Canadian Heritage Committee on June 19th, 2023

[Judge Rosemarie Aquilina]

I totally agree: Whistle-blowers need to be protected. There needs to be a fundamental change in all sports, but, again, it begins at the top. It begins with listening to the athletes. If we don't listen to the athletes, if we don't bring in those whistle-blowers and ask what prompted them, what the roadblocks were and how we can help them, then we have not done enough. Without that, it's like going to the emergency room and having a patient with a ruptured appendix. If you remove the appendix but you leave the poison, the patient will die.

I applaud all of your efforts. I've been watching the hockey issues and some of the coaches who have been removed and put back, and all of that. I think the whistle-blower piece, which was part of your question, is key and critical, as long as there are protections. Right now, sport is operating in fear. Take the fear out. When you take the fear out, you will find that you have these human beings, and all they want to do is represent Canada and give you their best. They are asking for your best.

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

Through your leadership and your position, you are creating a framework that encourages people to speak freely.

You have witnessed the many strategies that federations use to protect their image and their reputation. Independent organizations do conduct investigations in some cases. There is a risk, however, from a legal perspective, that the evidence may be contaminated. I would like to hear your thoughts on that.

What mechanisms would help us protect the victims who are brave enough to speak out?

[Judge Rosemarie Aquilina]

Contaminated evidence is a huge issue, even in the United States. There has to be protection of the chain of custody. There has to be some education about what we need to gather, how we gather it and where it goes before it's lost, destroyed or contaminated, because that is also a huge problem in the United States. That was a problem in the Larry Nassar case. This case was so old that by the time there was the investigation, things got shredded, lost and destroyed. It will take education, and it will also take penalty, because that's tampering with evidence.

The legal system must partner with you to look at where they can be helpful, and then you need to follow through. You may not want to jail a coach, but if they are a bad actor, why not jail them like the rest? Just because they wear the hat of a coach, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be in front of a judge and possibly go to prison.

We need to look at evidence and even train athletes. Athletes should know where to go, how to protect evidence, how to protect themselves and how to report. If we start with education on all of that, you will find less contamination, more reporting and a cleaner system.

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

In March 2022, people from the gymnastics community sent a letter complaining about abuse in their federation. You gave them your support publicly, which was very bold, coming from someone in your position.

Why is it important for you to offer your support to Canadian athletes and send a message across the border?

[Judge Rosemarie Aquilina]

If you don't speak up, you're part of the problem. I would always rather be part of the solution and pave a new road. Paving a new road means that we can make sure people are safe and we can fully explore the options. Going on the same tired road means that we are not looking at the forest or the trees. We're not protecting anybody, and we're not looking at the issues. So, yes, I'm going to speak out. I don't care about the consequences to me.

I think it's important that we all partner together in one voice for safety. To do anything different means we are joining together in abusing children and others, and I will never stand for that. I will always take the road less travelled, regardless of the consequence to me. Yes, there are people who don't like my voice. Oh well, pour my coffee, I don't care.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now I go to Peter Julian for the New Democrats.

Peter, you have six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Judge Aquilina. You're a hero of ours. This is some of the most important testimony that we're going to hear. As some of my colleagues have mentioned, we embarked on this process about a year ago now. We are coming to the point where we're going to have to produce our conclusions and recommendations, so your testimony comes at just the right time.

You said a couple of things that really struck me. First, there's the power of the fear of retaliation, which silences victims when there isn't a balance of institutions to allow those voices of the victims to be heard. You also talked about bystanders, about people doing nothing. If I'm quoting you properly, you said that potentially hundreds of people allowed Larry Nassar to be a serial abuser, victimizer and rapist, with no one speaking up until he was brought to justice.

I'd like you to talk about those two points. First, how do we counter the fear of retaliation? In the Larry Nassar case, so many people did nothing, even though they may have been aware of the abuse that was taking place. How do we stop that? How do we build a culture where people speak out because they understand that to not speak out is wrong?

