Thank you, Madam Chair.
Judge Aquilina, it is a great honour to meet you today. Your presence here today caps off more than a year's work on this issue.
Sport is not a topic that is easily put forward in Parliament. We had to be creative. This debate was the subject of motions in the House of Commons. Moreover, in three days, on June 22, it will be a year since I proposed a motion that was anonymously adopted by all parliamentarians to hold a public inquiry into abuse and mistreatment in hockey, particularly within Hockey Canada.
Since then, things have of course evolved. We did some remarkable work thanks to a consensus. All the political parties agreed to get to the bottom of what is happening in hockey. I wanted to mention that.
The matter then moved on to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women to talk about the status of athletes, and then it came back to us at the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
We have heard testimony from athletes. Many athletes told us about what they had experienced. The interesting thing is that we also offered them a framework that gave them some protection, which is essential for people to speak freely.
We are now waiting for the Minister of Sport, Pascale St‑Onge, to announce an independent, public inquiry to investigate all abuse in sport.
You are encouraging us to conduct that public inquiry, in particular to make Canada a leader internationally in this regard.
Why is it important for the United States and all the countries that are watching us right now to receive that strong message in support of a paradigm shift in the world of sports to promote the health and safety of our young athletes?