Canadian Heritage Committee on May 1st, 2023

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Since you have experience here and internationally, is there a desire for other countries to work on safe sport—possibly together? You mentioned Wales, the U.K., the Netherlands and Belgium. Can we learn from these other countries, or do they have a slightly different system?

As we heard from Mr. McLaren, there's a lot of fragmentation between provincial and national. What studies can we learn from?

[Whitney Bragagnolo]

Absolutely, we can learn from our European counterparts. As I mentioned, Wales is doing a fantastic job right now, and UK Sport as well. There are some others—the Netherlands.

I'd like to say something just in regard to some opposition to the inquiry, concerning the amount of time that it would take to do an inquiry. For governance audits, they don't typically exceed a period of two months. They can be done simultaneously. Many could be done at the same time. My seasoned colleagues who work specifically in sport governance have been doing this since 2011 and 2014. They generally only bill for five business days, which is generally independent of the scale of the organization. This is something that we really seriously need to consider. It needs to start now. It's not just auditing NSOs. It's Sport Canada, all of the safe sport, for-profit entities, and our reporting mechanisms as well.

Thank you.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

I'll turn to Dr. Carpentier.

In this cultural change, we know the provinces and territories have that key role. I believe you said that you serve on a provincial sports organization board. Most of our athletes are local. They're in our communities. That's under provincial jurisdiction. We see the challenges. How can the federal government work to ensure that those provinces and territories handle abuses and help with safe sport practices?

[Dr. Joëlle Carpentier]

The answer is complex. At the provincial level, the implementation of mechanisms for athletes to make whistleblowing reports is fairly recent, and we see their limitations as they are used.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Dr. Joëlle Carpentier]

For example, we look at what happens once whistleblowing is done and what the implications are for confidentiality and anonymity. We also see what measures are put in place with respect to coaches, administrators, or organizations that are the subject of these whistleblowers.

It's hard to answer you in just 30 seconds. In summary, I would say that there are some limitations in that these mechanisms are still new. So we need to continue to test and improve them.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Tim.

We'll now go to Sébastien Lemire for two and a half minutes, please.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. McLaren, I first want to express my appreciation for your testimony today. I must say that your appearance before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women had raised a question in my mind. On the issue of non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, I was under the impression that your reports leaned more towards protecting organizations.

What can we do to minimize the cover-ups and avoidance by executives, and particularly those at Soccer Canada? People like Mr. Montagliani, Mr. Montopoli, Mr. Reed, or Mr. Bontis may have used elements of your report to buy time and a better public image, rather than to change things in their organization. It may be that while a report is in progress, public opinion has time to move on. When it comes to real action, however, we're still waiting.

What do you think about this situation?

[Richard McLaren]

Well, I'm not quite sure how to answer your question, sir.

There's no doubt that sports administrators often try to protect themselves rather than have a greater objective of what the sport administration and the sporting body are absolutely there to do and are trying to do.

However, when it comes to work that I do, like investigative work.... I had this conversation with the board of Canada Soccer. I was unwilling to do any work with them unless any work that I did was totally put into the public domain after it was completed. I had to actually appear before the board to persuade them that this was the right way to go, and eventually they agreed with that, so my report is totally in the public domain. I wouldn't have done the work if it was not. I think, when you're doing independent work, that's an important feature to remember: Make sure it has to be made public.

However, even so, yes, sports administrators can take the report. If they give you a long enough period of time, people may lose interest in the particular issues that you're looking at. I don't think that's true of some of the topics we're talking about today with respect to safe sport; I don't think people lose interest. With some other forms of corruption—fraud, etc.—yes, that happens.

I think that the best way for that to not happen.... I've forgotten which of our witnesses said this, but education about governance and the role of being on one of these boards is a very important thing. It is generally not provided to members of sporting boards, and it should be, so that they learn their obligations, including bringing their own integrity to the process and not using the process to hide and protect themselves.

That's the best I can do for an answer, sir.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

No, Madam Chair, I'm going to be honest: my time is up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Peter Julian.

Peter, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I would take Mr. Lemire's remaining 30 seconds, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

It doesn't work that way.

Go ahead, Peter.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Ms. Bookal and Mr. McLaren, I'd like to come back to both of you.

Ms. Bookal, we know that organizations like Hockey Canada made commitments to combat racism within their national sports organization. It did not meet those obligations, yet funding is streaming to Hockey Canada as we speak.

