Canadian Heritage Committee on June 12th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Karl Subban]

Okay.

What we'd like to say is that it's important to recognize that many other countries have begun to restrict advertising for sports betting. Italy and Belgium have banned it altogether, and other European countries restrict ads to times and venues that are not seen by children and youth.

We want to see a restriction on the use of sports celebrities and superstar athletes, and we want to ban these sports betting ads.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Subban. You may elaborate during the question and answer session.

Now we go to the question and answer session, beginning with Mr. Lemire for the Bloc Québécois.

Sébastien, you have six minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Auch, thank you very much for your testimony. Under the circumstances, I think that your call for an independent public inquiry is quite legitimate and necessary.

I'd like to hear your opinion on another recommendation the committee heard, one that, in my opinion, makes a great deal of sense after hearing testimony such as yours. It would be to remove the sports portfolio from Heritage Canada, which obviously aims to promote pride in Canada, and integrate it into Health Canada, in order to promote sports as part of a healthy lifestyle and as accessible to all. What do you think of this important proposal by committee?

[Susan Auch]

I have always wondered why sport is in the Department of Heritage. It would be better placed, it seems, in the health portfolio in Canada. I think it is a source of pride, obviously, but that comes every four years—one for summer and one for winter, so every two years—and that's just for a few.

To me, the biggest benefit of sport is mental and physical health and well-being, so why isn't it in the health portfolio? I guess maybe sport is afraid of not getting enough in that portfolio. It should definitely have its own portfolio. It is important. It is such a critically important part of the life of a child to be able to play and do sport, and the fact that it's not in its own portfolio is always shocking to me, for sure.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Indeed, that is the question.

Given your experience and involvement, I'd like you to tell us about the following phenomenon. There seems to be a closed community of experts, when it comes to the people working within the various organizations, such as the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, the Canadian Olympic committee and Own the Podium. Indeed, experience working in a similar field seems to confer a significant advantage to being able to work in another. This means that sports culture never changes, because those people are trained using a cookie cutter approach. But that cookie cutter has contributed to creating a culture of silence and pressure on athletes to perform, which has led to cases of abuse.

Does that situation mean that, as a committee, we need to report those facts to ensure that changes are made to how we value the résumés of the people we want to put in positions of authority over athletes?

[Susan Auch]

A national inquiry would definitely bring out some of these negative things that keep happening.

I saw the new Boxing Canada CEO speaking at the committee last week. He is a 10-year veteran of Own the Podium. He was their high-performance adviser. Those advisers were, unbelievably, bullying me, as a CEO of the organization, and also my staff. As high-performance directors, they cost a lot of money. I don't understand.

You're right. There is a revolving door. There needs to be more discretion, I think, in terms of where the persons came from, why they left the last organization they were with, and what happened in that organization. I talked about a CEO who allowed a sexual assault to basically be exposed in the most minimal possible way, because he was friends with those people in the car. He then gets hired by another NSO, by GymCan, and now we see all the problems at GymCan.

These people cannot just be quiet, because they want to keep their jobs and have organizations such as Own the Podium and COC rehire them and place them in new organizations because they threaten the CEOs who don't want to give in and be puppets. They threaten them with funding losses. It is an epidemic in sport right now.

The NSOs could actually help the grassroots level if they were allowed to function the way those mostly well-meaning CEOs would like them to function when they get into sport. We get bullied into focusing on medals at all cost.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Subban, thank you for testifying and for enlightening us on the dangers of sports betting, which can put pressure on athletes. Can you tell us more about the risks, particularly for young people, associated with legalizing—allowing and promoting this kind of betting on a broader level? What are the potential repercussions for athletes?

[Karl Subban]

When I started out in education and I was in a social gathering, the conversation was always about the teacher, or something that happened in school. I then got into the hockey arena, and in these social settings, the conversation was about the hockey coach, or the hockey problem. Do you know what's happening now? The conversation is about gambling.

Oftentimes when I'm speaking to parents, it's about the impact that gambling is having on the future of our young people. The CAMH here in Ontario shared, in its review of literature, that “there is a causal relationship between people’s exposure to gambling advertising and their intentions to gamble”.

