Evidence of meeting #40 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was athletes.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
I have about a minute left.
You talked about protecting athletes, so what are your thoughts on the complaints mechanism?
The minister talks a lot about the OSIC.
What do you think of how the complaints process has been structured? What mechanism is needed to make sure that victims are supported as soon as they come forward?
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I'm sorry. I wasn't sure who that was directed to.
I think as soon as a complaint is filed, it should be taken to a secondary body. Teams and institutions should not be looking at themselves. I think we need outside institutions to do that.
Dr. Fowler, I don't know if you want to make other recommendations here.
Assistant Professor, Concordia University of Edmonton, As an Individual
Yes, I definitely agree. Calls have already come through regarding other parties investigating these incidents. We really need to look back and consider how these incidents have been handled and say that this is not how we need to do it and move on from there and have people independent of the organization do the investigating.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
That's wonderful. Thank you so much.
We're going to pass it over now to Leah Gazan for six minutes.
Leah, go ahead, please.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Thank you so much, Chair.
My first question is for Madam Moore or Madam Fowler.
One of the barriers to sport that were identified online at the Canadian Women and Sport website in 2021 was the lack of sport and recreational spaces for women, two-spirit, trans and non-binary people only.
I know you mentioned that in your testimony, Madam Fowler, and I'm wondering if you could expand on that and what that looks like.
Assistant Professor, Concordia University of Edmonton, As an Individual
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Teresa, do you mind if I jump in before we go to you?
In our study.... I would feel uncomfortable speaking beyond our study, because I'm in the faculty of education; I'm not a sports sociologist. A lot of my recommendations are educational.
What we saw in our study was discussions of men and boys leaving elite-level sports because they felt the space was not safe for them. When we look at which brand of masculinity is privileged in sport, you are eliminating men who express femininities.
When you think about a gender binary, you realize there's such an assumption of the conflation of sex and gender in our society. We really need to push back at that and look at the ways in which these spaces are unsafe for males who express femininities. Even our co-researcher speaks about the fact that his son finds the locker room so uncomfortable because it is so loud. He does not know where there is a space for him.
Certainly beyond our research, other people would have things to say, but in our research it was how the spaces were not conducive to varied performance of masculinities.
Assistant Professor, Concordia University of Edmonton, As an Individual
To add to that, I feel like it's a bit of a paradox in that we need safe spaces for people who do not conform to these team standards.
For example, in Calgary, there's a hocky league with teams that are all gay male players. They play similar teams. There are obviously women's teams. We have these separate spaces for a reason.
I think the danger in that is it keeps the spaces separate. The danger we see in men's ice hocky, for example, is it is a very cis-straight and very heteropatriarchal environment with no room for anyone to be on any sort of continuum of difference.
While we certainly need safe spaces for folks to be able to express themselves, we also need to be mindful that we do not continue to keep these spaces segregated in a way that allows cultures like we see in men's ice hockey to flourish.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Thank you very much. I totally agree.
Madam Bailey, you spoke about the importance of mentorship and role models, and the importance of others seeing others like them in sport. You spoke particularly about some of the work that you've done and some of the representation you've achieved as a mentor now and a representative at the North American Indigenous Games.
Can you elaborate on the importance of mentorship and role models in sport?
Assistant, Sport Program Development, Indigenous Sport and Wellness Ontario
Yes. I can talk a bit about the mentorship and role models.
Personally, being a woman and being indigenous, I really didn't have anyone to look up to. It was a bit of a hard upkeep for me participating in sports. I would sit there and do my research of people I could look up to who were people like me, since I didn't have anyone in my life to do it.
I think it's really important to have that person to look up to, which is why I chose to be a coach. I chose to go that route and go and coach at the next North American Indigenous Games because I didn't have someone, and I want to be that person for another youth growing up.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
That's wonderful. It's really inspiring, including what you shared about the Sharing our Strength gathering.
Can you expand on that?
Assistant, Sport Program Development, Indigenous Sport and Wellness Ontario
Do you mean the gathering or the conference?
Assistant, Sport Program Development, Indigenous Sport and Wellness Ontario
Yes, of course.
My colleague and I started the women and girls committee, and we're the co-chairs. We do it together. We decided there needed to be a space for women and girls to come together, share stories and listen to people who they could look up to. It was all about role models for this.
We invited entrepreneurs, cultural-based individuals and athletes to share their own personal stories and share if they had a business that no one knew about, so that more individuals could know about them.
