Canadian Heritage Committee on June 12th, 2023

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

You described somebody who is in the position of CEO and has been there longer than his term. It's against their own bylaws, so what's the mechanism to appeal that or to get Sport Canada to take action there?

[Susan Auch]

What I said was that the president, who is an elected member, has overstayed his maximum eight years and his maximum four terms.

There is a way they could have made a special permission, but I did a search through freedom of information, and Heritage Canada doesn't have any of the resolutions that would have allowed him to stay longer.

If a president wants to do something similar to what happened to me in Manitoba, if the president wants to impose their might through their policies and through the power they have, they have an unbelievable amount of power and they have the funds behind them. They have the legal defence that usually the people who are fighting them don't have, so it's very difficult.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Are there any final recommendations you want the committee to consider?

[Susan Auch]

I would really encourage trying to lower the bureaucracy in sport, but not lower the funding, because it is much needed. Adding a level of bureaucracy was maybe helpful when the meddling and bullying and imposing were not so strong, but now, when we see these people in interviews and demanding to be in interviews with organizations they are not a part of, with the threat of intervention—

[The Clerk]

I'm so sorry to interrupt.

I wanted to flag, Dr. Fry, that the six minutes are up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Marilyn.

We now go to the Liberals, starting with Lisa Hepfner.

Lisa, you have six minutes, please.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Auch.

I have to tell you, I was also playing ringette in Calgary in the seventies and eighties, so I'm wondering if we encountered each other back then, maybe on opposing teams.

For me, it was always a really positive experience. I learned teamwork, and I learned how to get better at sport, how to improve my skills. We had really great bonding moments when we went away as a team to different towns to play in tournaments. So for me, I'm trying to reconcile that experience with what is happening. I was never at the level where I was going to be an Olympic athlete, so I'm wondering if that's where this system breaks down and where the culture breaks down, when we're talking about athletes who are really at a higher level.

We're not just hearing from skaters here at this committee. We're hearing from all kinds of different sports. I'm trying to see if maybe there's a link between the abuse we're seeing in all these different sports. Does it happen at a later level, when we're talking about higher-level athletes? Is there a problem with how we're training people to get to that higher level? Is that where the culture breaks down?

Maybe you could opine a little bit on that.

[Susan Auch]

Well, I think things have really changed since the 1970s and 1980s. I think sport has become much more professionalized and regulated than it was when we were children. I think that is part of the problem throughout the grassroots level, all the way up to Olympic or professional-level sports.

I think sports now are pressuring children to specialize into individual sports too early. We were able to do many sports. I played ringette until I was about 15. I was going to the Canada Games shortly after that, in speed skating and cycling. I think that doesn't happen as much now, because people are trying to develop these little robots that are going to win Olympic medals. I think it's the sport organizations that are allowing this to happen.

Certainly, I tried to implement a better, long-term athlete development program before I left SSC. One of the goals was to allow children to be children on the ice, before we make them into little professional athletes. Ninety-nine per cent of the athletes won't get up there. What they get out of sport they get when they're children. They learn from sport all of the discipline, development, kinesthetic sense, muscle use, aerobic and anaerobic systems development, friendships and powerful communication styles. That is what sport is all about. Then, a few get to go on a little further and become Olympic medallists.

We need to inspire both sport and healthier living. We need the Olympic medallists, the national sport heroes and the professional athletes to inspire families and children to go into sport. We also need the children, who are the bulk of our sporting system in Canada, to enjoy their time as athletes and not be pressured to go into a direction that might not be suited for them.

I was fully suited to be an Olympic-level athlete. I loved the stress. I loved competition. I'm not sure that most kids love that. It's just not for everyone. Why are we pushing children to do that sooner than they need to?

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Would you have recommendations about how to protect children at that level? Do we need more supervision? Is there a plan? Are there any suggestions you might have for us?

[Susan Auch]

We need organizations to absolutely follow their own policies. Policies are there for a reason.

