Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 16th, 2023

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Would you also mandate that sports organizations have to consult this registry before bringing new people in, or would it simply be for people who have been through a process of sanctions to be added to the registry without any onus on the organizations that are hiring or bringing on volunteers?

[Sarah-Ève Pelletier]

I think organizational accountability is essential, as it also is for people in positions of authority. I think a variety of measures could accompany and help support the objective of a public registry. In my view, some would include requirements as well as potentially best practices and standards to make sure that the information is used for its intended purposes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

What about people who face allegations? There hasn't been a formal sanction process. Maybe they leave the organization and move on to another organization or move to another province. Would those incidents be covered under a database like the one you envision?

[Sarah-Ève Pelletier]

The one we envision and the one we currently have in place—even though the information is not shared—is a registry of individuals whose participation in sport has been impacted. This means it can also be information about what we call in our world “provisional measures”. While a matter may be ongoing, if a coach is being suspended because the allegations against him or her are so severe, we also don't want these individuals to cause harm or, to your point, resign and go elsewhere.

I think we have to be careful about the type of information in those cases when a matter hasn't been looked at fully with fair and due process and the principles of natural justice, but there is a possibility.... The U.S. Center for SafeSport, once again, has that model in place whereby they share that information, but the level or categorization of the information may be impacted as a result of it not being a final sanction.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

In my last few moments here, I'm wondering if you can reflect on whether athletes in this system or athletes who are playing sports today understand your office and the options available to them.

Do athletes know right now where to go and how to access this system if they have a complaint of abuse?

[Sarah-Ève Pelletier]

At the national level, the athletes have increased and better awareness. Still, it's an important priority of ours to make sure athletes who are eligible to use our services know how to engage. In terms of athletes at all levels of the sport systems, I have mentioned the urgency around the gaps to make sure everyone has a place to turn to.

I do want to mention, however, that the Canadian Sport Helpline is available for all Canadians and all athletes at all levels of participation. Even if athletes may not be admissible to OSIC—if they are at the local level or something like that—they can get the services of the helpline today. There are services and resources that they can access as of today.

We need to make sure everyone has a safe place to go.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Lisa.

We're going to go to the next round.

Thank you very much, Ms. Pelletier, for your testimony and for being so patient with us.

We now need to ask the clerk if we need to suspend so we can bring in everyone else.

Yes, we're going to suspend for a short period of time to allow for the next round of witnesses, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We are going to begin the next round. As you know, we're studying safe sport.

We have three individuals present. They are Jennifer Fraser, author and educational consultant; Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, chief executive officer, from Canadian Women and Sport, who is here by video conference; and Rob Koehler, the director general at Global Athlete.

We have three witnesses. I will begin by letting the witnesses know they have, as a group, five minutes each.

I will give you a 30-second voice warning so you can round it up, because we don't have as much time as we would like in this round. We would like to get around to hearing from you.

I will begin with Ms. Fraser for five minutes. Please go ahead.

[Dr. Jennifer Fraser, Author and Educational Consultant, As an Individual]

Our son started skating at two years of age and playing hockey at five. As he got older, he also played competitive soccer, basketball and rugby, and he rowed in a quad that won several gold medals. At 12, diagnosed as an auditory learner, he found the frenetic yelling by his coaches a cause of anxiety, but he still loved sports. By the time he was 13, he'd tried out for and been selected to play on a hockey rep team.

It wasn't until age 16 that he was exposed to coaches who regularly used misogynist and homophobic slurs. Players reported being told to “grow some balls”. They were yelled at in games as “fucking soft” by an irate, threatening coach with a finger jabbing up in their face. One coach said to our son that another player “looked like a faggot”. Players said coaches called them “fucking pussies”, “fucking retards”, “embarrassments”, “pathetic” and so on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Excuse me, but I think you may need to temper the language. I know you're being factual, but—

[Dr. Jennifer Fraser]

I'm being factual. If it can be spoken to my son and other children in Canada, I think we can all handle it. It's not being directed at us. It's just being spoken.