One of the issues.... A parent just shared this with me. An alcoholic can stay away from that environment. If you don't like tobacco smoke, you can just do things to separate yourself from it. When it comes to gambling, you can't really get away from it, especially if you're addicted to it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Subban.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Sébastien.

I will now go to the New Democrats, with Peter Julian for six minutes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

Ms. Auch, thank you for all of your contributions to Canadian sport.

I'm saddened by your testimony. It is heartbreaking to hear what you went through. I think it's even more disturbing when you talk about the various levels, where even if a national sport organization endeavours to change. What I hear you saying is that, essentially, there are layers of protection for the status quo and to maintain the kinds of abuses that take place with Canadian athletes, for other organizations that help to fund those national sport organizations. Really, when you talk about the importance of having a national inquiry, it is very much, I think, because of those systemic problems.

To what extent has the fact that you have other funding organizations that try to cover up abuses that are taking place created the crisis we're seeing now in Canadian sports?

[Susan Auch]

Honestly, I don't think they have attempted to cover it up; they have covered it up. I think it's a crisis.

I was asked to become the CEO by the board at the time. I had no intention of ever working in sport. I did it in an interim position and was very fulfilled at the beginning, but I had unbelievably high pressure from Own the Podium to keep a certain staff member who was absolutely not following our rules. Had I not stuck to my guns, we would not have changed at all. I would have just stayed in the sport system, been the CEO, toed the line and been quiet. This happens every day, I think, but I pushed it and said, “No, we're not continuing with this when this culture is a problem.”

Own the Podium basically threatened me right after that with an intervention. It set up a high-performance management group and barred me from it, in my own organization, in exchange for funds. We would not have received the same funding. We were threatened with losing funding, which is a critical thing for our athletes. Our athletes get this funding and are finally able to perform on a world stage at the highest level.

There are two sets of funding in the national sport organizations. There is the reference level, which supports the activities of the national organization, promoting the sport in the country, doing the administration of it and all those things. There are the excellence funds as well. The reference level hasn't changed in 30 years. The excellence funds came along before Vancouver. I think they were of good intention, but they've gone way out of control.

Own the Podium wants to control everything, and it is a massive problem in sport right now.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

What you're saying is that there is a huge power imbalance. You spoke very explicitly to that. Sport Canada hasn't played a role at all, certainly for the reference funding.

What I hear you say is that the funding for excellence compounds the problem because there isn't any oversight. Sport Canada, up until now, has basically given a blank cheque to organizations. We've seen that repeatedly. That power imbalance with the use of the funding seems to be a major problem.

[Susan Auch]

The funding isn't the problem. The funding could be better managed by the actual national sport organization, and it should be. We should have outside organizations that we can rely on for support, but not for instruction on what we can do with it, or what we have to do with it or face losing it. That's the problem.

The reference level funding does have decent guidelines. The reporting system to the federal government is exceptionally difficult. I think something along the lines of a national Canadian sport council that is separate from the federal government—get rid of Own the Podium and give less power to the Canadian Olympic Committee—would probably be much better. The sports can go to them for support, as opposed to begging and sucking up for funding that should be theirs anyway.

They're just taking another layer of bureaucracy by having all these multi-sport organizations that want to be experts of that specific sport organization.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I have two final questions, as my time is coming to an end.

First off, your story about mediation where the victim is basically forced to sit down with the perpetrator to find some resolution, I find unbelievable. It is irresponsible of any organization to do that. Obviously, a national inquiry is something that is essential to finding out other stories like yours, which we've certainly been hearing, where victims have been forced to try to mediate, to accept the perpetrator. Then you have the NDA, which muzzles victims. This is an impossible situation for victims.

[Susan Auch]

Absolutely. Mediation should never, ever be done in sexual harassment or abuse cases. Without a doubt, there is no benefit to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Peter. Your time is up.

How much time do we have left in this hour, Madam Clerk? Do we have time for a second round?

[The Clerk]

We have until 12:10. We have about 20 minutes left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

All right. We will go to our second round.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Madam Chair, how many witnesses do we have in the second section?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We have three.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

This is a five-minute round.

We begin with Kevin.