Evidence of meeting #72 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 system.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I'll pause for a second, please, and find out what's going on.
Thank you.
11:50 a.m.
Secretary, Board of Directors, Athletes’ Association of Canada
Would you like me to start again from the top?
11:50 a.m.
Bloc
11:50 a.m.
Secretary, Board of Directors, Athletes’ Association of Canada
At AthletesCAN our board works, yes, to hear and talk to as many athletes as possible, and then try to instill change. We work in the safe sport field. But we also work in many different areas in terms of what active athletes are looking for, such as funding, increased funding, athlete agreements and governance. All of those types of things we are looking to teach and build in those avenues, not just in the safe sport field. However, the safe sport field is critical at this time within sport.
Ms. Kerr has no influence over what our board is doing. She does research at different points in time, but in terms of the day-to-day activities of AthletesCAN, she does not influence what we are doing in that way.
11:50 a.m.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
How much money has AthletesCAN paid to Ms. Kerr in the last five years, for research or whatever else?
Can you provide that information?
11:50 a.m.
Secretary, Board of Directors, Athletes’ Association of Canada
I cannot, off the top of my head. I would have to look into the resources. Oftentimes, she just partners with us if we do solicit a researcher, but I don't know what the monetary value is there.
11:50 a.m.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
I'd also like to know about your relationship with the athletes. As we know, about 15 sports have parted ways with your organization.
How is your organization reacting to all these requests to cut ties and these displays of no confidence?
Has the board of directors had any discussions about finding solutions and course correcting?
That would help maintain athletes' trust in your organization.
11:50 a.m.
Secretary, Board of Directors, Athletes’ Association of Canada
As an organization, we try to talk to all of the groups that come forward. We've talked to bobsleigh and rowing. We've reached out to different gymnastics groups in the past, roughly a year ago. We try and support them online. As we move forward, we're always looking to improve what we do as an organization.
You mentioned that we get a fair amount of resources. Really, up until this last year and a half, we had one and a half staff members, so we do not have a lot of staff. Our board is made up of volunteers, and many of us work at it like a part-time job for free.
We are always trying to do as much as we can with the limited resources we have. We know we're not perfect, but we are working to try and make a better landscape in the sports field.
11:50 a.m.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
You commissioned a report on maltreatment and abuse that surveyed 1,000 athletes. That study was conducted by Erin Wilson and Ms. Kerr.
What were the findings of that study?
Obviously, the central issue is the need for athletes to have a safe space where they can talk about their experiences, in order to change things in society. That's very important for making sport safe and healthy. There needs to be a review of sport participation.
Are you in favour of an independent commission of inquiry?
Today, several witnesses have called for a commission of inquiry, and we've been hearing similar calls for months. More and more athletes' federations are calling for one.
11:55 a.m.
Secretary, Board of Directors, Athletes’ Association of Canada
To answer the first part of your question about what was found, I alluded to the findings at the beginning of my remarks. They included: performance excellence at all costs; normalization of harm; lack of attention to equity, diversity and inclusion; a culture of fear and silence; and the lack of trust in organizations to handle the cases. Those were the major themes that emerged from that study, and the last one is definitely one of the biggest roadblocks, as the other panellists have mentioned.
If the athletes do not feel there's an avenue for them to lodge their complaint, and feel comfortable in that, then there's no avenue for them. They feel hopeless. We need an organization that they can go through to do that. OSIC is what we have at this point. It hasn't been in place long enough, I don't think, to fully judge it, but it's similar to the CCES.
11:55 a.m.
Secretary, Board of Directors, Athletes’ Association of Canada
For the final part of your question, we are not against a national inquiry. We are trying to work with what is there now, and that's why we're focusing on education and governance.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
I will now go to the New Democrats and Peter Julian, for six minutes, please.
11:55 a.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you to our witnesses, and particularly Mr. Sheehan and Ms. Shore. Words can't express how sorry we are for what you, and so many other athletes, have been through.
We have a system that has allowed predators and abusers to game the system with impunity, and there has been no reaction up until now from the federal government, or from federal agencies, to change that situation. We have to develop and put into place safe sports in this country. We're all wedded to that.
This committee has been working in a non-partisan way to find solutions. I am profoundly saddened by what you've told us today. In my mind, it just reiterates the importance for us to move forward.
We've seen a number of organizations that simply failed at their task. Gymnastics Canada seems to be one of those. It had the resignation of Ian Moss, the CEO. It had the egregious and appalling cases of Alex Bard and Scott McFarlane, and so many others.
Do you have any confidence that Gymnastics Canada is putting into place what is needed now to protect, and provide for safe sports? If not, what does Gymnastics Canada need to do to have your confidence?
11:55 a.m.
Co-founder, Gymnasts for Change Canada, As an Individual
Personally, I do not have confidence in Gymnastics Canada.