Is that okay?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

It's a public hearing. That's just not parliamentary. I'm sorry. It's a parliamentary committee you are speaking to, but thank you anyway.

[Dr. Jennifer Fraser]

It could be abuse by administrators too. We learned from other parents that for at least a year they'd been raising alarms about abuse on two teams that had the same coach who, in front of the director and parents, had admitted that he should go on probation. Instead, the administrators engaged teen athletes in multiple sham investigations. They breached confidentiality and positioned the 14 athletes who had reported abuse as liars. This defamatory insinuation was published widely by them.

Despite their clear duty to protect children from abuse, administrators acted with wanton or reckless disregard for the lives and safety of those children. They not only failed to protect: They added betrayal trauma to the abuse, which is documented in research as being very destructive.

In this context, let us review Canada's criminal negligence law, which states:

Every one is criminally negligent who

(a) in doing anything, or

(b) in omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do,

shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons.

Negligence is exponentially more serious when one has fiduciary duty for children, youth and young adults. It is well documented in medical, psychological, psychiatric, neuroscientific and neurobiological research that exposing children to repeat homophobia and misogyny, yelling in the face, belittling, shaming, humiliating, assaulting and threatening, and punishing for speaking up do significant, long-lasting, life-threatening damage to the brain and body.

All forms of child abuse and neglect—and even abuse in adulthood—are extensively documented to damage brain architecture and leave neurological scars visible on brain scans, and to lead to mid-life chronic illness and push some victims onto the path of criminality or suicide.

Let us note: Suicide is the second leading cause of death in our youth populations and is on the rise.

A judicial inquiry is not needed to hear reports of abuse from athletes. They have already reported in great numbers across all sports. A judicial inquiry is needed to figure out why administrators and all others with oversight whose wanton or reckless disregard for the lives and safety of athletes, as well as their alleged victims, are not being charged with negligence.

Our son chose not to play on the hockey rep team at 13. Hockey was one of many sports he gave up in order to give his full attention to basketball. The abuse done to our son, as described earlier, took place on a high school basketball team, and the coaches were certified teachers. The commissioner for teacher regulation and the ombudsperson's office covered up the abuse.

The abusive teacher said that our son was one of the best players the school had ever seen in a 100-year history and that he'd be sought after on college teams. Along with five other athletes, our son—an award-winning athlete—refused to play his final year for the abusive teacher, and he thereby sacrificed his dream of playing at university.

In protest, I resigned as a teacher at that school and began teaching at another one. Within three years at the new school, I witnessed first-hand the commissioner for teacher regulation covering up more abuse. Two educators were exposed as sexually grooming students. One was an administrator, formerly an English teacher. The other was the school principal.

The English teacher now lives with his victim in England as, after he taught at another province in Canada, he was barred from teaching in British Columbia. The commissioner's public discipline report whitewashes his grooming and sexual abuse with the vague statement that he wrote “inappropriate text messages”. He works in a development capacity with teachers.

The principal's victim, even though she had attempted suicide, was asked to participate in a restorative justice process so that the principal would not be charged. The commissioner did not publicly discipline the principal or put any restrictive measures on his teaching certificate—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Fraser, I would ask you to wrap up. We can get some of your testimony in questions. Your time is up.

[Dr. Jennifer Fraser]

—to ensure he did not reach out to his victim ever again. The principal reached out again to his victim. He met with her while she was at university. Half a year later, she killed herself at the age of 19.

These are my final statements: Research conducted by former federal deputy minister Anne-Marie Robinson and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection documents that student sexual abuse in Canadian schools is on the rise. School administrators are ill equipped and suffer, like sport organizations, from conflict of interest. Too often, they neglect to keep children safe.

A new, fully independent body that receives and acts on abuse reports needs to be established to eliminate the conflict of interest and/or political interference that results in a wanton or reckless disregard for the safety of the—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Fraser, some of your testimony will come out in the question and answer segment. Thank you very much.