[Judge Rosemarie Aquilina]

Right now you have a culture of gaslighting and grooming that has become normalized. People don't speak up, out of fear. They've seen that they're not going to play the next game. Their friends are going to make fun of them. They're going to be kicked off. They're going to be bullied. They won't get their scholarship or whatever it is. There are lots of things. They are fearful of this retaliation.

We have to start anew. We need to teach people that it is positive to report abuse and to keep people safe. Then we need to have safe places to report and safe people to report to. You cannot report a coach who's abusing to the assistant coach, who then may be retaliated against by the coach. It takes a long time to remove coaches.

Is there another channel? In the military, we have a chain of command. What's the chain of command for reporting? I'll bet if you asked an athlete, they wouldn't know a safe chain of command for reporting. Some of them report to their parents, and their parents say, “Well, I'll report, but understand, you might not be able to play.” Then the child, or athlete of any age, says, “I want to play. That's my life.”

We don't have safe places to report. We don't have a chain that is known or that is safe and where action is then taken immediately. If you report an abuser and the abuser stays, and you still have to travel or be in the locker room with that abuser, have you really reported in a safe place? No. You are fearful that someone has told that abuser.

We need to make it very clear that you are a hero when you report, and to always be the voice, and that there's no retaliation or retribution. If there is, whoever retaliates or takes any action against you is out. They are out, not you. They are out. There have to be clearly defined and articulated rules that are trained and that are followed—that are not just on paper but followed.

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

You have been working with members of Congress to try to develop a safe sport system in the United States. You've been working, I believe, with a number of members of Congress who have been looking to the U.S. Olympic committee and making changes.

Can you maybe talk about some of the successes or some of the disappointments you've seen in that process as you've been talking with members of Congress? Obviously, those members are struggling with what we're struggling with as members of Parliament, on how to make recommendations that change the system.

[Judge Rosemarie Aquilina]

I've spoken nationally and locally in Michigan and in other states. There are some common problems. First, you have to acknowledge that there is a problem. A lot of people don't want to acknowledge that there's a problem, because then it's a loss of money.

One of the successes we've had is that they were able to put 50% of athletes on a governing body. We'll have to be able to see in the long term how that works, but it was not done before. Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic gold medallist in swimming, several times over, was really spearheading that. That was very successful.

The statute of limitations has changed, so the reporting has been extended. It varies throughout the States, but that has helped bring some of this to the forefront. That remains in discussion throughout the United States. Some states have eliminated the statute of limitations completely and some have just elongated it. That has really helped to bring some of these old issues to the forefront. Now they can be investigated and you can do what you're doing here, which is to look at how we got here. That, I think, is a huge success.

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

In the United States, there hasn't been that type of public inquiry. There have been other types of investigations into abuses in sports and making sports safe.

Is it fair to say that we can learn from each other on both sides of the border so that, hopefully, right across North America, we can make sports safer for everyone?

[Judge Rosemarie Aquilina]

Not only should we learn from each other, but we should also partner together. In the Olympics, we should partner together for safety. If America sees something Canada is doing right or wrong, we should talk about it. It's the same thing if Canada sees something America is doing right or wrong. We should talk about it. We should get at these core problems so that, together, we solve the problem. That's because we're all partnered together. We're all human beings. We all suffer the same.

Let's protect children across every border.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Peter, your time is up.

As you well know, we have 30-minute bells. We need to have our in camera meeting soon, but I think we still have time for one round. I'm cutting the round down to four minutes and two minutes.

We'll begin with Kevin Waugh and the Conservatives for four minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I'm sorry. I have a point of order here, Madam Chair.

We don't have bells here, and I don't see an email coming in to that effect. My understanding is that we have a vote scheduled for about one o'clock.

There's been some conversation in the room. We're curious about whether we might agree to do an entire round. Since we got started 10 minutes late, perhaps we could go until 10 minutes past 12 o'clock in order to complete the next round.

Would that be possible?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Is that the wish of the committee? Would anyone disagree with that, or is everyone in agreement?

