Status of Women Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2023

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank Ms. Marchant and Ms. Neil for their testimony.

My reading of the testimony is that sport cannot be governed solely by itself. The courts in Canada are laying the groundwork right now to finally give athletes more rights. There's still a long way to go, but the #SportsSurvivor and #MeToo movements are an inspiring start.

It's creating a movement around the world, starting with parliamentarians on the Hill and university researchers as well.

Mr. Gumbley, thank you for making us aware of the fact that sport must comply with many laws that fall under the jurisdiction of departments other than Sport Canada.

Could you provide some details on how the Competition Bureau handles complaints? This seems to me to be a good illustration of how quickly the government responds when sport organizations make a request, compared to how quickly it responds when athletes who are victims of abuse file complaints.

[Randall Gumbley]

From our history, what we learned was.... I'll use the analogy that when we filed a complaint with the Competition Bureau in 2018 on a certain clause that was in the player contract, there was $500,000 release fee that was mandated if the player in the CHL wanted to leave the league to go to play in any other league other than the National Hockey League. Under section 48 of that act, it's clear that the law says that it's a criminal indictable offence if an organization imposes an unreasonable restriction upon an athlete. What we got back from the Competition Bureau was a four-year delay in determining what was unreasonable. They could not determine if $500,000 was unreasonable and they said that the law was imposed in 1975 and that no one had ever acted upon it, so now we're going to change the law. We're not going to act on that.

The time frame that happened with that was impossible to understand. We filed a complaint in 2018, the Department of Justice did an investigation in 2019, and then we heard nothing until Hockey Canada got called to the mat at the heritage committee hearings for the abuse and the payment of funds. I got a call on Canada Day, over a long weekend, from the investigating officer at Heritage Canada telling me that they're not going to act on the complaint. To me that was unacceptable—for it to take four years to find out if someone could determine if it were unreasonable to ask $500,000 from a 16-year-old when he only makes $50 a week. This is the action that we got—and this is not the only area that was there in this regard.

I don't even think that we need more laws. We have enough laws; we just have to enforce them. No one enforces them because they're NSOs they believe in.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

You certainly have more information to share with the committee on how the Canadian Hockey League operates and how it affects athletes.

Would you like to see a recommendation to go back and repeal the changes that were made to labour laws without consultation? The Canadian Hockey League, which operates across Canada, is subject to federal labour laws.

[Randall Gumbley]

Yes, for sure. Our position has always been that they should have been considered federal employees. They cross borders. They play internationally, across the U.S. border. They play within provincials...and we believe they should be considered federal employees. That would be the easiest thing to solve that issue of classifying these players as employees of the clubs.

Remember, the federal government already classified CHL players as employees in the 2001 Canada Revenue Agency court case, which held up upon appeal. However, no one ever enforced that these players were employees. In fact, it went the other way. The provincial governments said they were going to disregard the federal and were going to say, after the laws were changed, in order to mitigate damages in a class action lawsuit for non-compliance and wage and hour theft, they'd stop the clock from running and allow the teams to get off.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I have one last question for this round.

There are at least four class actions currently authorized in hockey, and several others in a dozen sports. They are all related to abuse, mistreatment and economic abuse as well.

May I assume that you have spoken with senior officials at Sport Canada and the office of the Minister of Sport?

Should we broaden our definition of “abuse” to include abuse that is monetary or economic in nature, as in Quebec?

[Randall Gumbley]

Justice Perell, in one of the court cases, stated that abuse comes in many forms and that financial abuse is one of them. These players within the CHL are definitely financially abused. Every province across Canada turned a blind eye.

I don't blame the ministers for changing those laws. They were lobbied under the false and misleading information they received from Hockey Canada and the Canadian Hockey League.

I believe changing the federal law to classify CHL players as employees would be the first step.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you.

We're now going to pass it over to Leah Gazan.

You have six minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, everybody, for being here today.

You said something, Madame Marchant, that really hit me. There were a couple of things, actually, that really hit my heart. You said “believing”, like “we just want to be believed”. I think when you believe somebody, you respond with action.

You testified in 2016. You're back here. Clearly, there's not been enough action.

You also spoke about your “stupid“ athlete brain. I would say your “battered brain”. This really hit me, and it demonstrated to me how deep this labelling is.

As I go through this study.... This is very new to me. I was not sporty. I barely passed my gym credits in high school. It was a battle at the time.

This is all very new to me. However, in the study that we've had, it's becoming very clear to me that the systems that are in place are not working. There's OSIC. You talked about NSO and Hockey Canada. They're not keeping athletes safe.

However, there seems to be a lot of push-back from federations in response to calls from victims for judicial inquiries. I know that you have a legal background. I wonder if you could share why you think there's push-back from federations right now for a judicial inquiry.

[Lanni Marchant]

It's not that I don't think OSIC is effective or can be effective. I was part of the SDRCC, which put in the request. The government put out a call for applications to create a safe sport and abuse-free sport program. They asked for that to be housed within an existing entity, so the SDRCC put forth its version of what they wanted abuse-free sport to look like, and we ended up with what we have now with OSIC, the safeguarding tribunal, etc.

Where I would say the athlete brain and NSOs are coming into it is the NSOs don't want a separate system. Whether it's housed in the SDRCC or completely independent, the NSOs want to keep investigating themselves to allow it to continue to go on. They all have their own investigation systems or their commissioners, who do x, y and z, and that's not working.