Now I go to Ms. Sandmeyer-Graves for five minutes, please.

[Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Women and Sport]

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and distinguished members of the committee. My name is Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, and I am the chief executive officer of Canadian Women and Sport. My pronouns are she and her.

Canadian Women and Sport is a national non-profit with a 42-year history of work as the leading voice and authority on women and sport. We believe in the power of sport as a platform for advancing equity for women across all areas of society. As such, we are committed to creating a more equitable and inclusive sports system that empowers women and girls as participants and leaders within sport and also through sport.

As our mission implies, our focus is on systems change, working with organizations and leaders on solutions that will permanently improve the sport system. Through our research, advocacy and programs, we empower sport organizations and leaders to bring gender equity to life in their work.

In doing this work, we work extensively across all levels of the sport system and all provinces and territories. In 2021-22 alone, we engaged and impacted 2,700 sport leaders and more than 750 sport organization. I share this as evidence of our unique and extensive insight into the process of systems change across the sport system.

On the subject of safe sport, and specifically on how to create a truly safe, welcoming and inclusive sport system, I wish to share the following insights and observations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Sandmeyer-Graves, there was a bit of an interruption in the sound system.

Is it fixed? Yes, it's good.

Please continue.

[Allison Sandmeyer-Graves]

Thank you.

I wish to share the following insight and observations. As I shared in my remarks to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women in November, the movements for gender equity and for safety in sport are inextricably linked. One cannot be achieved without the other.

Gender inequity and unsafe sport are both structural and systemic issues that share many characteristics. They are rooted in a sport system built in another era, based on societal values and norms that are out of step with contemporary Canadian society. They are deeply embedded in policies, practices, budgets and cultures, making them highly normalized and very difficult to disrupt.

Unfortunately, the burden of advocating and leading systems change typically falls to those being oppressed. These are people working from a place of relatively limited power, and doing this work puts them in an even more precarious position. It is emotional, exhausting and endless work that comes at a high personal cost.

While Hockey Canada is a significant example of these structural issues at play, there is clear evidence of these issues throughout the sport system. This indicates that while the circumstances of a given incident may be unique, the conditions giving rise to these incidences are not. To prevent maltreatment and gender inequity, we must look at these structural issues systemically, effectively looking at the root causes versus the symptoms.

I offer the following lessons from the fight for gender equity over the past 42 years in hopes that they will help to accelerate progress for safe sport.

To date, when dealing with gender inequity, the scale and scope of the solutions have not matched the scope of the problem. The result within the gender equity movement is change that is exceptionally slow, piecemeal, quick to regress and ultimately voluntary, with organizations and leaders opting out entirely as they wish. Without persistent consequential accountability and incentive structures, we have had to rely only on the innate desires of organizations and leaders to change, with the prospect of natural consequences for those who do not.

If we want safe sport to have a different trajectory, we need to be prepared to think and act bigger. The goal must be systemic transformation. Tweaks and one-off programs that leave the current operating system intact are inadequate. Transformation means a comprehensive values-based overhaul of how we design, implement, and measure sport in Canada with government policy and investment that is aligned and supportive.

We need more than a rejection of the status quo. We need a new vision for sport, with a right-sized strategy to get us there, grounded in a clear-eyed understanding of the current system from the grassroots to high performance.

As such, I repeat our call for a national inquiry or another appropriate mechanism that will help us realize this outcome for the entire sport system. We believe this effort will have powerful positive impacts across multiple structural issues and contribute directly to creating a truly inclusive sport system that produces the highest value in the lives of all Canadians.

As ever, Canadian Women and Sport is committed to working with Sport Canada and the national sport community to help realize this potential.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I now go to the third witness for five minutes, please. Global Athlete is represented by Rob Koehler.

You have five minutes, Mr. Koehler.