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

It's an excellent suggestion, Madam Chair, because the vote will not be until slightly before one o'clock, or just after.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Okay. Thank you.

We have bells at 12:30 p.m., so let's go back to the five-minute round.

We'll start with Kevin Waugh.

Kevin, you have five minutes.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Welcome, Judge Aquilina.

We started this because there were sexual assault allegations over a function Hockey Canada held in June 2018, five years ago today, in London, Ontario. It was five years ago. Let that sink in.

This past weekend, I read that several of the players on that junior team are getting upset because they weren't at the function, yet they have been tied to the function and can no longer represent Canada in any world competition. Is that fair to them? It's been five years and ticking. We still have not heard from the London, Ontario police force.

That's the issue we have in this country. Everybody is waiting for the investigation. Nobody knows when. You said the police investigation.... They should close it and bring it out. They could take five more years to bring it out. I don't know. Nobody knows.

What should we do with this? That's where this safe sport study started. This incident was reported a year and a half after it happened, by someone at TSN looking at the court dockets: “Oh, look what I see.”

[Judge Rosemarie Aquilina]

You have to impose time frames. If you have an investigation for 10 years, is there any evidence? After 10 years, if you don't have any evidence, what's going on? You need to have some kind of evidence.

Also, when there's a case against people, take those people out so the rest can move forward. It shouldn't affect generations of hockey.

There has to be an analysis that goes forward. You can't just say, “Oh, I'm going to continue this investigation for years and years”, and then stall hockey, its players and generations. That's unconscionable. It's also very unsportsmanlike. There's a clock in every game, isn't there? Where is the time out for law enforcement? Either they have a case or they don't. I dismiss cases in front of me all the time. If they have a case, they can build it against those few, and the rest should go forward.

They should clean it up. There have to be clear policies, reporting procedures and time limits, and there has to be an understanding of ethical and legal boundaries and time frames.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

We have an organization called Sport Canada. All it does is hand out money. It never disciplines anybody until, all of a sudden, the shit hits the fan, if you don't mind my saying it. Now Hockey Canada gets all its funding back. We still don't know what happened; it was five years ago today. They get their money, and the federal government says, “We recommend Hockey Canada get its money.”

Here's our problem. We have too many bureaucrats involved. We have Sport Canada, and now, a year ago, we started this OSIC.

Let me read you a letter, because I talked to someone from Ontario over a month ago who had a problem with his daughter being harassed at the Canada Soccer National Development Centre in Markham, Ontario. He filed a complaint with OSIC. He filed it. Why wouldn't you? I told him that's the procedure, and he did so. He was told he was going to get a response in seven days. Ten days later, he followed up, and three weeks later, there was still no response. A month later, there's still no response.

Do you see the problem we're having? It's bureaucracy: Sport Canada and now OSIC a year later. They told him, “We're going to look into this”, but a month later—crickets.

[Judge Rosemarie Aquilina]

Again, money talks. In the United States, if I make a Freedom of Information Act complaint or request, they have to respond within so many days. They can ask for an extension. If they don't comply, there's money attached. If they don't comply again, they can come to court.

Why aren't you having deadlines? If they're going to respond to a letter, they should have seven or 10 days, or whatever it is. If they don't, they have to have an explanation or they have to ask for an extension, and then if they don't, they cough up the money. If they keep paying, money eventually talks. Why is the federal government handing out money for abuse? They're partnering with abuse, and they need to be called out on that abuse.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you.

My time's up, but I appreciated your comments here this morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Kevin.

Now we will go to the Liberals and Lisa Hepfner.

Lisa, you have five minutes, please.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to thank our witness here today.

I was among, I'm sure, many people around the world who were absolutely horrified by the Larry Nassar case. There's some evidence that I don't think will ever leave my head. I really appreciate your work during that time. I think it was a decision of yours to hear from so many survivors. I don't think the trial necessarily had to unroll that way. Please tell us why you made that decision and what you learned from it.