Status of Women Committee on Dec. 12th, 2022

[Christopher Winter]

Yes, we could.

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

Do you want to do it now, or would you like to table that later for the committee to see?

[Christopher Winter]

I don't have a document in front of me, but we have our structure within the sports system in Canada. Athletics Canada is the NSO, and we have our provincial and territorial member branches. Then underneath that are our clubs and independent athletes.

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

If you could table that with the committee, it would be really wonderful. I think we need to see that.

Mr. Winter, it certainly feels at this point, based on testimony, like the fox is protecting the henhouse. Survivors are going to complain, but the people they are complaining to are the ones being funded to keep the system in place and the toxic culture in place. We're just trying to figure out that process right now and understand where money is going.

In particular, I'm curious if you could release the fees that are received by Athletics Canada from local clubs. What is that amount of money?

[Christopher Winter]

It comes from our member branches. It would be $15 per person for a member of a provincial-territorial branch, transferred to Athletics Canada.

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

Can you simplify that for people? If I'm a person at a gymnastics club in, say, Ontario and I'm paying my fee, how much of it is going to Athletics Canada?

[Christopher Winter]

Just as a point of clarity, “athletics” is an international term for track and field. We're not part of gymnastics.

If you're in a track and field club or if you're an individual athlete, you are going to pay a branch membership fee to a provincial branch. In Ontario, that's Athletics Ontario. That amount may be $100, say, for simplicity's sake. Then $15 of that would be transferred to Athletics Canada.

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

Okay, so there is money going directly from local clubs to you guys.

What's the process, then, if somebody has a complaint with Athletics Canada? Can you walk us through how that would be done?

[Christopher Winter]

As I mentioned in my opening statement, we have the Athletics Canada commissioner's office, which was established in 2015 as an independent office to receive complaints primarily from the national level, but—

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

I'm sorry. You said “independent office”. Who funds that?

[Christopher Winter]

We fund it.

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

Then how is it independent?

[Christopher Winter]

It operates as a separate system. We don't share email addresses. We don't share an office. We don't share any sort of resources with the complaint mechanism. Those are received and managed on an independent basis.

It was the best thing we had going forward, and we're excited about OSIC coming on board to provide an additional level of independence. However, the opportunity that we had at the time was to take that step, and we did that without a government mandate. We felt it was the best thing at the time for the sport. We're really pleased with the results, and we feel that it took a couple of years for our athletes to truly understand and have confidence in the system.

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

Are you happy right now with the way the complaint process is run?

[Christopher Winter]

It's not perfect. That's why we feel that, at least at the national level, being able to adopt OSIC is a positive step forward. The challenge we see with the new abuse-free sport system is that it still just maintains the national level. If we look at our historical complaints, the number of complaints taking place at the national level, at least within athletics, is actually quite small.

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

Why would somebody complain if they know nothing is going to happen, which has been the experience we have heard from witnesses?

[Christopher Winter]

A number of cases taken on by the commissioner's office have happily led to lifetime bans of our coaches. We're certainly working to make that process as transparent and fair as possible to make sure that our athletes feel safe and that there is no fear of retribution. Having a disconnect from the national office and the national staff ensures that.

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

I have just one final—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Just hang tight.

We'll go on now to Jenna Sudds.

Jenna, you have six minutes.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much to all of the witnesses.

I'll go back to Mr. Winter. I want to dig a bit deeper into what the last member was asking about.

In 2015, you set up your commissioner to address issues within Athletics Canada, as they were brought forward, of your own accord. Can you speak to the impact that has had from 2015 up to most recently when OSIC was established?

[Christopher Winter]

What it provides us is that arm's-length reach and a piece of independence. I think it was mentioned earlier that our sports are very small and everyone knows everyone, or there's one degree of separation. For someone like me to take on a complaint like that and manage it in an independent way is nearly impossible. We needed to set up an office, and again, that was the only thing available to us at that time. It required our funding because there wasn't anyone else stepping forward at that time to provide funding.

We hired experts in this process who have experience in the law. They're retired judges or current judges. They've taken on that process to accept complaints and manage them in an independent way. They hire their own investigators, and at the end of the day what we receive is a final report. We are then required to administer the disciplinary process as determined in the report. Obviously there's a range of options that the commissioner's office has at its disposal, but in the case of more egregious issues, they lead to a lifetime suspension. That is publicly posted on our website, and you can see on the “Safe Sport” section of our website the coaches who have faced those suspensions.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

That's fabulous.

Fast-forward to June when OSIC was established and up and running. I believe you're fully signed on to OSIC. Am I correct?

[Christopher Winter]

We'll be starting on April 1. That's when we fully make that transition.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

What will happen to your current commission as it stands now? What is the added value there, or why, as you referenced, are you excited that OSIC will now be available to you?

[Christopher Winter]

We'll still retain the commissioner's office for a couple of things. It still acts as the body for any complaints against team selection or team funding. We still need to have that, as OSIC doesn't accept those complaints, so we'll still require them. We also need to maintain the office to hear complaints that come from the club and provincial levels. More and more provinces are onboarding their own independent safe sport offices, but there are still many that don't. We feel that it's still in our sports' best interest and our athletes' best interest to maintain the independent office to hear complaints so that they have a robust body to make those complaints to.

Maybe you can ask the question about OSIC again so that I get it right.