Thank you very much.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today. It's wonderful that the Canadian heritage parliamentary committee has taken such interest in the state of Canadian sport. Sport is clearly in the public interest, but only rarely do Parliament and its committees take such an active interest.
This presentation and that of my colleague later today will build upon the points we made in the brief submitted to this committee last December with our colleague Peter Donnelly. Specifically, I will emphasize three points: one, that attention must be paid to all forms of threats to athlete welfare; two, that significant progress has been made with the UCCMS and OSIC, but this must be extended across the sport sector; and, three, that further advancements must be athlete-supported and research-driven.
First, it’s important to clarify what we’re talking about with the term “safe sport”. As stated in the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport, the term “maltreatment” is used intentionally. This term is an umbrella term, also used by the World Health Organization, that encompasses forms of abuse, including sexual, physical and psychological abuse, as well as neglect, bullying, harassment and discrimination. This breadth is important, as all forms of maltreatment are violations of human rights. At their foundation, they represent a misuse of power, and all can be associated with short- and long-term negative health outcomes.
While the negative effects of sexual abuse seem intuitive to us, research evidence indicates that repeated experiences of psychological abuse, neglect and discrimination can be equally harmful to health and well-being. Further, all of the prevalence studies conducted in Canada and internationally show a consistent pattern, namely that psychological abuse and neglect are the forms of harm most commonly reported by athletes regardless of sport, level of participation or gender. It’s these forms of maltreatment that account for athletes’ descriptions of their sport contexts as toxic, and they must be addressed in future safe-sport-related policies and education.
One of the strengths of the UCCMS is that it reflects this breadth of harms. Compared to the case in other countries, the UCCMS provides the most comprehensive and realistic standard of what harms can be in sport. Another strength of the UCCMS is that it was initiated by athletes through their call for a harmonized code of conduct across sport, so every athlete, regardless of level, sport or geographical region of the country, can expect adherence to the same code. The UCCMS was developed through broad consultations across the country in every province and territory. These consultations revealed a challenge facing the sport community—namely, the need to dismantle the assumptions that psychological harm is “just sport” and thus is widely accepted as a normal and even necessary tool for realizing athletic talent and winning. This finding also runs contrary to expected conduct in other domains in which young people engage.
The UCCMS represents an important accomplishment and important first step in changing the culture. It articulates prohibited conduct and becomes the standard for expectations by participants and sport leaders alike, but our work is not done. Now it needs to be rolled out across the entire sport sector as a requirement, and all sport organizations, from community level to provincial and national levels, must be aligned in its adoption.
The second sign of progress is the establishment of the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, which, again, arose in response to athletes’ calls for an independent reporting and complaint mechanism. It was also informed by research indicating that fewer than 15% of athletes who have experienced maltreatment have ever submitted a formal report or complaint. While the implementation is slower than we’d like, it’s an important first and positive step in the right direction.
We must keep the foot on the accelerator to continue this important work and avoid what we've seen in the past—cycles of attempted reform in Canadian sport following high-profile cases, public scrutiny and proposed reform, only to have those reforms diminished.