Status of Women Committee on Dec. 12th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Good morning. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 46 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on Monday, October 31, the committee will resume its study of women and girls in sport.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute it when you're not speaking.

For those on Zoom, to hear the interpretation, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use your earpiece and select the desired channel.

I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking list as best we can.

In accordance with our routine motion, I am informing the committee that all witnesses completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Before we start, I want to seek agreement from the committee to publish and redistribute the press release that was circulated by the clerk last Friday. Has everybody had a chance to look at the press release?

Are all of you in favour of it?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Great. That's approved.

We have a trigger warning. Before we welcome our witnesses, I would like to provide this trigger warning. This is a very difficult study. We'll be discussing experiences related to abuse. This may be triggering to viewers, members or staff with similar experiences. If you feel distressed or if you need help, please advise the clerk.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses.

I would like to welcome Waneek Horn-Miller. Waneek is a Mohawk Olympian and a Canadian Hall of Famer.

I would like to welcome, from You Can Play, Inc., Kurt Weaver, chief operations officer, who is online.

I will introduce Dr. Clermont-Dion, who is just coming into the room. Dr. Clermont-Dion is a documentary filmmaker and a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia University.

You will each have five minutes for your presentations. Once you see me wave my hand, let's start winding it down.

Waneek, with your approval, I'd like to start with your testimony, so the first five minutes are for you. Please go ahead.

[Waneek Horn-Miller, Mohawk Olympian, Canadian Hall of Famer, As an Individual]

[Pursuant to a motion adopted by the committee on January 30, 2023, this testimony has been deleted. See Minutes of Proceedings for January 30, 2023]

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much for coming here. I can tell you that we are so honoured to have you here today to speak to us.

I'm now going to pass it over to Dr. Léa Clermont-Dion.

Léa, you have five minutes.

[Dr. Léa Clermont-Dion, Documentary Filmmaker and Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Learning Performance, Concordia University, As an Individual]

Good morning, everyone. My name is Léa Clermont-Dion, and I have a doctorate in political science. I've been exploring the question of violence against women for about 10 years now. I'm a postdoctoral researcher at Concordia University.

I'm also a sexual assault survivor. I made a complaint within the criminal justice system a few years ago and the assailant was convicted. He appealed and we are still waiting for the appeal court decision, five years after the start of the judicial process. We still don't know the outcome.

I made a film called T'as juste à porter plainte, a documentary series that is now part of the training given to legal specialists in Quebec as part of the process of establishing the special court dealing with sexual and domestic violence. I'm interested in this issue, and feel very strongly about it, because I'm the mother of a son and a daughter.

In a few months, I will be working with the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and will be giving sexual consent training to the players.

The scandal surrounding Hockey Canada shook the whole country and has put a spotlight on the dynamics of sexual domination and violence, and also on its trivialization in sports. This trivialization has been widespread, organized and systemic for too long, and perpetrated by actors in the system, and people in positions of authority. The scandal is unfortunately no more than the tip of the iceberg, and and what is needed now is collective awareness and acknowledgement of the problem.

It's a political and social matter, and for many years, blaming the victim has been part of the culture in sports organizations. Certain people are to blame for this. There has to be some accountability on the part of the assailants and the people who were responsible. I'd like to take a moment to pay tribute to the courage of the victims, these heroines who deserve all of our respect.

Curbing this unacceptable behaviour will require solutions. Coaches, authorities and players need to be educated about sexual consent and respect. That's one way to work on prevention, but there is also repair, which I will discuss later.

I have two concrete solutions to propose today. The first has to do with raising awareness. There is an urgent initial need with respect to awareness. There are indeed appropriate forms of sexual consent training, but it will take more than that. We need collectively to acknowledge the fact that the trivialization of sexual violence is a problem. Coaches and players need to be told that it amounts to sexual assault. Most don't know what sexual assault is. The training has to be systematic. As Ms. Horn-Miller described it so well, sports create a form of proximity that facilitates relationships of dominance, authority and abuse.

What's required is a Canada-wide campaign to promote existing resources. The resources are there, and they were established through Sport'Aide. But resources and money are required to make these tools better known and more accessible to players and coaches.

Compulsory training for coaches and players is needed to make them aware of sexual violence and to prevent it. Such training should be neither random nor optional. It should be organized in partnership with women's groups and feminist groups with a view to inclusiveness, and the intersectionality of violence should also be addressed. That's essential. Problems like domination and racism also have to be dealt with in this kind of training and education.

