Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thought it was just me whose hips were too fat by age 10, and whose coach went to strippers so that he could tell us how it looked when girls did the splits on glass tables.
I thought it was just me whose coach terrified her into attempting skills—one of which resulted in a broken leg—and who screamed things like, “You're a waste of my time, your mother's money and your own effort.”
Was it just me who was forcibly kissed by a married coach, who then had to miss practices to avoid him, who suffered two grand mal seizures after a training accident that got no medical attention, and who earned a full-ride scholarship to a division I NCAA school, only to give it up to escape a predatory coach who was later banned for life?
I spent my entire childhood in gymnastics. Despite it all, I loved the sport, but I spent many adult years recovering from it—and I am not alone.
In 2018, I joined the GymCan board of directors. It was becoming apparent that gymnastics had serious human rights and child abuse issues to tackle, and I was ready to help. There was interest at first, but then resistance, gaslighting and insults. Eventually, I was told to stand down when I challenged wrongdoing too many times.
Here are some of the highlights.
In 2016, a GymCan board chair was arrested for the possession and distribution of child pornography. He had previously gone to prison in 1992 for child prostitution, and nobody knew.
In 2015 to 2018, executives were informed by staff and others about inappropriate behaviour by multiple coaches. Information was suppressed, and there was a failure to act on their duty to care. The coaches kept coaching, and at least one reoffended.
In 2018, a secret internal investigation led to two executives resigning, one of whom is now a CEO at a different national sport organization.
In 2017, two out of three women's national team coaches were arrested. The third was relieved of his duties in 2019, with the CEO citing, “the gravity of the situation is at a level that I must remove him from his role” as a result of “both formal and informal complaints.” Conversely, the gymnastics community was told he left for personal reasons.
I pushed back many times, to no avail. The welfare officer of 30 years insisted that Gymnastics Canada had received only one formal complaint about his conduct and that it was very unusual to suspend or expel someone based on one complaint.
I still wonder how many complaints it takes to trigger a safe sport investigation. What is a child's safety worth?
In June 2021, I opposed the naming of a coach to team Canada because a formal complaint by an Olympian was still unresolved after eight months. Within days, the case was dropped, with no investigation. The coach went to the Olympics, and I resigned from the board.
This is how gymnastics in Canada has operated for decades. Putting a new CEO in place will not fix it. It's much bigger than gymnastics, and bigger than any one national sport organization. It's a complete failure to do the right thing by children and athletes, while protecting abusers and enablers. If balance of power was a hockey game, the score would be: athletes nothing; sport system everything.
Canadian sport is a tangled web of people. Many of them have failed athletes, but continue to influence developments like the universal code of conduct, the Canadian sport policy and the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, and sit at the minister's roundtable discussions. Is it any wonder that so many athletes don't trust those running our sport system? They are those who also say a national inquiry is not necessary.
Willful blindness, an imbalance of power and undeclared conflicts of interest need to be uncovered and resolved. Adults need to stop choosing to protect their legacy over protecting children. Resistance to a national inquiry needs to be deeply scrutinized. We recommend a national inquiry to interrogate and then repair Canadian sport.
Thank you very much.