Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thanks to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women for having us today.
Until very recently, I was an Olympic boxer. I won silver medals at the 2019 Pan-American Games and had 6 podium finishes at the Continental Championships. I have constantly been in the top 10 in all my years on the national team and competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, which were carried over to 2021, finishing in ninth place overall.
I was named to the national team in 2011. Despite finishing on the podium in my first international outing, I was welcomed with the following comment: “We can't consider developing you at your age; you're already old.” In June 2019, I received a call from the high-performance director, who told me that, based on my results, I was now eligible to be carded. However, I would have to permanently leave my team and the trainer with whom I had worked for the previous 10 years and relocate. I also had to leave my job immediately and to give him an answer within 48 hours, or else the card would be offered to someone else.
Since I'm a teacher, I negotiated a centralization that would start at the end of the school year, but he told me that I therefore wouldn't receive the full card funding. I knew that wasn't true, but I nevertheless felt pressured and somehow at fault before I even started. I tried to report the situation because that kind of incident occurs very frequently in sports federations. Unfortunately, my complaint was considered inadmissible and always will be under the new Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, the OSIC.
It was made clear to me from the moment I entered the centre that I had to work first and foremost with the team psychologist, someone I couldn't trust as a result of previous experiences and his close camaraderie with the administrative staff. Since we were required to undergo personality tests every year, I contacted various institutional resources who were there to protect the athletes and reported my concerns. They responded that those concerns were unfounded.
At the 2019 world championships, I witnessed staff members distributing prescription sleeping pills to athletes. The coach, who had a trusted relationship with all the athletes, was replaced by the high-performance director without advance notice or any explanation. The team massage therapist was also required to limit her contact with us. In response, the entire team turned to the institutional resources, and we were once again informed that our concerns were unfounded.
The integrated support team provided the administrative staff with assistance and support in the areas of communications and interpersonal relations. In other words, it wasn't their fault that they were given assistance at the expense of the athletes. That's how the system works, because no one, not even the OSIC, has the necessary authority to issue warnings or impose sanctions.
A few weeks later, our trusted coach was fired without an explanation or advance notice. You can imagine what happened when we then be appealed to the various authorities who were supposed to protect us: our complaints were ruled unfounded.
When athletes say there's no system to protect them, they aren't referring to the number of resources or programs because there are a lot of them. They mean there's no authority to hold people accountable for their actions or to impose consequences, something that's completely nonexistent in the sport system in Canada.
After two full-time years in the centralization process, I began to experience psychological exhaustion and was no longer able to protect myself. I was required, on several occasions, to participate in “test” fights against much bigger and heavier opponents. I expressed and communicated my concerns, but no action was taken.
I suffered a long dissociation episode from April to September 2021 and thus have no memory of what is supposed to be my most memorable experience: my participation in the Tokyo Olympic Games. My only memory is of a video that the new coach posted on social media following my performance. In that video, following my fight, he said that I had not met their expectations, that he felt uncomfortable as a result, that I had not seized the opportunity to win the medal that my country hadn't won in 30 years and that it was extremely embarrassing for him and for the nation.
Despite the complaint I officially filed with various authorities, the coach from the video of course immediately went back to his job without even apologizing to me. I was subsequently isolated from the group during training sessions. After I filed my complaint, the assistant coach and my colleagues harassed me every day for more than a month. I was ultimately forced to leave the centralization process, stripped of my card and prematurely ended my boxing career for obvious mental health reasons.
People in sport now talk about rebuilding the system. However, there can be no rebuilding unless a judicial inquiry is conducted by a third party in order to hold the people who perpetuate abuses and the current sports culture in Canada to account. Adding a system would, once again, be a temporary solution, the latest in a number of such solutions in recent years.
A commission of inquiry into the toxic culture of abuse across Canada is absolutely necessary if there's to be any possibility of building a system that enables Canadians and Canadian sport to rise to a level commensurate with their ability to achieve results and win medals. That's what we all hope for.
I want to thank the members of the committee.
Thank you, Madam Chair.