that there was a failure in putting in place a governance structure, the right types of systems, to respond to these incidents, these complaints and, in some cases, these criminal activities that were taking place?
11:25 a.m.
Senior Counsel, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, As an Individual
As you know, and I don't want to repeat it ad nauseam, we didn't study specific responses to specific incidents, but as you will know from the report, what we did say is that there was a serious gap in the policy framework for the organization about what funds could be used for what, under what circumstances, and governing or setting out guidance for each board and its staff members as to how these matters should be dealt with at the policy level. We've recommended, as you know, that this be done.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
I guess my question is more specifically on the governance structure and policies that the board put in place and have had as part of their organization. Do you think the board structure, governance and policies that were in place served the stakeholders well in responding to these controversial issues?