Canadian Heritage Committee on March 27th, 2023

[Ryan Sheehan]

It's implicit.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I want this to go to Ms. Glover, Mr. Ross and Mr. Sheehan. How important is it to have the public inquiry for that very reason, what Mr. Sheehan and Ms. Shore have spelled out in terms of victims and revictimization?

[Dr. MacIntosh Ross]

I would say that it's incredibly important, because the vast majority of athletes across the country are afraid to come forward because they're not sure how their testimony, their allegations, will be handled and whether they'll be taken seriously. We know that there is retribution when athletes come forward. They put their whole careers on the line when they do this, so there's a lot riding on it. You don't throw it away, but you're really putting a lot of trust in people who probably don't deserve it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I now go to Kevin Waugh for the Conservatives for five minutes.

Go ahead, Kevin.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I'm going to pick up on that, if you don't mind, Mr. Ross.

I was in Saskatchewan on the Graham James incident. The two names, Sheldon Kennedy and Theoren Fleury, have never had.... They're going through hell even today, 20 years later.

It's not about Graham James; it's about Theoren Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy. Wherever they appear, everybody links them, but James gets nothing. He gets to walk away. He moved away from Canada and went coaching. It's all about Fleury and Sheldon. I feel sorry for them, because they will take that to their graves, both of them.

Do you want to comment on that, Mr. Ross?

[Dr. MacIntosh Ross]

Yes, that's a really difficult part of all this. When you go public about something as traumatizing as abuse, whether that's sexual abuse or whether it's something else, like Akim Aliu's coming forward about racism in the Greater Toronto Hockey League.... Now he's constantly asked about racism in that hockey league and about trying to break down barriers, when I'm sure he'd rather just focus on creating opportunities for young people to play hockey. The same goes for so many advocates.

To some degree, we have to keep bringing it up. We have to keep on building these coalitions and these advocacy groups, but I don't think we can underestimate how much pressure we put on people when they do come forward and what that means. They know that when they come forward. That's why it's so important, when they come to groups like this or other groups, that we're really ready to take action based on their testimony and not just hear it and file it away on a shelf.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

I agreed last week with Teresa Fowler from the University of Alberta.

This where I have problems with the Sport Integrity Commission. OSIC is top down when we need to go the other way—grassroots up. We're not doing it in this country.

I'll start with gymnastics, if you don't mind, Kim or Ryan, if you want to comment on that, because we're all looking for volunteers: “Oh, you have a live body. Bring him in. Get a police check quickly and get him in there.” Right...? Every sport suffers from that that.

Could we have your comments on that? I love the comments that everybody has made today, but we have to go from the grassroots up. It is the only way that we're going to succeed in this country.

[Kim Shore]

I want to say one quick thing about the national inquiry. My hope would be that recommendations for legislative change would come out of that inquiry, which we have no research on.

You brought up background checks, Mr. Waugh. They are sorely lacking. There is a disconnect between the RCMP system and the municipal system. Predators can slip through the system as easily as that.

Also, it costs money to get those checks done. I sat on a provincial board where the coaches and judges were really reluctant to have to get re-evaluated every couple of years because it costs them personal money, and they aren't really making enough money anyway.

Changes to child protection in our legal system would be a recommendation that I hope might help.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Okay.

I will go to Ms. Glover.

I have a situation in my province right now with a young kid by the name of Connor Bedard. Wherever he goes, people are there. His mom and dad, Tom and Melanie, have been with him, but, as stated:

...However, with great fame comes great scrutiny, and Connor's rapid rise to stardom has raised concerns about his privacy. Recently, Connor's mother, Melanie, spoke out about the invasive behaviour of some fans. She described how people would wait outside their home, take pictures of them, and even trespass on their property to scream for Connor. Melanie also shared she had to turn off her phone for days due to the overwhelming number of messages she has received.

Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Wendy Glover]

He is an outlier, one of the greatest stars who's going to be going into the National Hockey League, and very shortly, it seems. Unfortunately, he's an example of fandom gone wild.

It filters down to younger age groups as well. They see that. They aim for that.

How do you protect his privacy? Again, I wouldn't have the first clue on how you can prevent people from acting inappropriately and doing this. They want to see him. They're going to be inappropriate.

Unfortunately, we are connected through social media. She'll have to continue to cut down her access on her social media platforms, because people think they have the right to connect with those people in sport.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much. The time is up on that one.

I will go to Michael Coteau for the Liberals for five minutes, please.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I want to start by thanking all of our witnesses here today. I know that coming into a public forum and sharing such personal stories is a big challenge. I want to thank each and every one of you for your strength and your continued advocacy.

Personally, I support some type of inquiry. The stories we've heard are very compelling. I don't know how that inquiry would look. I wanted to take a moment—maybe we can start with Ms. Shore—and just ask, if it did proceed, what would an inquiry look like to you?

[Kim Shore]

Thank you very much for the question. I appreciate that.

I'm not an expert in national inquiries, other than I know that we have them.

I think I speak for most of the advocacy groups. If we could do an inquiry that is crafted outside of the sports jurisdiction, with human rights and child protection experts sitting at the table, and with the voices of survivors who have not yet been consulted, that would be a first good step towards producing something.

If we have to do it in parts, we'll take it any way we can get it right now. If we need to do it part by part, look at it department by department, or federal versus provincial versus local, etc., let's just put the plan together and then price it and see how we can actually do it.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Right. I'll ask Dr. Ross the same question.

