Canadian Heritage committee  I'll start by saying that Ellen is not a researcher with me, and that Gymnastics Canada has a wonderful, new safe sport officer, who comes with a broad research base of knowledge. It's really important that we have researchers in these roles so that they are making evidence-based

Canadian Heritage committee  —is that it's like putting your thumb in the dike. It's such a small step forward, and they still have to work in a culture with all of these other tensions and barriers that they're not in a position to solve. We're putting them in a position where it's very difficult to succeed

Canadian Heritage committee  It's not unlike researchers to disagree. That's how we get to the bottom of issues. Many athletes have already told us what they need to move forward. We don't need another inquiry for that. They need independent mechanisms. They need sport leaders who are trained. They need the

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for the question. There are differing points of view on how to best move safe sport forward. As you may know, I'm not a supporter of a public inquiry. I think it will slow down the progress being made. It will be extremely costly. Those funds could be devoted to putt

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. We will lose time and money and progress. We have the information we need to move forward. If you're asking why more progress has not been made, it is a cultural challenge. A multi-faceted and multipronged solution is needed. It's everything from governance to fundi

Canadian Heritage committee  One of the challenges around your question of charges being laid is that so many of the harmful behaviours fall below the criminal threshold. Yet, that's what's causing athletes so much harm. Sexual abuse, as part of the criminal system, can be dealt with there, but the other for

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you. We know the values that we see playing out in professional sport or at the Olympic level filter down to children's sport. One of the areas we need to tackle is how sport in this country is funded. When we have programs like Own the Podium funding athletes and teams

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I've heard those concerns as well. As was mentioned by other panellists, OSIC needs time to establish itself and gain trust amongst the athletes. On the independence question, to me it's a little bit like saying that Supreme Court justices are not independent because they a

Canadian Heritage committee  On the issue of governance, first, there is the matter of athlete representation in governance and, secondly, there is the notion of accountability. To highlight this, Sport Canada previously mandated NSOs to have independent harassment officers to deal with cases concerning saf

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the wonderful progress that has been made to address that is the establishment of OSIC. As everyone has said, it's new; it's still in progress. Once it's up and running, we either need its extension or an equivalent model that will filter from the national level down to t

Canadian Heritage committee  It was actually over 20 years that complaints were addressed by employees of the organization itself. It was most often the CEO of the sport organization, which, of course, presents all kinds of conflicts of interest. It's an explanation for why there's this culture of silence, a

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. I'm grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today. It's wonderful that the Canadian heritage parliamentary committee has taken such interest in the state of Canadian sport. Sport is clearly in the public interest, but only rarely do Parliament and

Status of Women committee  The funding for the national gender equity hub was not to fund research on gender-based violence. It was to bring together a collective of researchers from various disciplines across the country who study gender equity, so we could have a consolidated database that we could share

Status of Women committee  Well, I and others would argue that we cannot allow the status quo to continue. However, I would also argue that there are better paths forward than a judicial inquiry. The judicial inquiry will give us information we already have in terms of prevalence, effects, causes and so on