These are the kinds of issues that I think are very frustrating. If we know that racialized victims are less comfortable reporting crimes that occur, this is something that, as a society, we need to combat. However, we have a very porous financing structure, and Sport Canada basically gives money out even if organizations aren't meeting their obligations.

I'll come back to.... Do you feel that national sports organizations should be meeting their obligations before they receive public funding? Do you feel, as well, that a public inquiry is warranted, so that we can get to the bottom of all these issues that have permeated sports and created a sporting crisis in this country over the last few years?

[Shauna Bookal]

Yes, I believe that a public inquiry or a report card, if you want to call it that....

We've said it a couple of times. When you look at countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Australia, they all do report cards on their NSOs or their respective organizations. They post them publicly. It's not like they're held in private where people cannot see them. They give a report card. It's posted so they can see exactly where the sport organization stands. It's not just with anti-racism, but we're talking about across the whole EDI sector, including where they stand with equality, inclusion and everything from that end.

Also, in one country—I can't remember off the top of my head—they have to set yearly goals. They have to attain those yearly goals. If they don't attain the yearly goals, they have to explain publicly why it was not done.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. McLaren, go ahead on the same questions.

[Richard McLaren]

I think we need to have audits. I agree with that. We need to do 360-degree reviews of individuals who are on boards—which can be part of an audit—so you can assess the proper functioning of the governance process of that organization.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I now go to Kevin Waugh for five minutes, please.

Kevin.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is interesting.

Do we blow up Sport Canada? They're part of the problem here. They know first-hand. They were told by Gymnastics Canada that they had an issue. They were told by Hockey Canada that they had an issue, and they did nothing. The funding should have been pulled from Hockey Canada in 2018, and it wasn't.

What do we do with Sport Canada? It's almost like, what do we do with OSIC?

Mr. McLaren, I'll go to you. You've hit it right on. The grassroots couldn't care less about the provincial bodies, and the provincial bodies couldn't care less about the national bodies.

Here you have OSIC gobbling up lots of money. Realistically, all they have to worry about would be the national bodies, because I know the provincial authorities couldn't care less about OSIC or grassroots either. You've mentioned it, and I've talked about it for a long time here.

This is the problem we have in sports in the country, where grassroots couldn't care less about provincial authorities and vice versa. That's a problem we have in this country right now. It's a deep problem.

Mr. McLaren, comment on that.

[Richard McLaren]

I agree with you. It's a major problem that's been part of all the work that I've done in Canada and have observed.

The funding that OSIC has, for example, can go only to the elite, high-performance athletes who are under the governorship and control authority of the national sporting organization. They don't have the authority to go any further.

There are some mechanisms by which you could develop a grassroots, club, provincial and federal national body structure and buy into a much better system than what we have, but that would have to come from the bottom up. It can't come from the top down. That's the problem. The top down doesn't have the authority or the jurisdiction. Many of our sporting bodies nationally don't get along well with their provincial.... That problem carries on all the way down the chain from there.

We should look for good examples of clubs, provincial organizations and national—there are a couple—that operate well and effectively, and try to encourage that. That's the way out of that problem, I think.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you.

Ms. Bragagnolo, I saw your head bobbing there. What are your thoughts on what I just said?

[Whitney Bragagnolo]

Yes. I think something that's worth mentioning is the need for, again, accountability but also the appropriate capacity of those in boards and those running NSOs. At any level, to eliminate and address this, there's a need for interdisciplinary teams who should be undertaking these safe sport investigations, audits, inquiries and reporting mechanisms.

By interdisciplinary teams, I mean those that include independent sport governance experts; certified, registered mental health professionals; and human rights legal professionals. These kinds of people are crucial, but it is not common practice here. Advanced specific expertise is required to help with these kinds of assessments, but having a law degree or having extensive experience in governance or being an athlete does not necessarily equate to appropriate expertise in handling abuse and allegations in a trauma-informed, survivor-centric manner, especially if your governance experience is solely in a system that has been broken.

I think these governance audits will help determine the capacity and also help these organizations to evolve and realize where some of their holes are—for example, the lack of registered certified mental health professionals, the lack of ethicists on ethics committees, and the lack of sports governance and independent professionals; or, if entities are hired, they're not considering gender mainstreaming or intersectionality and don't represent that in their practice.

These are all current problems in the Canadian sport landscape. We can use interdisciplinary experts to help us assess these types of governance audits to make sure people who are running our sport are able to do so—