Status of Women Committee on Dec. 12th, 2022

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to take a moment to thank our three witnesses today.

My questions are for Madame Clermont-Dion. Then, if I have time, I'll come back to Mr. Weaver.

Ms. Clermont-Dion, you talked about the system and what's needed to repair it. You also mentioned education and awareness, and I fully agree with you on that score.

All the recommendations people have made so far are really about enabling victims to talk about what happened to them.

What we want for the future is to be able to begin immediately to protect children and adolescents who are entering the world of sport.

We want a sports system that is safer for young people and kids who are entering sport.

You mentioned having a transparent process in place so that people know what the steps would be if something were to happen to them and where to go to complain. Can you go further into the details of what a process such as this should include?

[Dr. Léa Clermont-Dion]

Thank you for your question.

The process is very important from the moment a complaint has been received, whether through the court system or elsewhere.

First responders should be properly trained to handle complaints, by which we mean showing empathy, listening and being kind. You may well say that this is subjective, but there are techniques that can be used and taught if the first responders are properly trained. Coaching throughout any process like this is essential.

The responders therefore need to know about active listening. Instead of trying to blame the victims, which sometimes happens in the criminal system, the police and others need to use interview techniques that involve active listening. That's the first thing.

Then, I think the complainants need to be properly informed about what they can expect, because some of the steps involved in making a complaint can be traumatic. I'm referring here to the fact that people may experience a new form of victimization when they testify and tell their story, and that can make them vulnerable during the process. It's important to really pay attention to that and to ensure that an overwhelming amount of testimony is required from the victim. One session should be enough.

To be sure, the victims need to trust the complaint system. The more they know what's involved and by whom the process is being conducted, the better things will go. For example, the process could be carried out by experts in sexual violence or psychological violence. The victims need to trust them, and I believe that requires systematic psychological support to help the complainants. When a complaint is made, it can elicit all kinds of difficult things, and without support from a psychologist with listening skills, the process can create a lot of anxiety.

It's also important to ensure that launching the complaint process will not be harmful to the athlete's future career. That may mean sanctioning those who allowed certain incidents to happen.

I know that it's complicated and that I could go on at greater length, but in terms of an answer, that's a good start.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're getting tight on time. We will have Andréanne for as close to a minute as possible and Leah for as close to a minute as possible.

Andréanne, go ahead.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you once again for your testimony, Mr. Weaver and Ms. Horn-Miller.

Ms. Clermont-Dion, you concluded your preliminary comments by launching an appeal for action from federal elected representatives to put an end to what I call token feminism. Can you give us a summary of what would constitute concrete and truly feminist forms of action?

[Dr. Léa Clermont-Dion]

The education and training I was talking about needs to instill concepts that are currently lacking. Things like toxic masculinity and rape culture have to be explained, for example. Most people don't know that these forms of behaviour trivialize sexual violence.

I believe that what happened with Hockey Canada and other instances we've heard about are examples of rape culture. It's important to appropriate words and concepts that are being bandied about these days, and to deconstruct them with the help of team members as a form of prevention.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

An independent commission of inquiry should also be established.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We'll move to Leah.

Leah, you have one minute.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

My last question is for Dr. Clermont-Dion.

You spoke about education. Do you think education for coaches provided by an independent body with articulation agreements between the provinces would be helpful? I ask that because although I know education is in provincial jurisdiction, athletes come from across the country, so there have to be some sort of agreed-upon standards. Do you think that would be helpful?

[Dr. Léa Clermont-Dion]

I think so, but it would be especially important to make sure that athletes are involved in awareness training. It would be very interesting to see how a program that would allow athletes who have survived such experiences to contribute to the democratization of this issue and to raising awareness of it.

I believe that interventions, when they are sincere, can affect people and make them more aware. That being the case, why not do more consultation with athletes, so that their voices can be heard in riveting testimony, and that they could even be offered financial compensation? That could turn out to be an interesting option, particularly from the repair perspective, because prevention, education and awareness are also part of the restorative process. It's therapeutic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

On behalf of the committee, I'd really like to thank Waneek, Léa and Kurt. Thank you so much for bringing us your testimony.

We are going to suspend to allow the three other panellists to join us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

As everybody is taking their seats, I would like to welcome our next panel for today.

On our second panel, we have, from Athletics Canada, Chris Winter, director of domestic programs and safe sport; and from Volleyball Canada, Mark Eckert, president and chief executive officer. They are attending online. Here in the room, from the Sport Information Resource Centre, we have Debra Gassewitz, president and chief executive officer.

You each have five minutes for your opening statements. Once you see me spinning, I would ask that you wind down your comments within 15 seconds.

