Thank you.
During international crises and natural disasters, Canada supports refugees, has peace and stabilization operations, has disaster assistance and response teams, and acts quickly and appropriately when it receives a request for assistance from countries facing disasters, conflicts or acute food insecurity.
So, I have to ask you this: Why do your Canadian children have to reach across your borders to this judge to ask that child abuse stop in sports? Your Canadian athletes are asking for the 100% they give you. You are their Parliament parents, and they're asking you to protect, defend and provide for them. Their health, safety and welfare are in grave danger. They are at risk every single day they are performing with coaches who are untrained and uncaring and have a “win at all costs” attitude.
Athletes deserve and demand immediate and meaningful action and accountability. It will only happen with an independent judicial investigation where those athletes who are not tied to any body but who have come before you and are asking for help with their input.... When will Canada hear its children and take this meaningful action to protect them from the pain, suffering and trauma they suffer in sport?
Canada should be celebrating and honouring the excellence of Canadian athletes and their well-being, not profiting from their abuse. Athletes have the absolute right to expect safe, positive, healthy training without physical and emotional abuse. The current culture allows aggressive coaches who overstep, blur lines and abuse children. If you want to maintain Canadian sports' integrity, you need to protect the sports and the players. Remember, all athletes begin as children, and what's happening now in sports is that they are suffering a lifetime of abuse that has become normalized in sports. Allowing abuse in sports is allowing and condoning child abuse. It is the murdering of the souls of the athletes, who pay the price for the rest of their lives while everyone else profits.
Science and psychology have proven that positive coaching always leads to better athletic outcomes compared to negative, abusive coaching, which leads to a lifetime of physical and emotional harm and trauma. Abuse cannot be mediated. Minimizing the risk is not enough. Eliminating the risk of abuse is the only answer. Non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, cannot be mandated. They cannot be tolerated because they hide the truth from parents, the public, the media, and even you.
Sports cannot—and it is proven—regulate themselves. They need you. They need your help. All governing bodies must have half of the seats with athletes. Again, independent athletes, those voices that have independently come before you and said “help us”.... You need to listen to them. Those are the dissenters, and “dissenters” is not a bad word. When you have a dissenter, that means you have an open discussion and you get the right answer. These children deserve the right answer. They deserve protection, and they deserve it now.
To end the culture of abuse, sports must be under the oversight of the health and human rights committee for protection of athletes, because being safe is a human right. It is not a question mark. It is an absolute right. Sport must rebrand itself with zero tolerance for abuse of any kind. Safety must be a priority, not an afterthought, not a cover-up, not a back seat to money and medals. Before any meaningful action can be taken, you must—I implore you; I beg you—have this independent judicial investigation, because without it, you will not reignite the trust that you have lost.
The current reporting and investigation process is so closely tied to the organizations that monitor the athletes' career that the athletes do not report out of fear that more harm will come to them.