Canadian Heritage committee  You're talking about two different things. The statute of limitations is for a victim who's traumatized and who may not even remember they were assaulted because the body does not let them. The body says, “I'm going to save my life first.” They may not remember or be able to come forward with their trauma.

Canadian Heritage committee  Get more investigators. Where's the money? If you need more investigators.... If you have five and you need 10, get 10 or 20 or whatever it is. If it boils down to money, fund the investigation. Do it properly and get it done. Have a timeline. What's the excuse? Are there only two investigators?

Canadian Heritage committee  I totally agree. I think they are complicit. If, for whatever reason, they needed to re-fund them, it should have gone along with a string of “Let's have training and education. Let's have a reporting process and let's do the right things.” However, if they simply gave the money back, saying, “Enough time has passed and we haven't seen anything”, then they are complicit.

Canadian Heritage committee  I agree that they're associated with the abuse. I don't know how you would make them responsible, except that the media is the watchdog. The media should be saying, “These are the sponsors. Don't support them until this gets cleaned up.” In that way, that is a big enough sanction.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. If you are not trauma-informed, you are not going to have people speak their truth. They need to feel that there is a safe place to speak. For me, I have the gavel. I try to be the good witch and not the bad witch. I try to be the healer and the hammer. I think what you have to be is the healer, to listen and find out, like a doctor, what's going on with the patient.

Canadian Heritage committee  Right. I can tell you that, with my approach, even attorneys will ask to approach the bench and they'll say, “Your Honour, how did you get this information out of my client when I've met with them half a dozen times and I never learned that?” I say it's the open-ended questions.

Canadian Heritage committee  There should be no ban on parents being there. The parents have the constitutionally protected right over the child, not the coach, and when parents are banned, then the child loses their voice, and now it's the coach's voice. That is an imbalance of power right there, and that should never legally happen, ever.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, because in the United States people are free to contract, so, with the freedom to contract, people are free to enter into an NDA, but there is a lot more conversation saying, “You don't have to do that. You don't have to settle for this. Make it part of the deal that there will not be an NDA signed, or there's no deal, and you will go to court, go to the media and go public.”

Canadian Heritage committee  Not that I'm aware of. When there is an abusive coach, there should be some kind of registry. There isn't, but that needs to happen—not a public registry, but there should be a registry so that a coach can't move from gym to gym or state to state. That is being talked about, and there is sort of an undercurrent of that, but officially, no.

Canadian Heritage committee  Of course not. Nobody wants to start over when there's money involved. Take the money out of it and put the safety in, and the money and medals will come.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, if you have rules in place, the reporting and all the safety and training, that is a good start, but when you take the money out of it and put safety first, you will get better outcomes with your athletes. You will also really be the leader. We have to take the money out: safety first, and then the money and the medals.

Canadian Heritage committee  When it's safe, the money and medals will come. There's just no question. The parents will bring their athletes. The athletes will want to perform. They'll be safe. They'll be free to be who they are. Science has proven that when there is safety, when there is positive coaching, you're going to have super athletes.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, the practice is starting to change. People are speaking out and saying, “We're not going to sign an NDA.” The problem isn't just silencing the victim—that is a huge problem—but also protecting the abuser, because when you have an NDA, all you're doing is saying, “Yes, you were abused, but now we're going to keep that coach.

Canadian Heritage committee  I've been a judge going on 20 years in January. I have done that in every single case. I always listen to everyone in the case because of that backstory. It's similar to what I'm asking all of you to do. The backstory is really what drives my decision. When I learned about the Larry Nassar case, I didn't know the athletes, and I didn't know him.

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. Other countries will follow suit, if only because they are shamed into doing the right thing. I think you are doing the right thing. You could be the leader and—similar to what, unknowingly, I did with Nassar—catapult the whole world into doing the right thing. Part of your inquiry should be what I did with Nassar: just listen, take notes, ask questions, and make a safe space for victims to listen and speak their truth.