Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
Thank you very much for inviting me today.
On behalf of Rugby Canada, I would like to thank the committee for its ongoing work to make sport in Canada better and safer for everyone.
Our mission at Rugby Canada is to provide lifelong rugby experiences to clubs and communities across the nation that will inspire participation by people of all ages, abilities, genders and ethnic backgrounds so that they may be healthy and active and contribute to their communities, whether that be through playing rugby, coaching, officiating, volunteering or supporting.
In rugby, we pride ourselves on being a sport for people of all physical shapes and sizes, as well as a sport with strong values of integrity, passion, solidarity, discipline and respect. We have over 38,000 registered people involved in our sport across Canada. We are also responsible for fielding our women's and men's national teams in both traditional 15-a-side rugby and the sevens rugby format that you see in the Olympic Games.
We desire that all people involved in rugby have healthy, enjoyable and rewarding experiences in our sport. We believe that for our elite players and teams to represent Canada to the best of their abilities, we must provide a safe and supportive environment for them to prepare, train and compete. We are committed to a never-ending journey of putting the safety and well-being of our players and participants at the centre of what we do each and every day. We are working to create a culture of continuous improvement, where we listen as well as educate, and where we care as well as perform.
In the past, our organization has encountered conduct that didn't align with our values. These experiences drove us to embark on a journey of significant change, designed to transform Rugby Canada into a better-governed, more transparent, better-resourced and more effective national sport organization. Some of these actions include an overhaul of our governance structure and transitioning to a skills-based board led by our chair Sally Dennis, who is the first woman to chair Rugby Canada. We have two athlete directors on our board—one male, one female—elected by the Canadian Rugby Players Association.
Following the conclusion of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the board of Rugby Canada commissioned an independent high-performance review in response to on-field and off-field challenges faced by the organization. The findings from that review were published in March 2022 and included 12 recommendations to improve the culture, structure and strategy of Rugby Canada. In July 2022, Rugby Canada made a leadership change and asked me to join the organization as CEO.
Good governance and fiscal responsibility are the foundation of high-performance sport. We have invested in our organizational capacity as a governing body by creating new roles and filling gaps in our organization, including a senior director of finance and business services, a human resources manager and a high-performance director to lead the performances across all of Rugby Canada's national teams.
Our director of governance and regulations, Ashley Lewis, who joined us in January, is here today to support Rugby Canada and the committee with your review, and has been outstanding in helping our organization understand how we can better govern our sport. With Ashley's leadership, we have updated our policies and procedures across the organization, including the incorporation of our status as a signatory to OSIC. We have adopted a reconciliation, equity, accessibility, diversity and inclusion policy, developed by our independent ethics and integrity committee, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Canadian Rugby Players Association. We are currently engaged in discussions with the CRPA on a new collective agreement for our players.
We have regular dialogue between our players and leaders within our organization. I have personally spent time with all of our national teams and engaged with our women's and men's teams collectively. We are currently writing a new strategic plan for Rugby Canada to set the direction for our organization over the next several years as we build toward the North American Rugby World Cup in 2031 and 2033.
I feel we have made some real progress, but we know these steps are just the beginning. We now need to find the necessary resources so that we can do more to support our teams, players and community.
After the months of important and, no doubt, difficult work that you have conducted as a committee, I feel that out of respect to you and to our players I should finish by talking about some of the good that sport and rugby bring to communities across Canada. It was a long, hard pandemic, but rugby has returned. Canadians are coming together to play rugby, be healthy, exercise, connect with their friends and teammates, compete and then shake hands and share some camaraderie after the game. This is rugby.
Your Canadian national teams are filled with some outstanding young people. They are some of the most impressive young men and women I have ever been associated with. You should be proud of them. In particular, your women's national team is one of the best in the world. I had the good fortune to spend some time with them at the Rugby World Cup last autumn in New Zealand. These young women are not just outstanding rugby players, but outstanding young people and outstanding Canadians.
We're hosting a major women's international tournament here in Ottawa in July. I invite each member of the committee to attend and spend some time with these women. I assure you that they will inspire you as they do me. They will make you proud to be Canadian.
Respectfully, they deserve our support.
Thank you for continuing your work to improve sport in Canada. We still have much to do.
Thank you for your attention.