Ian allegedly resigned, but we weren't given a date for when he's actually resigning. He was also the high-performance director at GymCan, so he chose people for national teams and was in charge of a lot of national team issues. I don't know what his deal is, entirely. There was a safe sport person at GymCan for a couple of years, but she left. I believe that was in September 2001. After that, for a few years, all the safe sport complaints were to go directly to Ian.
I don't have confidence. If he leaves, he takes a ton of knowledge and information with him, which we will never get. The board currently in place has been there for a long time. Some of those members are new. When Ian resigned, they approved a statement saying, “Thank you so much for your service. You've done so much for safe sport.”
11:55 a.m.
Co-founder, Gymnasts for Change Canada, As an Individual
I echo what Ryan said.
In my hand, here, I'm holding the statement of a young survivor who was raped by her coach in the bathroom of the gym facility when she was seven years old. When she was a teenager, he returned to the gym after he'd been in prison, convicted of sexual offences against other children—not her, though. In 2015, she filed a complaint with the police. Not one of the coaches or leaders in her province came forward. No one would tell the truth. They all turned a blind eye and worked together to protect each other. Many of the coaches who knew he was in the gym with her are coaching at the national team level. They're still operational, and they work together to protect a guy who had already been to jail, so he was a known predator. Because she didn't get anywhere with the police, she put a civil case together and spent eight years.... This month, she was supposed to have her hearing. Six weeks before the hearing, all the defendants agreed to a settlement. They finally acknowledged wrongdoing happened.
However, it's the betrayal of the system. She told us—it's similar to what Ryan said today—that the betrayal of the system and of those whom she thought she could trust to come to her aid was more damaging than being raped as a seven-year-old.
I think the people developing all of our policies, from the very top of the sport chain down, need to recognize the dire harm they're causing. The negligence and conflicts of interest.... I don't want to name-call, because some people are well intentioned. Perhaps they've lost their way. I'd like to hope they are not evil people.
We are seeing the same people you had here last week, frankly, profiting off abuse in the sport. Perhaps they're doing some good work. I don't know who's doing the good work and who isn't, but some are profiting off the fact that the status quo is not changing and abuse continues. If there is no abuse, how are you going to research abuse? If all we need is education—if that's the only recommendation that comes out of the committees I've testified at—all the people doing the education are going to make a lot of money. However, they're just guessing at what, exactly, needs to be done. Even if those educators are well intentioned, we need them to be informed by evidence. We aren't going to tell our evidence to any of the researchers who have been in front of any of these committees.
Noon
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
These horrific stories are why you're calling for a national inquiry, and why we need to reboot our sports in Canada: so they can be based on safe sports. We have fallen so far from what we need to put in place.
Noon
Co-founder, Gymnasts for Change Canada, As an Individual
These stories represent systemic failure.
We don't want to trot out survivors to tell the awful, embarrassing things that Ryan and I had to say today. We don't want any more people to have to do that. We want the stories to represent information that will inform how our system is failing us, then go above that and see how the funding models and the relationships among all the different agencies are failing us. The agencies might be good, themselves, but there are individuals in them who....
I worked with a CEO whom I know hid a couple of abuse situations, over the years. They've all been around for 20 years or more. If you hide one thing in your past, then the safe sport stuff starts to surface, you're not saying anything. You're doing everything you can, from that day on, to cover up what happened and that you might have misjudged, instead of coming forward and saying, “You know what? I made a mistake five years ago. I let a guy off and I shouldn't have”, or, “I should have been harder with the sanction, and I wasn't.”
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Ms. Shore.
I'll go to the second round. It's a five-minute round. We begin with, for the Conservatives, Martin Shields.
Noon
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I very much appreciate it, having been a volunteer coach in the community and having organized coaching in schools.
Ms. Glover, there's a piece here we're missing—it's the parents. I'm very familiar with a parent who went to the organization. The organization referred her to a third party.
She's now been to the police, who agree with her complaint. The third party organization is now dealing with it, but the original organization has washed their hands of it. She and her child have been revictimized.
What about the parents in this? How do we deal with this so that they're not revictimized? The amount of guilt they're now suffering for not having taken care of or protected their child is re-emphasized.
March 27th, 2023 / noon
Secondary School Teacher and Athlete Development Consultant, As an Individual
This goes beyond what I'm able to address, which is why everybody's meeting—
Noon
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
You mentioned parents, though, a couple of times. That's why I'm asking you.
Noon
Secondary School Teacher and Athlete Development Consultant, As an Individual
—and educating with regard to the process of going through the sport and what is actually appropriate per age group. The reporting systems that are in place are not clear, and I've said that.
As a parent who did raise children through sport, I wouldn't even know where to find that information myself. As an educator in school, as I've mentioned, it is very clear what I would do if I suspected or was told of a student who had experienced abuse.
There's a disconnect between how we help them in sport and.... I don't know how to answer that question, which is why we're here looking for help with that.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
I think that's a critical piece in a sense, and I don't know if any of the other witnesses today want to weigh in.
You've told the stories, but what about your family? What about your siblings? What about your parents? What has this done to them?