I'll turn it over right now to Mark Eckert.

Mark, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Mark Eckert, President and Chief Executive Officer, Volleyball Canada]

Thank you to the committee for inviting me to speak on behalf of Volleyball Canada.

I have listened to the statements and stories of those who have shared their experiences with this committee so far, and wow, they have been very powerful. I'm hoping that I have the opportunity to speak about some ways that we are working toward positive change in this space.

First, I’d like to share some background from our sport.

Volleyball has a high female participation rate, especially at the youth levels. In 2022, our youth national championships had more than double the female players compared with male players. Female participation was also higher at our beach volleyball national championships, perhaps inspired by the success of our women’s teams at the world championship level.

Canada’s women’s teams and programs have progressed greatly on the international stage in recent years. It's something Canadians can be proud of, but it's not all good news. Unfortunately, most of these young athletes have been coached only by males, and often, youth volleyball is where their journey ends.

We have to ask ourselves some difficult questions. What are the barriers for female athletes and coaches? How can Volleyball Canada and its partners break those barriers for women coaches and referees? How can we make our sport more appealing and welcoming to women of all ages in all roles? Really, first and foremost, how do we make the sport environment as safe as possible for all, especially for those who have felt vulnerable or have been abused in the past?

Volleyball Canada has not been immune to the challenges facing sport. The work to make our sport safer is ongoing but by no means complete. Here are a few of the initiatives that are contributing to a safer sport.

Volleyball Canada requires all of its participants, as many sports do, to take safe sport training, and through coach education, we have incorporated the safe sport program and respect in sport program throughout the system.

Volleyball Canada was one of the first NSOs to sign on to the abuse-free sport program. It’s crucial—and we hear this over and over—that participants have a third party mechanism and are guaranteed that their complaints are being heard without judgment and without prejudice.

It’s a system that is evolving, and I am encouraged by the buy-in and participation from our partners at the provincial level and their affiliated clubs. We cannot make meaningful change without working together.

Our provincial and territorial associations also recognize the importance of working together at the policy level. We have implemented pan-Canadian policies to promote consistency in how we deal with issues across the country.

With the assistance of our funding partners, Volleyball Canada has teamed up with athletics and swimming to create a safe sport tool for youth. Our goal is to develop and implement a digital platform that promotes safe sport education and engagement for athletes between the ages of 11 and 18. This platform will be used to increase awareness among young athletes on different aspects of safe sport, such as maltreatment prevention, mental health support and nutrition. We have engaged with our provincial and territorial partners as well as clubs to get their input on the project to ensure it's a successful collaboration.

We have also been fortunate enough to work with associations such as Canadian Women and Sport on the gender equity playbook. It helped us to look inward before we embarked on any changes to the external strategies and programs.

Volleyball Canada is in the midst of independently led culture audits—some call them environmental reviews—of a few of our programs. These audits look at how we can be more inclusive and how we can serve our athletes better as players and people. I believe that culture audits are just as important as financial audits, which are typical in sport, and they need to be done on a regular basis.

With the assistance of our partners at the Canadian Olympic Committee, we have embarked on a diversity, equity and inclusion review led by Deloitte. It's already proving to be an eye-opening experience for all involved.

We have women in leadership roles, including our women’s indoor head coach and our sitting women's Paralympic head coach. More than 40% of our board is female. We are adding more female staff at the development and next-generation stages, but it's not enough.

We need to make the pathway to success clear and deliberate. We need to work together and demonstrate that our sport is a place where girls and women can thrive and succeed throughout their lives and careers. I am the father of two daughters who have been involved in several organized sports, so there is a personal as well as professional side to this quest to keep athletes safe and to make our sport more inclusive and welcoming.

With purposeful system-wide improvements from the grassroots club level to our national teams, we will witness the change needed to keep our sport relevant, inclusive and enjoyable for all.

I thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much. It's pretty impressive, since volleyball doesn't have timing, that you went right down to the five minutes. Great job.

Christopher Winter, we'll go to you now for five minutes.

[Christopher Winter, Director, Domestic Programs and Safe Sport, Athletics Canada]

Good afternoon, and thank you to the committee for the opportunity to speak with you all today.

My name is Chris Winter. I serve as the director of domestic programs and safe sport with Athletics Canada, the national sport organization for track and field, para athletics, road running, cross-country, race walking, and mountain and trail running. I personally have been involved in the sport of athletics all my life, first joining a track club at the age of nine. I've had the opportunity to represent our country at world championships, the Commonwealth Games and the 2016 Olympic Games.

