I absolutely agree with my colleagues.
On the side of Emily and the mental health process, we need funds. We need money. We need resources. After two years, I'm still in therapy, and I'm paying, of course. The game plan is helping, because I have two therapists, but I suffered from disassociation for six months, so I can't recall either my Olympic qualification or my Olympic participation. I have no recall of the best memory of my life—as it's supposed to be—so we need...and all that money is paid from my pocket. I need to work to pay for my therapy, so how am I able to work if I'm not able to work...? I have to go to work to earn money to pay for therapy, but it's super hard to go to work because I was in a depression stage for so long.
Yes, we need help on that, please, and we need to stop people inside the federation from using our complaints against us in the judicial department in our province. On what we're saying, all the complaints we're telling you about, we're using the mechanisms you put in place. The government put mechanisms in place and put a complaint process in place, but when it's used, it can be used against us, and we don't have the same money power. You have to understand that: I don't have the same power as people in my federation who are paid, who are actual employees of this federation and receive a proper salary. Athletes are not employees of their federation.
I'm happy to see that at Hockey Canada they are employees. They are the luckiest ones, yet you see abuse in that federation, and it is considering them athlete employees. Imagine, for the rest of us who are not even considered employees of the federation, how we are treated. We don't even have this respect of being considered an employee, but it's because of us that the system is working.
It's not working.