Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Saskatoon—Grasswood.
I would like to start off by highlighting why the matter of safety and trust in the world of sports is so important and why the concerns raised by the athletes who came to committee, who highlighted their experiences, is something we need to take seriously.
For a lot of young people across our country, especially young people lacking in opportunity or facing a series of adversities and barriers to success, sports are often where they find themselves. It is where they access mentorship, guidance, personal growth and development, and learn about hard work and discipline. It is a place where they often find the first adults who ever care about them and are invested in their success.
When I think about the positive things in the world of sports in our country, I think of some of the people who are doing excellent, incredible work at the grassroots level. I think about people like Michael “Pinball” Clemons, the general manager of the Toronto Argonauts, who has been able to work with youth in some of the most challenging circumstances across our country and do what he describes as bringing young people from the margins of society into the mainstream and building a bridge for young people who grow up in circumstances where they feel like they are looking at life from the outside, unsure of where they fit in in school or where they fit in in our economy. It is by building confidence and self-esteem through sports that they are able to perform well in school, pursue their dreams and live up to their potential.
Mr. Clemons has done a phenomenal job through his foundation of building grassroots programs and supporting them across our country, but particularly in the Toronto area. One of the organizations he supports, which has operated in the Jane and Finch community for a long time, is the Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education, run by a schoolteacher named Devon Jones.
Mr. Jones has been in the Jane and Finn community for a long time. He works in classrooms by day and is operating incredible sports programs and tutoring programs by night. He has shown many young people who did not believe in themselves what they are capable of by first engaging them through sports and then opening up an entire world of possibilities for them.
Locally in my community of Durham, Scott Dickinson, a basketball coach, has run local basketball programs for young people in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters all across Clarington and Oshawa, showing young people all the incredible things they can do.
The reason these programs are so successful is that they prioritize safety and trust. Parents who know their kids need more opportunities and access to ways that allow them to live up to their potential and learn all the skills and abilities they have inside of them given by God know they can trust these programs and trust these people. They can hand their kids over to them and it will be an incredible experience that will elevate their lives.
Unfortunately, what we have learned through the process of understanding what has happened with safe sports in Canada is that there are far too many young people, student athletes and parents whose trust has been broken. They believed that organized sports were going to be the positive experience they are for some, but they instead found that they were not getting the support they deserved. In fact, there has been poor conduct and people have not lived up to a reasonable standard, or even a decent standard, of how to treat other people.
The impact of sports hinges on safety and trust so that young women and men can engage in sports organizations and receive the mentorship, guidance, personal growth and development they need. The report on safe sports in Canada highlights where Sport Canada and national sports organizations have failed to create a safe and trusted environment for athletes.
I stand in the House today in full support of the Conservative Party's dissenting report on safe sports in Canada, which outlines changes that would help us provide a positive experience to more Canadian youth. I would like to focus on the lack of accountability highlighted in the testimony provided by witnesses before the heritage committee. In particular, the testimony highlighted a lack of accountability resulting from failures of the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, which, as many people across our country have highlighted, needs to do a better job of investigating complaints in a timely and impartial fashion and needs to enforce consequences for non-compliance.
The issue of a lack of accountability is a theme that comes up very often when discussing the current government, but some very reasonable, logical, actionable recommendations have been provided on how the OSIC can better do its job of protecting athletes and enforcing accountability in sports across our country. I would like to highlight three of those recommendations.
First, the OSIC is not trusted by many Canadians to take their concerns seriously, act in an impartial, investigative manner and enforce compliance. These are the reasonable expectations of any commissioner who receives a complaint, a red flag or a concern about what an athlete, a young person, might be going through. Time, impartiality, seriousness and enforcement are the basic foundational elements of any ability to evaluate a complaint and make sure not only that victims are heard, but that what they share, which is often a very uncomfortable and difficult experience to begin with, is acted upon. That is the first recommendation to the OSIC.
The second recommendation is that the OSIC work with provincial and territorial governments to ensure greater transparency and accountability on provincial and university teams. We heard from witnesses that red flags, concerns and complaints can be raised at the national sports level, but they are not necessarily enforced locally when it comes to provincial and university teams. This is a jurisdictional problem that should not exist, but it is the result of a bureaucracy that is not working with local partners to make sure that if violations are found or complaints are raised, those who have been found guilty or proven to be violating a code of conduct are followed.
Young athletes, young men or women, naturally work with and are members of teams in sports at various levels. The idea that we have a commissioner who cannot work with universities and provincial and territorial governments is absurd. It is a very reasonable recommendation that deserves action immediately.
The third recommendation, which is also common sense, is to establish a searchable and accessible public registry of coaches who have violated the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport. This makes complete sense. Coaches are trusted authorities in the lives of young people. When a mother or father sends their kid to practice or to perform as part of a team, they are trusting that their coach is going to use their authority within the law, with respect, care and love. When that does not happen and there is violence and, as one of my colleagues adequately put it, pernicious behaviour on the part of an authority figure in the world of sports, that needs to be known to parents. That needs to be known to athletes. Putting coaches in an accessible and searchable registry makes sense. This is how we protect people and hold people accountable for their actions.
I call upon the Liberal government to take action on these items. The report that we received identifies many items that could be acted upon now. Actions could be taken now, with the best interests of families, students and athletes in mind, to restore what should be a trusted and safe environment for all young people to be involved in.
As I mentioned at the top of my comments, many people, and I count myself among this group, find their best mentors and sources of support, the people who believe in them the most, through the world of sports. It makes such a difference in the lives of young people, especially young people who are struggling and overcoming adversity.
I believe this needs to be a top priority, as another one of my colleagues mentioned, to ensure that the bad behaviour of certain actors in the world of sports does not taint or poison how sports broadly are perceived. We hope that the Liberal government will take action to hold those who give sports a bad name accountable.