Athletics Canada is an organization that believes strongly in ensuring diverse and accessible sport, especially through the gender diversity lens. It has in its strategic plan to 2028 the goal to continue to increase diversity, including gender equity, across all roles, as well as to continually improve safe sport policies and governance.

At its core, the sport of athletics and its competition structure provide for equal opportunity to both men and women. Our national team programs provide for a similar equal opportunity for both men and women. With that in mind, a priority of the organization has been to ensure that the boardroom and our national office staff resemble the diversity that our sport sees on the field of play.

In terms of our coaching membership, we see relatively equal numbers of men and women coaching at the grassroots and club levels. However, those numbers tilt heavily towards men at the national level, so we have work to do.

Athletics Canada wants to be recognized as a leader in the growth and development of gender equity, and over the past few years, it was able to take advantage of a Sport Canada grant program to work with Canadian Women and Sport to put the organization through a gender equity audit. This was followed by the formulation of a gender equity action plan that ensures Athletics Canada works toward being a world-leading organization by providing an environment that ensures gender equity and an environment that's safe for all levels throughout our sport; reflects our members by ensuring that we consciously create an organization that is representative of our membership base in all ways; encourages women and men to work together in a sport where they participate equally at all levels, creating success together; and maintains a pathway for women to occupy positions at all levels of office and coaching through a concerted effort.

Recommendations have been produced in the areas of governance, leadership and strategy; recruitment, selection and promotion; values and culture; measurement and tracking; and growing the pool.

One area that was identified as a priority was recruiting and supporting more female coaches so they rise up to the national team and high-performance level. As such, Athletics Canada launched its national female coach mentorship program in the fall of 2021 with great success. That program saw six female coach mentors provide leadership to 16 female coach mentees. In 2022-23, this program has grown again. We now have 11 female coach mentors working with 22 female coach mentees.

Since the establishment of these recommendations, Athletics Canada has also created a diversity, equity and inclusion committee to help drive the necessary change. Over the past 12 months, the DEI committee has been primarily focused on developing a policy of transgender and gender diversity inclusion, which was approved by our board and membership at recent meetings in Ottawa. Attention will now turn to the gender equity action plan.

In terms of safe sport, athletics has not gone without its share of challenges. In 2015, in response to these issues, Athletics Canada was one of the first NSOs, if not the very first, to institute an independent third party to receive complaints of violations of Athletics Canada’s Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport. Since the inception of the office of the commissioner, the policies, governance and procedures have continually been reviewed and improved. A full suite of policies now exists to ensure not only a safe sporting environment for all participants but also a proper mechanism in place to address any code of conduct violations.

Examples of those policies include athlete protection guidelines, screening policy and screening policy requirements, a whistle-blower policy and a diversity, equity and inclusion policy. Athletics Canada is also in the process of moving to abuse-free sport for all national-level sport complaints, but will retain its office of the commissioner to provide an independent reporting mechanism for complaints that fall outside of that office’s jurisdiction.

On the education and prevention front, which Mark referenced, Athletics Canada is working collaboratively with the sports of volleyball and swimming on the development of a youth safe sport education program designed specifically for youth from 11 to 18 years old. Funding has been provided through the COC. Our hope is that, once built, other NSOs will be able to adopt this program for their own athletes.

I want to close by saying that as the director for domestic programs and safe sport, I am responsible for the safety of our athletes. My priority is to ensure that they are participating in a sport that is safe and supportive, and to ensure that if any of them feel uncomfortable or find themselves in a situation where they believe they are being mistreated or abused, they have the ability to speak up. We must break the culture of silence in sport. I know that I speak for all our organization when I say that we are willing to do our part and support what is necessary to make sport the positive, safe space it needs to be.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We'll move over to Debra Gassewitz.

Debra, I'm looking at your speaking notes. I may get you to cut it off a few minutes before the five-minute mark. I'll pass it over to you for five minutes.

[Debra Gassewitz, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sport Information Resource Centre]

Thank you, Madam Chair and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, for inviting me to speak today on behalf of the Sport Information Resource Centre. I'll refer to it throughout as SIRC.

To the survivors who have come forward and shared their experiences, and to those who have not, my heart goes out to each and every one of you, as no one should have to go through the abuses and harms you have suffered. As a parent, as a volunteer, as a girl who loved sport growing up and today as someone working in sport, I firmly believe we need to do whatever we can to ensure that no one—especially children—is maltreated or harmed in any way.

My reason for coming here today is that I believe we can make a difference. Why? Because I'm watching behaviours change.

SIRC is Canada's leader in advancing sport through knowledge and evidence, and our role is to help answer questions, facilitate conversations and share knowledge with the sport sector. We're not an advocacy group. We're a resource centre known for neutrality and our desire to help find credible information, to listen and to learn.

