Thank you, Madam Chair.
I join you today from the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
I want to stress the courage of the victims and survivors who have broken the silence. We have heard you. I also want to honour your bravery.
For those who continue to sound the alarm, as we've heard today, we are with you.
The system requires wholesale cultural change. The only way to achieve this is through a national judicial inquiry. This is an issue of national importance—the baseline. An inquiry will create a public road map for united cultural change. We have seen similar mechanisms used around the world, resulting in dramatic change to address systemic safe sport. I witnessed the power of the Dubin inquiry in 1988 after the Ben Johnson scandal. The legacy of that inquiry is that Canada is a leading anti-doping nation.
The mission of the Coaching Association of Canada is to oversee the development of coaches and sports workers, in accordance with ethical principles, and to put in place and promote a professional development program in association with all levels of government and all national, provincial and territorial federations.
On average, we train 50,000 coaches annually under the National Coaching Certification Program, from the community level all the way to high-level sport. Safety and ethics are central to the training that coaches are offered. Since 2006, a trainer has had to successfully complete the Make Ethical Decisions training in order to be certified.
In the last three years, we have worked with leading researchers to develop training in teen dating and gender-based violence, bystander empowerment, modelling healthy relationships, creating a positive sport environment, and anti-racism. This work is supported by Sport Canada, Status of Women Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
In 2019, at the request of then minister Duncan, we created mandated safe sport training to educate all sport participants. As so eloquently spoken about previously, we need training and education to be part of it, and yet that's not all. We also partner with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to deliver training on grooming awareness. We work with Respect Group and Kids Help Phone. We launched the responsible coaching movement, which includes evidence-based prevention strategies in the “rule of two” and training and screening. We screen coaches for major games. We offer a designation for coaches, but coaching is not a regulated profession.
The training and prevention programs I have spoken about are only one facet of safe sport culture. We are one organization. More is needed from us and more is needed from others. That's why a national judicial inquiry is required. This is a complex issue. Canada does have great coaches, and coaches play a vital role in supporting athletes and participants, as we just heard. At times, they are the only trusted individual in a young person's life. But that's not why we are here today. The power imbalance in coaching is a huge problem. Professional standards are a huge problem across the country. The lack of resources is a huge problem.
While we know that predators predominantly use the coaching role to abuse, it's also important to acknowledge that predators come in many forms. It's not just the coach-athlete relationship. Dr. Larry Nassar is one of the most horrific long-term abuses cases. Pairs skater John Coughlin sexually abused his partner, Bridget Namiotka, who committed suicide. Parker Egbert, a 19-year-old swimmer with autism and an intellectual disability, just recently filed a lawsuit alleging that he was violently and repeatedly raped at the Tokyo Paralympics and at the national training centre by a two-time Paralympic gold medallist. There was a recent assault by eight hockey players in 2018, and again at the 2023 World Juniors.
If we fail to recognize that abusers come in many forms, we will fail the system, and we will fail our athletes again.
As a final point, we respect the jurisdiction of the provinces and territories. However, if we want safe sport measures to be effective, the federal, provincial and territorial governments will have to join forces and create a national registry of all predators and assailants.
If we have no centralized registry or coordinated registries, then abusers and predators will continue to travel from sport to province to territory and to any role in sport, which will set the stage for more abuse.
To summarize, we are calling for three things: for an investigation to be conducted, for safe sport for all to be the goal, and for there to be a national registry or, at the least, collaboration.
Thank you for your attention.