Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee and colleagues. Thank you for the kind and warm welcome.
I want to thank you all for undertaking this important study.
I must also thank not only the extraordinary athletes who made the year 2022 the year of athlete advocacy and courageously came forward with their stories of abuse, but also the athletes and their families who have come forward over decades. We owe them our gratitude, and we must do everything in our power to address the many years of abuse and the entrenchment of that abuse—emotional, physical, psychological, sexual and verbal abuse.
Canada's national sport system was never built to protect athletes and young people. It was built to have fit men for war. After Canada “failed” to win a gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, sport changed in our country. We felt it across sport and right down to the club level. The goals had changed, and the goals were to compete for Canada and to win medals for the nation.
In the 1980s, some sports federations and coaches put the health, safety and well-being of athletes far behind winning. Athletes were experimented on. They inserted fake bladders with clean urine and young athletes injected older athletes between their toes with performance-enhancing drugs to hide the drug use. The 1988 Dubin inquiry into the use of drugs and banned practices exposed the extent of the rot and made dozens of recommendations, which government implemented and which made Canada a leader in the war against doping in sport.
We need that same leadership now. Our athletes should not have to beg, for over a year now, for us to do the right thing and move forward with an inquiry into an outdated sport system. In 1988, an inquiry was called in less than two weeks, and it cost $3 million.
My first recommendation is that the government hold an independent, comprehensive, systematic inquiry focused on the health, safety and well-being of athletes.
My second recommendation is that a systematic inquiry needs to start with the athletes, be trauma-informed and survivors must be fully empowered to speak their truths should they so choose.
In the 1990s, hockey player Sheldon Kennedy bravely came forward with revelations of years of sexual abuse at the hands of his junior coach. His story should have been a wake-up call to the Canadian hockey community and to the entire sport system. It wasn't.
I come at this discussion from the perspective of a high-performance athlete. As a gymnast, I did double back somersaults in the air from the floor. I ran the Boston Marathon many times, and I competed in half Ironmans. I have been a coach, a dance teacher and a judge throughout my life. As you know, I also served as the Minister of Sport, and I made safe sport my number one priority.
In the year I served as minister, I put in place the first broad strokes of a safe sport system, including a national helpline, a third party investigator, an agreement from every sport minister across Canada to make safe sport a priority, 13 safe sport summits, mandatory prevention training and funding, and the development of a coaching code of conduct.
With regard to my third recommendation, the spoken and unspoken rules of each sport, the power differentials that exist among the national sport organization—coach, trainer, medical support, members and others—and the concept of owning athletes and prioritizing winning championships over athlete health, safety and well-being need to be investigated.
My fourth recommendation is that Sport Canada's safe sport measures, accountability and financial instruments developed to ensure compliance need to be examined.
Fifth, national sport organizations and their collective power need to be investigated, as well as governance accountability and finances and how sport leaders circulated among NSOs and reinforced relationships and protections.
My sixth recommendation is that an inquiry review data on all forms of abuse in sport on a sport-by-sport basis.
My last and most important recommendation is that a thorough investigation be undertaken about whether cases of abuse were effectively resolved and perpetrators removed from the system, or were there passive enablers in place who protected the sport and the organization over the protection of young people?
The time is now for a national public inquiry. If Canada gets it right, we can better protect our athletes. We can also be a catalyst for a long-overdue global conversation on athlete health, safety and well-being, as we were in the aftermath of Dubin 35 years ago.
With your indulgence, Mr. Chair, I would like to say this very briefly to those who are living with cancer: Know that you're not alone and that I stand with you. I'm grateful for the life-saving medicine, science and compassionate and excellent care of our health care professionals.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