There is conflict of interest with parents being involved in coaching and leadership positions. Conflict-of-interest documents aren't just to say that you have a conflict of interest and let everyone know. Once you have a conflict of interest, you're biased. You don't have the ability to say, “I'm not going to be biased.” You don't have that anymore. That is a huge part of it.

There should be policies on keeping parents away, possibly, from their children's development in sport, so they are spectators only, not coaches, administrators and volunteers at board levels. It's tough, I know, because we need parents to be volunteers. There has to be some way to control the outside interference.

It's not just parents. It's coaches who want to make their own little swim team, for example, the only team that is succeeding at sending athletes up to the national levels. They compete against each other. We need a better, positive rivalry system in Canada, rather than this competition system that is negative and forces coaches to feel like they're forced to hurry up and develop young athletes to be the best in the world. It's not healthy for everyone.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thanks very much.

Would you say that better mental health or psychological supports would be helpful here?

[Susan Auch]

Absolutely. Access to mental health support as a young athlete would teach them, potentially, how to assess their surroundings and say no to things better. That's one of the problems. Children just idealize their coaches and it's tough to say “No, I don't want to do that.” For sure, mental health support and being socially stronger would be great for young athletes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I think that's my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 50 seconds, Lisa.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

All right. Then let me ask whether you think we need better co-operation between provinces and the federal organizations. How do we bring everybody together so we're on the same page?

[Susan Auch]

You know, honestly, I think we have to take the system apart and rebuild it. A national inquiry is probably the only way to do it.

What's difficult in this system today is that the PTSOs, the provincial sport organizations, the NSOs and then the multi-sport organizations are all fighting for a piece of the pie.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Lisa. That's it.

I note that Mr. Subban is here. Has he been cleared for takeoff?

[Karl Subban, Committee Member, Ban Ads for Gambling]

Yes, we're ready for the faceoff. I'm ready to drop the puck.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

All right. We can have Mr. Subban present to the committee for five minutes, please.

[Karl Subban]

Thank you.

I want to thank you for this opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on behalf of the campaign to ban ads for gambling. I am Karl Subban.

I would like to take some time to share our position. The campaign is a group of sports-loving Canadians who are deeply disturbed by the proliferation of content advertising sports betting during televised—

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

Madam Chair, I have a point of order. Is it possible to ask the witness to move his microphone out slightly and place it at mustache level?

[Karl Subban]

In the trial run it was okay.

How is that?

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

It's a little better, thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Go ahead, Mr. Subban.

[Karl Subban]

The campaign involves a group of sports-loving Canadians who are deeply disturbed by the proliferation of content advertising sports betting during televised sports, on social media, on billboards and in and around arenas and stadiums. We are Olympians, sports leaders and parents of athletes, as well as researchers and teachers. Such is the harm created by the ads for gambling that we urge Parliament to ban such advertising, in the same way and for the same reasons it previously banned advertising for tobacco, to minimize harm. We also call on federal, provincial and territorial governments to prevent betting on the Olympics, Paralympics, amateur and educational—that is, school, college and university—sports. We see it as a safe-sport issue.

In the first place, the exhortation to gamble, urging people to gamble, demeans the spirit of the sport and creates a powerful external pressure upon athletes to perform in ways never intended. Instead of the athleticism, kinesthetic beauty, ethical values, intercultural respect and communal spirit of sports, sports betting reduces meaning to whether a team or a player achieves a point spread or a parlay is made within a game. It pressures the athlete to think about the spread, not the team. Athletes in sports on which betting is allowed are increasingly subjected to abusive pressure placed on them by gambling through social media.

Second, although it's early days for hard data, we hear over and over again that the allure of sports betting, heightened by endorser stars like Wayne Gretzky, Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid, seems to be particularly attractive to young Canadian sportsmen, many of whom already suffer from confidence issues and other mental issues.

What is not in doubt from the research is that worldwide gambling ads, in terms of both content and frequency, are particularly enticing to adolescents and other vulnerable—