More specifically, I think that the training should include a section on consent and another on demystifying current problems like toxic masculinity and rape culture. On reporting the fence in which an explanation is given to coaches and all members of staff about the repercussions of being charged on the life of victims. It should also incorporate information about trauma to lay to rest any stereotypes about victims of sexual assault. Finally, there ought to be a section on the impact of sexual violence on victims.

The second option that I am proposing is restitution. It's true that there are tools that make it possible to report assaults, but what are they? Sport aid needs to be transparent. It's important to know the nature of the process for victims when they make a complaint. At what level does this happen? Should restorative justice be used as a model? It's a means of remedy that is interesting and one of the solutions I'd like to put forward.

The traditional judicial process is extremely difficult for victims. It's not always appropriate and that it can be destructive rather than remedial. A process involving mediation or restorative justice can sometimes be useful. It's a practice based on indigenous cultures. It's a relevant option that could be used outside of the judicial system. It's not perfect and requires a structure, sustainable means and a professionalization of the practice.

Transparency is what we want. To conclude…

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm trying to be very sensitive to the time, so we'll probably be able to do the conclusion through the questions, if that's okay.

[Dr. Léa Clermont-Dion]

I would just like to finish with a very important short sentence, if I may?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Go for it.

[Dr. Léa Clermont-Dion]

My comment is for the Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Justin Trudeau.

Prime Minister, in view of the historic crisis that has arisen in the hockey world and sports communities, it's essential for you to become concretely engaged in fighting sexual violence. That's where you have to start to become a feminist. The ball is now in your court

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We'll now go online and turn to Kurt Weaver.

Kurt, please go ahead. You have five minutes.

[Kurt Weaver, Chief Operations Officer, You Can Play, Inc.]

Thank you to the committee for the privilege of speaking to you today.

You Can Play, Inc. celebrates this year its 10-year anniversary of working in this space and fighting for LGBTQ2S+ inclusion in sport. We've worked with our sport partners and pro- and amateur-level partners to help them evaluate their sports and improve their inclusion efforts. Our primary mission has been to provide a safe and welcoming space for anyone who wishes to participate in sport as an athlete, coach, referee, administrator and fan—really, in any way they'd like.

Primarily, we work with our partners on visibility and education programs, but we also know that education programs are not the sole key to solving these kinds of issues or problems. They must be part of a larger program that looks at all kinds of safety aspects within sport, as well as the education that helps people realize what they are seeing and what they are experiencing. Really, we want to make sure that we are using our partners' substantial voices to make positive change and impact within the safety and inclusion part of sport.

Diversity and equity inclusion in sport is not just the right thing to do; it makes sport better. It's more accountable. When there are more and different voices, faces and people involved in sport, people are more accountable to themselves and to a sport itself. Frankly, the teams and sports that take on this kind of work are simply better, and they're more successful.

My personal history within this space does not just include working as a coach, athlete and referee for most of my career. I also ran a safe sport program for U.S.A. Rugby for five years, developing policies and procedures, education programs and the safety and reporting side of things. The education program was just a simple first step that we saw as a key to success in these spaces. Education programs are used as a check box to say that we've done something on a subject, but that's simply not the case. It is one piece of a much larger strategy.

I want to highlight one program that I believe is doing some innovative work in this space. It's called Girls Rugby. It was developed by the same person who developed the youth rugby curriculum in Canada for PE classes. Its focus has been on the values-based empowerment of girls in sport.

Part and parcel to the practices and games is a focus on a leadership and values-based approach. The true innovation is the focus on empowering girls to find their voices and confidence and stand for themselves and their teammates, which has been a really interesting way to approach the longer-term solution to some of these things.

I know that we have immediate challenges to deal with and some history to reconcile. However, looking forward, empowering young girls to be leaders and to stand for themselves and their teammates within a sport itself has been a really interesting way to approach this.

I'm so excited to see programs like this. It gives me hope that there will be opportunities for anyone to participate in sports, regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, sexuality or gender identity, and find a safe and welcoming home within sport. It's such a valuable place to be, and we want to make sure that it's there for all.

I'll wrap up there. I look forward to supporting this committee's work and its mission.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much, Kurt, for trying to get me back on track by giving me back a couple of minutes.

We will now go to our rounds of questions. We'll start with a six-minute round.

I will the pass the floor over to Michelle Ferreri.

