Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you once again for the opportunity to be part of this crucial study on safe sport in Canada.
The world of sport is in crisis. Canadian sport is in crisis. Make no mistake. Abuse in sports in all its forms is a systemic crisis, and it requires our immediate and undivided attention. Harm has already occurred and it's continuing to occur today. It will continue to occur tomorrow. We must act now, because now we know, and we must start taking care of our people now.
We know that as many as 70% of participants in sports will fall victim to at least one form of abuse during their sporting journey. The last record of sport participants in Canada dates from 2016 and stood at eight million people. Of that, 70% is 5.6 million people harmed.
Let that number sink in for a second or two. That's 5.6 million people harmed.
Put together all of the stories you've heard first-hand here, the ones you've just heard today, in the media and through friends and family. Even if we were to add the thousands of people who signed the petitions to request a national inquiry into sport—which should happen, actually—we are nowhere close to the actual number of people harmed in sport, with absolutely no end in sight and certainly no holistic solution on the table. “Urgency” doesn't even begin to describe the gravity of the systemic crisis we are facing.
I'm here today before you as the founder of The Spirit of Trust. It's the only charitable organization in the world that has developed a blueprint for a holistic and scalable model of care with a dedicated focus on empowering, supporting and safely guiding all survivors of any type of abuse in sport on their transformational journey.
We must start taking care of our people now. Won't you be part of that solution with us?
Let me tell you about our “why”. Why do we think we need an organization like The Spirit of Trust? It's because we wished we'd had it when we all went through our issues.
There's this urgent need to build capacity to empower the largest number of survivors on their paths to recovery. We're going to be able to do two things at once with this model of care. Number one, heal the past and present survivors in order to, number two, prevent the harm in the future. Healing is the best form of prevention.
We must exist because healing survivors has always been a non-negotiable part of the safe sport agenda, and it must be delivered independently from the sporting systems.
We must exist because the imbalance of powers must be addressed. Empowering, guiding and supporting survivors will be key for the scales to finally start to shift.
We must exist because we need to decrease the hardship on all survivors. We will build trust, foster hope and save lives.
What we know about healing from trauma is that it's a lifelong journey. It's a unique path for each and every one of us, but we have one common thread. It's us, the survivors. Whether it's Myriam, Amelia, Katherine, Guylaine, Kelly today, Trinea, Kristen, Jon or Ryan, it doesn't matter. The commonality is our lived experience. The key's to create safe and professional spaces to foster that human connection that will build trust, foster hope and save lives.
At the centrepiece of our scalable model of care there are evidence-based, holistic, survivor-led and expert-driven programs and tools that are developed, built and delivered for, with and by survivors. More specifically, they model the peer support concept that's very successfully used in the military and other high-intensity industries. That's at the core of our offerings.
Whether survivors will use the individual or group model, virtually or in-person, or the survivor advocate accompanying someone through a complaint process, all of these paths will exist individually or be used in combination with each other. Peer support will build trust, foster hope and save lives.
We will be able to deliver that through our partnerships, research and protocols. All survivors wanting to support others will be screened and trained, as well as supported, to offer the safest model of care.
Who's in the team of superheroes behind these initiatives? There are a ton of us, and we're all from diverse backgrounds, but we share a mandatory combination of things. You heard some of them today. They are lived experience with expertise, and the trauma-informed and human-centred lens.
Each of us is driven by ethics and courage. I want to put emphasis on these two words. It's ethics and courage. We all believe in the same thing, which is that our model of care is a must, as we need to start taking care of our people now. We will build trust, foster hope and save lives. It's a game-changer.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.