For example, 10 years ago, concussions were not well known in the public sphere. Athletes, coaches, parents, sports officials and media all seemed to embrace the “tough it up” mentality. In 2016, the government, led by Governor General David Johnston at the time, embraced “we can do better”. The ministers made it a priority to increase concussion awareness and the management and prevention of concussions, and to collect data so we could continue learning. Today, all national sport organizations have mandatory concussion policies, the provinces have implemented concussion protocols, Ontario has Rowan’s Law Day and the FPT endorsed the fourth week of September to be concussion awareness week so that we continue learning.

Addressing concussions through research and evidence is one part of making sports safer for Canada's athletes. Safe sport is more than just physical safety.

We've heard about the horrendous harms and maltreatment experienced by our athletes, and we know our government has been listening—

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Chair, the interpretation isn't working.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Ms. Gassewitz, please stop for one moment.

Is everything okay with interpretation? They switched over, so we'll keep on going.

Ms. Gassewitz, if you could, go back to the line before and then go for it.

[Debra Gassewitz]

It's a good line too.

We know that government has been listening too. In 2019, the ministers endorsed the “Red Deer Declaration for the Prevention of Harassment, Abuse and Discrimination in Sport”. Following a series of pan-Canadian sports summits, the UCCMS was released. Fast-forward to 2022, and OSIC, an independent arm of the SDRCC, has been launched to administer the UCCMS.

These swift actions show that the government has been listening and helping, but more needs to be done, which brings us to the renewal of the Canadian sport policy. In February 2022, the Canadian sport policy and work groups contracted SIRC to help endorse and find information about the next policy. Since then, more than 5,000 Canadians coast to coast to coast participated in 28 engagements, and an e-survey available in English, French, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun was held.

We heard from Canadians that sport is an integral part of health and culture in Canada. Sport was described as important for physical, mental, emotional and community health. It was considered an integral part of our national fabric, a fabric that holds and brings us together. Over and over, we heard about the importance of sport as a driver of healthy active lifestyles that connect to enjoyment and to Canadian culture.

We also heard that to create these benefits for Canadians, sport needs to be safe, positive and values-based. Values and ethics came up as the top-rated priority for community sport for 53% of survey respondents. Values and ethics were also among the top three priorities in competitive sport, with athlete development topping the list at 68%. Respondents also expressed widespread concern over the perception of the “win at all costs” culture that puts athletes' performances ahead of their health, safety and well-being.

This is all very important as it goes forward, and the participants emphasized that safe sport requires more than developmentally appropriate and technically sound programs. It requires a focus on mandatory safe sport training and anti-racism and cultural awareness training for everyone in sport. Here, we stress “everyone”, meaning the participants, the athletes, the parents, the coaches, the officials, the administrators and the leaders. That was loud and clear: It was everyone.

In addition to education and accountability, the launch of OSIC was very important. There's a clear need for messaging, resources and uniformity across the system.

The Canadian sport policy consultations indicated a clear desire to see Canada as an international leader in safe sport, so what can government do? We need to start by listening to Canadians, especially our survivors. We need to collaborate and make safe sport a government priority, and we need to fund sustainable programs to promote safe sport at all levels of sport. Education and awareness initiatives, supported by data, are needed to change behaviour for the benefit of everyone in sport.

Thanks for listening. We want to help.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's perfect. Thank you so much.

We'll be starting with our six-minute rounds, and the first round goes to Michelle Ferreri.

You have six minutes, Michelle.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. I really appreciate it.

Mr. Winter, do you want a national judicial inquiry into sport?

[Christopher Winter]

First of all, I think that anything our athletes are asking for is something we should be listening to. At this point, the details on what that would look like are still limited, but it's certainly something we would support if we felt that it would be the right step forward and if our athletes were asking for it.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I just wanted to point something out. I know that you spoke a lot about having an equal number of male and female coaches on a more local level but not on a national level. You've said that you're working towards having more females, but I want to say on the record that I've spoken with a lot of survivors, and there are definitely as many abusive women coaches as there are men coaches.

I think it's really important to clear the record: Just because someone is a woman doesn't mean she's not as abusive. Would you agree with that?

[Christopher Winter]

Yes, that's a good point. I mean, when we look at the stats we have within our commissioner's office, the vast majority of the complaints come from female athletes regarding male coaches, but that's not without exception.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Obviously the ratio would factor in, I think, because there are more males, so wouldn't there be more...? I think that's interesting.

Three coaches from Ontario have received lifetime bans from Athletics Canada. A new whistle-blower policy started in 2020. In track and field, can you provide the organization chart of governing bodies?