As long as they can tell the athlete, “Don't trust the system. Keep it with us. We'll investigate”, there's no way they can do this well enough. They don't have the expertise in this area of sport. You're already not going to get the athlete buy-in, so whether it's OSIC or any other program, as long as we keep allowing the NSOs to have as much power and control as they have, no system is ever going to be fully functioning and working.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

It is becoming very clear to me that it's not functional. You shared a story that's horrifying.

The thing is—and this is what gets me in this study—that we've known about this forever. I've seen so many documentaries on TV. Knowing about abuse in sport is not new to me. Knowing about the governance structure of sport is certainly new to me. We've known about abuse in sport for a long time.

You spoke to the government, saying that it needs to listen and to act.

What could the government do tomorrow to make sure this abuse stops?

[Sandra Slater]

First of all, regardless of the person reporting the abuse, take it seriously. It came from somewhere. Do an investigation of it. Don't leave it there. Investigate it.

Don't rely on the NSOs because whatever policies, procedures and reporting mechanisms they have in place, they're clearly not working or these abuses would have been handled. They would have been reported properly and the government would have heard about them. They would have been reported.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

In terms of investigation, Mr. Gumbley, you said that you filed a complaint about the $500,000. Canadian Heritage got back after several years, saying they were not going to take action on the complaint.

I'm asking this because it seems to me that government departments are aware this is going on.

Do you feel that they know what's going on, but they're failing in terms of taking appropriate action?

[Randall Gumbley]

That's right.

It was the Competition Bureau. Let me tell you how fast the Competition Bureau acts. On September 15, 2020, a class action lawsuit was filed against the Canadian Hockey League, Hockey Canada and the NHL for anti-competitive acts.

Within days, the Competition Bureau came out and issued a statement to protect the NSOs in hockey, saying it would not pursue criminally those who were involved in price fixing. The Competition Bureau came back within days of Hockey Canada and the NSO coming back in 2022, to protect the NSOs again.

The Competition Bureau failed miserably to enforce the laws that were on the books and it failed to protect the competitive balance within the leagues.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Do you feel that because of all of these failures, you would support the call for a judicial inquiry?

[Randall Gumbley]

One hundred percent. There needs to be an inquiry into how all of these steps and various levels of government—not only the federal government, but the provincial governments—missed it.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes.

[Randall Gumbley]

How did the CRA miss $150 million in revenue within Hockey Canada?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes.

[Randall Gumbley]

How did the provincial governments miss that those players were classified as employees? Then they changed the laws to protect them and took away their [Inaudible—Editor].

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're going to get to our next round. Our next round will be for five minutes, five minutes, two and a half minutes, and two and a half minutes.

We're going to start with Anna Roberts for five minutes.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses. I'm really encouraged by your bravery.

Lanni, I love your dog. I rescue dogs, so every time I see a dog, it just opens up my heart.

My question will be for you, Lanni.

In your testimony, you talked about the abuse and being trolled by the Olympic teammates. Can you share with us some of the comments that were said?

[Lanni Marchant]

Oh. Um.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

It's whatever you're comfortable with.

[Lanni Marchant]

It's more about trying to clean up some of the language.

Essentially, when I testified the last time, I spoke about everything, but I wasn't as candid as I am now. I wish I had been, but it shows where I was at, I think, in my healing journey. The last time I was here, I had to be very surface-level.

Even with that said, I spoke about how we lose young girls from sport because.... If you are going to sexualize and objectify me out there, what do you think the 13-year-old cheering for me, whose body is changing and who already, through society, is being hit with all these things about how she's supposed to look and be.... Now, instead of commenting on my performance, you're commenting on my behind. Do you think that little girl wants to go and race in small shorts and a small crop top? No. I made comments about that.

What was received online.... I was basically told that I should have come here in my panties, in order to show you all what I'm really all about. How dare I show up here, dressed professionally, if I'm going to race in my skivvies out there? No one cared to ask me why I race in the kit I race in. Sometimes, that's all the sponsor gives you. Running does not pay the bills like other professional sports do. You are not going to upset your sponsors, especially as a female athlete. It was comments like that.

When I spoke about the harassment and abuse from some of my teammates and what it's generally like to be a female athlete out there, I was told what we all hear, always: If the statement had been made by a good-looking guy, I would have bent over and taken it. However, because it came from someone who wasn't attractive, of course I had an issue with it. It's the same stuff we hear whether we're in sport or not.

The fact is that I was brave enough, then, to come here and call out those behaviours. We didn't see anything happen from there. However, I was still expected to compete and try to make more national teams. Knowing this was how my testimony was received by athletes and the public at large was more than disheartening. To sit here and talk about the ageism and sexism I experienced.... I even said, in my 2016 testimony, that I would lose my funding the next day. I lost my funding the next day.

Where was Sport Canada? I am literally telling you that there are policies in place in my NSO saying I'm too old and that as a female, I have to hit this benchmark for competing. However, if I were 25 or male, the benchmark would have been here instead, and I could have kept my funding. The NSO, Athletics Canada...that was their policy. Sport Canada's response was, essentially, “They are the expert in your sport. We're not going to step in. We just give the funding based on their policies.”

I pled to you all. I said, “It can't be the athlete doing it.” Did anyone check whether Sport Canada changed that policy at Athletics Canada? No one here did. That policy eventually got softened, but that's because Peter Eriksson got pushed out. It had nothing to do with Sport Canada or this government changing anything.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

My next question is this: In 2016, you mentioned the negative feedback you received about appearances, which you just explained to us. It's absolutely appalling. Have you felt any pressure regarding your appearance here, today, as you did in 2016? Did you get bullied? Were you threatened? Did any of those situations occur?