Canadian Heritage Committee on June 1st, 2023

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

How do they feel about this?

[David Shoemaker]

They're very much committed to the effort to make the Canadian sport system as safe as it possibly can be.

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

You've heard me numerous times, I'm sure, if you've checked in with us. There's club, provincial and national, and then we have the Olympics.

Listen, Ben Johnson raced for Scarborough for many years. He was on PEDs long before the Seoul Olympics. We just found out in September 1988 on the 100 metres, when he ran 9.79, that in fact he was the problem. Then we had the Dubin inquiry.

You see where I'm going here. I'm not sure about any inquiry, because it depends on the ultimate, which is the Olympics. This is where the Ben Johnson story came from. It was the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

I don't hear it from anyone in my province, Saskatchewan. I don't hear from any of the clubs that they want an inquiry. It would start at the top, which is the Olympics. Would you agree or not?

That's where the Dubin inquiry started. Johnson ran for years with Scarborough. I covered him. Nobody gave a shit about whether he was taking PEDs at the time. It wasn't until Seoul, Korea.

[David Shoemaker]

As I said in my opening statement, we support an inquiry. I think it's very important that it hear from survivors and that it be trauma-informed. I hope the remit includes the very alignment to which you refer.

I believe we've made substantial progress for the 3,000 to 5,000 national-level athletes. They have a place where they can go to register a complaint and have it investigated without fear of retribution.

There are millions of young people in this country participating in sport who don't have that yet. We need, I think, to focus on that as a critical safe sport area of focus.

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

I agree on the registry, but how does the Canadian Olympic Committee, which hires outside of this country, deal with a registry when it's hiring coaches from other countries to come to our programs here?

[David Shoemaker]

Among our employees, we don't hire a single coach. The coaches who support the national sports programs are all hired by the national sports organizations.

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

Do you do a check on them before the Olympics?

[David Shoemaker]

We do indeed. We do criminal background checks, and we have a selection committee that evaluates that.

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

You had “equal prize money” in world tennis on your resume. What's your thought about equal prize money for Olympians?

We had four young women sit there a couple of months ago representing the Canadian women's soccer association, team Canada, and that was their biggest beef at the time.

What would you say? I looked at your resume, and you were about equal pay. Here we are in 2023, far from equal pay, if you don't mind my saying it.

[David Shoemaker]

I was one of the very few who were privileged to watch those four participate in the Tokyo games. Because of COVID, there were probably six Canadians and eight Swedes who watched them win the Olympic gold medal in a stadium with 80,000 seats.

Their performance for Canada made us all proud and incredibly inspired. We need a gold medal system to support them here in Canada as well.

I'm biased. My mother was a professional athlete. I believe strongly in gender equity. I think we need to work very hard to make sure we have that here in this country, in sport and across all sectors.

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

Do you see it with the current Canadian.... I mean, we're getting set for Paris 2024 now. Are there any athletes—male and female—you're going to promote to make sure it's equal?

[David Shoemaker]

First of all, probably more than 60% of our Olympic team at the Tokyo 2020 games and at the Beijing winter games were female. More women won medals than men won medals. Therefore, more investment is made in women's sport by the Olympic Committee than is made in men's sport.

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

Can you give me an example on money, then, where there's more money into women's sport than men's, as you just said?

[David Shoemaker]

Well, I'm making a per capita assumption based on how we fund the national sports organizations. We could try to provide that after the fact.

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

Good, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Kevin.

Now I go to the Liberals and Lisa Hepfner for five minutes, please.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I wanted to ask Mr. Bernard if he had anything further to say following his exchange with my colleague Mr. Bittle on the need to make a change in the federation's management.

[Yann Bernard]

You always have to wonder about the members of the board of directors. I don't sense any need to make changes because I see the current board members' serious commitment to safe sport. I personally don't get the impression that the problem is there since this board has a zero-tolerance policy regarding misconduct. So that would be my response at this time.

I think we need a system that gives us a much clearer idea of what's going on in the small clubs. It's quite easy to solve the problems of the national teams, but there are also teams in the municipalities and schools, as well as sports clubs. I deal with 200 clubs—that's 5,000 fencers—but I only have one and a half full-time employees.

We need to find mechanisms like a workers compensation program associated with workplace safety, or a youth protection program. We have to introduce a serious protection system for our athletes that doesn't rely on people who might be subject to conflicts of interest.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

All right. Thank you.

I will turn to Mr. Shoemaker.

Thank you for your attendance here today.

You mentioned something at some point—it may have been in your opening statement—about there being a need for more alignment with the provinces and territories, and that this should be the next priority.

Would you expand upon that thought for us, please?

[David Shoemaker]

Thank you.

We've made progress. I don't want that to be misinterpreted; there's still lots more work to do. An area I would draw our attention to is the important need for a registry as it relates to safe sport.

We've made important progress for the roughly 3,000 athletes who participate in sport at the national level. They now have a place where they can go and register a complaint about abuse, harassment or maltreatment in sport and not be fearful of retribution. I think that's an important step.

But there are millions of young participants in sport at the provincial level and at the local level—at the club level—who don't have those protections. To me, that is an enormous gap.

I know that this committee is focused on what some of the recommendations are that can be made. I would encourage you to think about how we address that gap.

I think it's going to take a lot of co-operation with the provincial and territorial governments in order to do that, but it's a very important step for us to ensure that the truly young people who are participating in sport, and their parents, can do so with real confidence that they're in a system that protects them.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you.

Would you have other recommendations that you would like to see come out of this committee in order to help inform the minister with an inquiry?

[David Shoemaker]

Thank you.

Education and awareness is something we've put our own investment behind.

I'll draw from my example with my three children who participate in sport. They participate with the benefit of fabulous volunteers and fabulous coaches. In part because of the role that I'm in, I know the questions to ask and the things to look for before I enrol them.

I can think of perhaps only one of the dozens of sports that they're involved in where there are materials either on the website or in hard copy that relate to safe sport and that provide parents the primer they need to understand such basic things as what is right and wrong, and where to go if they want to make a complaint.

Education and awareness are very important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shoemaker.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today—the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Canadian Fencing Federation. Thank you very much for being here, giving us your time and answering some not-so-very-easy questions.

I'm now going to suspend the meeting so that we can go in camera for our business meeting.

[Proceedings continue in camera]