Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, good evening.
My name is Andrew Campbell, and I am the senior assistant deputy minister at Canadian Heritage for the sport sector. Sport Canada falls under my responsibility and continues to be a key component of Canadian Heritage where our mission is to ensure Canadians participate and excel in sports. Within this mission, the health and safety of all participants in sport, not only high-performance athletes, is a key priority for us.
Over the years, I have been seized by the issue of concussions and impressed by the strong engagement not only of Sport Canada, but of the sport sector as a whole, along with the health and education sectors, and the provinces and territories, which are indispensable, as it has been said.
Indeed, five years ago, concussions were not a priority. However, let me be clear in saying that, while we have made many strides in addressing this public health issue, there is still work to be done. But today, I would like to highlight some of the accomplishments made by Sport Canada in order to help you identify remaining gaps and recommendations for moving forward.
First, I'm pleased to report that Sport Canada has been monitoring this issue since 2009, and we're seeing increased consciousness throughout the country around the scope of the concussion issue. In 2009 it seemed to be just within the professional sport sector. Shortly thereafter, in 2011, during the sport leadership conference in Toronto, Sport Canada was involved in the organization of a workshop with Dr. Charles Tator and another one around our 2010 Vancouver games Olympic medallists. This represented our first initiative to sensitize the sport community as a whole to the issue of concussions and to highlight the need for action.
At this point, Sport Canada embarked on a robust collaborative work with provinces and territories. The federal-provincial-territorial sport committee and the sport, physical activity and recreation, SPAR, committee allow us to work closely with all provincial and territorial governments and experts in addressing issues in the sport sector, as you saw earlier today.
Sport Canada is the co-chair of the federal-provincial-territorial sport committee and the sport, physical activity and recreation committee, and through this mechanism, in addition to managing Canada Games, we also address matters that emerge regarding our sport governance, including harassment, abuse, and in this case, concussions. We're very proud of the solid, multi-sector partnership that we've developed in managing concussions, and it is within these fora that the vital decisions on nationwide policies and their relevant implementation are made.
To support the work of this federal-provincial-territorial coordination, Sport Canada hosted the first multi-sector consultation in January of 2015. 2015 also marked the issuance of respective mandate letters for the Minister of Sport and the Minister of Health, who respectively indicated the importance of directing efforts towards the development of a pan-Canadian strategy on concussions.
I'd like to underline that our collaboration with the health sector, represented by the Public Health Agency of Canada, has been crucial in helping us to move this yardstick in both sport and society. My colleagues from PHAC will highlight the important work they have supported.
I also want to highlight that we are working with the education sector through the joint consortium for school health, and that we are building stronger collaboration to reach the school sport system to disseminate required information.
Further, during the 2017 conference of the Council of Ministers of Education, Sport Canada provided a presentation in which we showcased our work on concussion management in sport.
Another foundational event that represented outreach to the wider public was the 2016 Governor General's conference on concussions in sport hosted at Rideau Hall. This event represented a huge success in raising awareness and outreach to communities across the country to emphasize the importance of working together to harmonize our work in this area.
Sport Canada's work also includes a close relationship with 56 national sport organizations and several multi-service sport organizations, some of which have appeared in front of this committee.
Since 2016, Sport Canada has been working alongside Parachute Canada to facilitate their work with the national sport organizations in developing and refining their return-to-sport protocols and to ensure that they are aligned with the Canadian guidelines on concussion referenced in previous sessions.
To ensure dissemination of this extensive work, in 2017 we hosted another conference to highlight the work on management and detection of concussions. This work was done with the support of the Sport Information Resource Centre. During that event, we also launched with the SIRC the “We Are Headstrong” national campaign. That campaign, aligned with the Canadian guidelines from federal-provincial-territorial work, was designed in consultation with the sport sector ranging from those at the national level to those in smaller communities. These stakeholders underscored the desire to ensure that the communication on concussion management remains clear, simple and instructive on crucial steps to follow, from the moment an athlete or player receives a blow to the head to the return to sport activity. The “We Are Headstrong” campaign focused on four key general principles to apply to a suspected concussion: recognize, remove, refer and return.
I just presented a list of different activities that Sport Canada has taken on, which demonstrates the scope of Sport Canada's contribution to the wide-ranging management of concussion in sport, including the areas of awareness and detection. Resulting from discussions on pan-Canadian harmonized approaches, which you have heard about already at the committee and in the previous presentation, we have identified that we still have work to do in the areas of surveillance and prevention of concussions.
On the surveillance front, the sport community has indicated that it will be difficult for them to conduct thorough data collection since the type of personal data resides in the health domain. The sport sector has also identified to us a lack of capacity to sustain data collection due to the limited capacity of those who undertake the work. I think, as highlighted earlier, the sector is primarily voluntary.
This is not to suggest that the sport sector should have no involvement in the surveillance component, but at this point the federal-provincial-territorial SPAR ministers have indicated that Sport Canada should discuss with the Public Health Agency of Canada how to enhance the existing systems that my colleagues from the Public Health Agency will describe to you shortly.
We will also explore with the sport community how they can contribute to enhance the surveillance within their reality, given the constraints of the sport system. This will be part of the work that Sport Canada does moving forward.
At the federal-provincial tables, and with Sport Canada, consensus around the next focus for the sport sector has emerged, and this focus is that of prevention of concussions. We have come to a point that the next big logical step is one that the sport sector does own, and that is prevention. It's also an area in which the sport community can show a huge amount of leadership throughout society.
As you heard from my colleagues from the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Working Group on Concussions, we must turn our focus to prevention and consider this through the vectors of rules of the game, training methods and behaviours.
As part of our next steps, all federally funded sport organizations will be required to incorporate a concussion policy in their operations, covering all components of the harmonized approach. This policy will include the return-to-sport protocols developed with Parachute Canada.
As you can see, collectively and with a significant amount of coordination at the federal-provincial-territorial level and across government organizations, we have done a lot to address concussions, but we still have work to do. This work is mainly in the area of prevention and in ensuring the sharing of knowledge from the national level down to the club level.
Let me thank you again for inviting us here today. It's a privilege to share with you these facts and to answer your questions.