We thought it was incredibly important to make this for women and girls because, as I said, there is not a lot of representation or a lot of representation that we know about. We wanted it to be something that people could go to. It's a safe space for them to share stories and to listen to others.
NDP
Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
You indicated that participation rates are lower for indigenous women and girls. If there was more investment in mentorship and role-model programs, do you think it would encourage others to participate in sports?
Assistant, Sport Program Development, Indigenous Sport and Wellness Ontario
Yes, 100%.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Perfect. Thank you so much.
I'm going to give everybody an update. We have nine minutes and 48 seconds until we vote, so looking at the time, what I'd like to do is go through our last round. Then, once we go to vote online, the meeting is done.
What we're going to do is four minutes, four minutes, one minute and one minute. I'll start off with Anna for four minutes, go over to Adam, and then go back to Andréanne and Leah.
Anna, you have four minutes.
Conservative
Anna Roberts Conservative King—Vaughan, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses. I think we have a great deal of work to do, and it's not going to stop, but it has to start.
I'm going to speak about behaviour in sports.
One of my constituents recently wrote an article—a male hockey player who won the Stanley Cup for the Chicago Blackhawks, Nick Boynton. Reading his story.... I guess maybe I'm naive. I didn't think it would happen to men, but it did. He speaks about the abuse and he speaks about the fact that it occurs. We know that this occurs for women, but we need to also understand how we stop and educate coaches, both women and men, to ensure that they understand the importance of educating our children at a young age so that this behaviour does not continue into their adult life. What recommendations...?
I'm going to leave the question open to anyone who can answer it for me, because I'm really concerned about it. We have to stop it. We have to stop it at a young age, because if we don't, it'll just continue.
Maybe Dr. Fowler can start with that.
Assistant Professor, Concordia University of Edmonton, As an Individual
Sure. Thank you. I appreciate the question.
I think one of the things we certainly have learned or that has been exposed this summer is how institutionalized the coaching profession is with respect to hockey. For example, you have players who are now coaching young children who perhaps have engaged in sexual assaults, who have perhaps engaged in sexual harassment or sexism. We have this ability in hockey where somebody retires from the profession as a good player, and then they move into a different role as a coach without any accountability, which was spoken about this morning.
Before we even get to the education piece, I think what we first need to start with is to stop letting predators coach our kids.
I'll turn it over to Shannon.
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I don't know if you want to jump in, Allison, because I feel like we've spoken a lot already.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Women and Sport
Thank you, Shannon. I'd love to share a few thoughts.
I think that in Canada we actually have quite an asset compared to other systems in that we do have a national coach education system led by the Coaching Association of Canada and its PT partners. I would say that most would agree that coach education in Canada has been really focused on the technical and the tactical aspects of sport and really not with a strong emphasis on the social and emotional aspects of sport—the whole human, if you will, the whole human athlete. While there have been excellent modules and training programs developed, such as Respect in Sport—which, of course, is led by Sheldon Kennedy, an athlete who was abused by his coach—these have not been totally mainstreamed and normalized as mandatory coach education. We're moving there, but if we're talking about disruption, we have to go even further.
Along with that, as everyone has said, there have to be checks and balances on behaviour. If the coach is the ultimate authority over that daily training environment and there's no oversight on that and it's a homogenous group of people.... We know that diverse groups have greater checks and balances on behaviour. If in that environment everybody comes from that same lived experience and that same world view, you're going to have way less in terms of those checks and balances.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Thanks so much.
I'm now going to move over to Adam. Adam, you have four minutes.
Liberal
Adam van Koeverden Liberal Milton, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
This is my first time on the status of women committee, so thank you very much for allowing me to join. Prior to coming to committee today, I was able to join virtually before I replaced MP Sidhu, or will try to.
I just want to thank all of the voices, all of the incredible people who came and joined today to share their experiences. Their testimony is so valuable.
I also want to acknowledge that the burden of truth and the burden of that testimony is so often held by strong women, and exclusively women and victims, and that's something that needs acknowledgement. It takes a strong woman, but it's always women standing up against these things, and we need to call it what it is. The majority of the time this is men's violence against women, not just violence against women, not just coach violence against women. This is men's violence against women. As a man on the status of women committee today, I want to make sure that's very clear.
I would like to ask Dr. Fowler something.
First, I would like to thank you for saying something I have believed for a long time. I am a huge proponent of funding sport for and through health. Could you elaborate on that a little bit for the benefit of the committee?