[Rob Koehler, Director General, Global Athlete]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

Today I am not going to detail the stories of abuse from survivors from 15 sports and the thousands of athletes who have come forward with the experience of physical, sexual, financial, and emotional abuse, and a lack of equality. They have been met with little remedy.

We have already heard it acknowledged from the Minister of Sport and the Prime Minister of Canada on several occasions that sport is in a crisis in Canada. It’s time to act now for a judicial inquiry.

Today I want to focus on the complex, tangled web of sport dysfunction that has enabled abuse and corruption, along with the lack of transparency and accountability that perpetuate it. All of these are bred by the inherent power imbalance between sport administrators and athletes.

The global sport model set by the International Olympic Committee for the world of sport is replicated in almost every country. By design, this model relies on an intricate network of people and practices veiled under the accepted strategy of sport autonomy. For example, just last week, an email publicly shown by the International Olympic Committee asked all of the national Olympic committees to influence their governments to allow Russia and Belarus to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

In Canada, over the past year, we have seen the tangled web come to light. We have seen Hockey Canada with hidden financial accounts used to hide abuse issues and, more recently, athletes questioning the transparency of Canada Soccer and Canadian Soccer Business.

These organizations hold a non-profit status with separate entities to raise and distribute money with little to no oversight. How many other sports in Canada have similar entities?

This inquiry is needed to look at the tangled web of how sport operates in Canada. It needs to take a deep dive into the real and perceived conflicts of interest that exist.

Let me give you some examples.

Own the Podium receives over $2.9 million from the Canadian government and is also funded by the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Olympic Foundation and the Canadian Paralympic Committee. Who has oversight of Own the Podium? Why does this organization exist? Is it another offshoot organization, similar to what we have seen from Hockey Canada and Canadian Soccer Business?

I'd like to look at the legal community. A lawyer in Canada is required to carry out due diligence before taking on a client, but for some reason, sport allows them to circumvent this practice.

For researchers, we need to ask how independent researchers are finding them in positions of power within Canadian sport organizations and influencing Canadian sport policy-makers.

For investigations, we have to take a deep dive into so-called “independent investigations” that not only have existing relationships with sport but are also being paid to protect the brand of the sport that is paying them to do the investigation. Who is representing the athletes?

In all of these scenarios, it is akin to the fox guarding the henhouse.

We need to understand why so many staff and board members who have been trying to be agents of change find themselves silenced by non-disclosure agreements. Why it is acceptable that Canadian athletes are forced into silence when they become part of a national team?

We need to understand the relationships between national sport organizations and provincial sport organizations. National sport organizations mandate that provincial sport organizations filter registration fees to them, but use convenient arguments that they have no oversight and accountability to the provincial sport organizations. They are all part of the convenient tangled arguments that avoid accountability and oversight.

Over the past year, parliamentary committees have heard from the Minister of Sport, Sport Canada and heads of sport, all either defending the current system or agreeing to take on recommendations that are put forward to improve the system with no mandatory implementation. They have all admitted that the system is not working and needs to be improved.

We have heard directly from this committee that Sport Canada is not fit for purpose. They have all proven that they don’t have the tools and the systems in place to demand accountability. Freezing funding and resignations are all band-aid solutions that don’t get to the root of the problem.

The office of the integrity commissioner was created by the very same people who have been part of the problem. Let's stop relying on anecdotal evidence from people who are entrenched in the system and who have inherent conflicts of interest.

Please don't take my word for it. That would be anecdotal as well. Launching a judicial investigation is the only way to truly understand the Canadian sport system.

This government has an opportunity—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Please wrap up. You have gone over time, Mr. Koehler.

[Rob Koehler]

This government has an opportunity to reform sport in Canada and globally. You did it with the Dubin inquiry. Now it's time to launch a nationwide inquiry to be agents of change.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll go to the questions and answers. Because of our time limits, this is going to be only one six-minute round for everyone. I'm going to begin with the Conservatives.

Ms. Thomas, you have six minutes, please.