Thank you very much.
I was absolutely shocked when I heard. I was actually away in the United Kingdom when the news came through a few weeks ago that Hockey Canada was going to get funding back without having said anything about NDAs.
In fact, a kind of throwaway comment was made by the Hockey Canada CEO to the committee last summer when the hearings began that, if anybody wanted to be released from their NDA, it was no problem—they should just get in touch. I cannot tell you what a disingenuous statement that is, because how are people supposed to get in touch? Are they supposed to google Hockey Canada? Who do they ask? How do they do this? Of course, these are all people who are very fearful of the consequences of breaking their NDA.
I think the very first thing Hockey Canada should have done—they should have done this last summer—was say, “We shall formally release people from existing non-disclosure agreements, so they can contribute to the work of the study and the work of the committee”. They should have done that, and they still can do it by writing directly to each of the people. They know who the people are. They could write to them directly to say that they will tear up their non-disclosure agreements.
The second thing they should do is undertake to not use them again in the future. Otherwise, nothing is going to change, frankly, and it will all be pushed back under the carpet again. They can make agreements for confidentiality on the amount of money they paid. There might be special circumstances they want to agree to in terms of the public use of some of that information, but gagging victims without their being able to speak to anybody, and of course unable to then warn others about the people whom they have experienced.... This has become so incredibly effective in enabling these perpetrators to reoffend. We see that over and over again.
There is much research now—and I'm sure my colleague witnesses are very aware of this—that shows that acts of violence, sexual violence and harassment are carried out by a very small number of people over and over again. This is very rarely a one-off occurrence. We already know that people who have done this once are very likely to do it again, yet we're going to cover that up so they can do it again.
I believe Hockey Canada should release people immediately by writing to them, but not by saying, “Hey, get in touch; we'll think about it”. Write to them and release them.
Secondly, they should have been asked before funding was restored to undertake to never use a non-disclosure agreement again.
I did say at the beginning that the voluntary pledges are a very important part of culture change in relation to NDAs, but I think the reality is that secret settlements have to be outlawed because we cannot monitor what is going on behind those closed doors.