[Dr. MacIntosh Ross]

In Canada, and with regard to sport, it's a bit unique in that we have had a ton of positive collaboration between the federal government and the provinces. The downside is that most of the collaboration has come for the purpose of elite sport in pursuing medals.

You could argue that our obsession with winning at all costs led us to embracing Own The Podium, which funnels money into just a small number of athletes, and creates a very much “win at all costs” attitude. However, the good part of that is we already have these existing relationships between the federal government and the provinces, when it comes to sport.

If we can do this, in terms of competing internationally and developing long-term athlete development, and things like that, surely we can dedicate the same kind of co-operation and collaboration, collaborative federalism, toward protecting athletes at all levels in this country.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Glover, you talk a lot about education. I know you have experience within the education system, but also within the sport sector. I've always argued there's been a massive disconnect in this country between our public education system and sport system. The divides not only work at that level, but there's also a huge divide between the provinces and the federal government.

From your unique perspective, is there value in looking for ways to bringing the system closer together, especially at the education of JK to 12, and the sport sector as a whole?

[Wendy Glover]

Absolutely. That is one of the reasons why I'm able to, within the job I have, teach the sport systems to the athletes who sit in front of me.

Your provincial governments can deliver this type of information through courses that are in their high schools already. We can put them in younger grades if we want to. We have the ability to revise the curriculum and adjust it. Again, it would have to be, like Mac mentioned, through the provincial governments, because they handle education.

There are so many sport schools that are run through the B.C. school system that are not available to us in Ontario. Quebec has CEGEP. Students get extra time in school, and get an extra year in school.

There are different ways, within each province, that you can do this, absolutely, because my students are in it, and we've educated almost 600 in these sport models. They are well aware of Sport for Life and Respect in Sport. They take 10-15 certifications. We mentor them. They go off into the communities. They're coaching. They're leading in sport, and they're circling back for constant evaluation and mentorship. It can be done through schools.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I will now to go a third round, and Martin Shields for the Conservatives. You have five minutes.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I'll ask a question, and then I'll split my time with Dr. Kitchen.

Ms. Glover, I have seen that there are protocols in place in the education system. As you mentioned, if abuse happens, there's reporting. If it happens that day, everybody knows about it, and the proper protective services are brought in.

Help me understand, how did those excellent protocols get into place? Did the province edict them into the education system, or did they come from the teachers' unions?

[Wendy Glover]

I have no idea. I just know that if I'm made aware of something, I know exactly what I'm supposed to do, and I wouldn't go home that day until it was addressed to the people that it needed to be addressed to, and then there's follow-up after.

I would assume that it was from the province down to the local school board. Maybe that's the case, but I wouldn't know—

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I'm going to verify that, because that's a critical part of this.

Dr. Kitchen.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here and sharing their stories with us. It's greatly appreciated.

I'm on the health committee as well, and one of the studies we've been dealing with is basically on children's health. A lot of what we've talked about is sports, about the value of sports and the great need of sports for our youth. We see it so many times. I have a four-year-old granddaughter who's in gymnastics right now. She just loves it, because she's so active. The reality is, where do we start? As parents and grandparents, we sit there and....

Granted, I got my kinesiology degree before I did my doctorate. I did a specialty in sports medicine. The reality is that I have that background, but the average Canadian doesn't have that information. They don't have a clue. The parents don't know. They're putting their children into these programs in all sports, whether it's gymnastics or swimming or whatever, and the assumption is that the people who are teaching them and mentoring them as they move forward have those levels and are continuing to do that.

I was the regulator for the chiropractor profession in Saskatchewan and then nationally. The reality is that we regulate our professions. How do we regulate our coaches, our trainers and our administrators? Do you have any suggestions along those lines?

[Wendy Glover]

I do. Thank you so much for asking that.

I constantly refer back to swimming lessons. You don't usually join a swim team until you get to a certain level of your swimming lessons. We go into sport and, as you said, it's the Wild West. We're not making sure that some of the kids have the technical skills to move up in the sport appropriately. There are reporting systems for each sport to assess kids, but they don't do it. We need to actually assess the kids and let everybody know what's happening.

As you're implying, we're asking a lot of volunteers. You don't go to swimming lessons and not pay the lifeguards or instructors, so you're asking the volunteers who don't have the background to be teaching the skills that they may or may not be able to effectively teach.

For example, in hockey, are they doing CanSkate before they are actually playing hockey games? Skills coaches in hockey are brought in to kind of supplement the program, but it's not mandated. I would think that you should probably have proper skating skills before you're involved in getting hit and checking in the sport.

There are things that I would change and put into place to keep them safer physically, but I don't want to take too much time here.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you for that.

I coached hockey all the way up to AA midget. I coached soccer and other sports because of my background. I did my Canadian athletic...but the reality is that, as a coach, at no time did anyone actually talk to me about any of that part.

As we move forward, we look at mental health. In particular, for Ryan and Kim, it's the mental health that's impacting them in terms of what they've experienced. The federal government put out in December $2.8 million to increase the mental health literacy of coaches and sport leaders. The Public Health Agency of Canada put that forward. They ultimately had $100 million. What about putting out that information and using that money for our athletes so that people like Ryan and Kim can have some steps and some training such that there's an avenue you could follow as you move forward?

Do you have any thoughts on that, Ryan or Kim?