Michelle, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, witnesses, for being here today. I listened to all of you, and that was very powerful testimony.

If I may, I'll start with you, Waneek. May I call you Waneek?

[Waneek Horn-Miller]

[Pursuant to a motion adopted by the committee on January 30, 2023, this testimony has been deleted. See Minutes of Proceedings for January 30, 2023]

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

First of all, congratulations on all your achievements. You have such an impressive history. It's really incredible.

You said many things that jumped off the page for me, but one really popped. You said Sport Canada is funding without oversight. I'm wondering if you could expand on that. What would you like to see implemented in terms of oversight when funding dollars are going to these organizations?

[Waneek Horn-Miller]

[Pursuant to a motion adopted by the committee on January 30, 2023, this testimony has been deleted. See Minutes of Proceedings for January 30, 2023]

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

Thank you. I think it's really insightful to look into the accountability aspect of who's watching the watchers, as we've heard in other testimony.

Can you go through your process? Did you file a formal complaint? What was that process like, and where did it go?

[Waneek Horn-Miller]

[Pursuant to a motion adopted by the committee on January 30, 2023, this testimony has been deleted. See Minutes of Proceedings for January 30, 2023]

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're going to move to Anita Vandenbeld for the next six minutes.

Anita, you have the floor.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all of you for being here.

I'd like to direct my first question to Ms. Horn-Miller.

I want to thank you very much for being here to speak out. I noted in your opening remarks that there was one point when you were told to worry about yourself, and the fact that you are here worrying about everyone coming after you is a testament to your character. We all appreciate your being here.

You talked about people being very vulnerable because they want the dream so badly and about the abuse that comes with that. At the time, what could have been in place? In an ideal world, what should have been there that would have made sport safe for you and made it a better space for you? By extension, what things should be in place today for other young women who are in the same position you are in, particularly intersectional and indigenous young women?

[Waneek Horn-Miller]

[Pursuant to a motion adopted by the committee on January 30, 2023, this testimony has been deleted. See Minutes of Proceedings for January 30, 2023]

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much. I guess a lot of it comes down to what we value. I appreciate that.

The next question I have is for Mr. Weaver. Again, I'm picking up on intersectionality and how you create those safe places. It's about the whole human being, as we just heard.

You've done a lot of work with U.S.A. Rugby. Could you tell us some of the things you've been able to put in place with the safe sport mechanism?

[Kurt Weaver]

I would echo the message that what you bring to the field, the pool or the court is heaviness from life. There are items people can't change, be it their sex, sexuality, ethnicity, race or gender. When those become the issue, the sport becomes the place where you don't want to be, and you don't want to spend your time on it. It's too much of a challenge, and most people won't stick around for it.

It's unfortunate when you see elite athletes getting to the top level and being put in this position. They've worked their entire lives on this, yet they're uncomfortable and feel unsafe in this environment. They ask, “What can I do about this?” Then they stick it out, like they stuck out their hamstring injury and stuck out something else that they tried to put behind them, and they perform. That's why I love the message of the holistic athlete. That's the way to do this.

For the safe sport program we dealt with, I think too much of it relied on the good nature of the person in the position of receiving the information, the complaint from the athlete or the anonymous message that came in, and not on the process. That's why making the process efficient and effective is so vital to helping an athlete and ensuring that when a complaint comes in, it's dealt with in an appropriate way.

Too much of this relied on a gatekeeper, and the gatekeeper had an interest in the performance of the team, the sport or the outcome. As we said, it's about the medals. We found the most problems when the gatekeepers of reporting were also the same people responsible for outcomes on the field or on the court. That was the number one challenge we ran into.

My biggest piece of advice would be to look through your processes to see if the reporting is coming in through a channel with someone who has an interest in other items outside of a player's welfare. The player's welfare is more than just the outcome on the field or on the podium. It can't only be that. I think that's where we had some success, in that we were removing people and positions from the process that had anything to do with performance. Of course, you must have performance reporters and the people involved who are with athletes every day, but you should also have an alternative place where athletes can go and where steps will be taken no matter what happens.

I give credit to the safe sport program for the mechanism and process that was put in place, but this relies on our constantly rechecking and evaluating annually, if not more often, for effective outcomes of what we're looking for. Are athletes making reports that are making it to the right place? Are they all taken seriously? Are they all being followed up on?

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

In other words, the people who are invested in the athlete winning should not be the same people who they report to.