Trudeau: Hockey Canada doesn’t take situation seriously – TSN.ca

OTTAWA — The new sports integrity commissioner must conduct a broader investigation to address a toxic culture of abuse in Canadian sports organizations, federal sports minister Pascale St-Onge said on Wednesday.

With hundreds of athletes across multiple sports making allegations of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, St-Onge says more needs to be done.

“I think there should be (a public inquiry) and it should be conducted by the Office of the Sports Integrity Commissioner,” St-Onge told reporters Wednesday after the weekly Ottawa Liberal caucus meeting.

St-Onge’s office is currently facing allegations of abuse and sexual assault in Canadian hockey, and both she and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have called for a full leadership change at Hockey Canada over how it is handling the situation.

Trudeau said Wednesday he doesn’t think the organization’s board or executives really understand the seriousness of what is happening after the interim chief executive defended a decision not to force the organization’s executives to resign.

“It’s unimaginable that Hockey Canada would stay on its heels,” Trudeau said Wednesday morning in Ottawa. “Parents across the country are losing or have lost confidence in Hockey Canada. Politicians here in Ottawa have certainly lost faith in Hockey Canada.”

He said he really hopes they find out, “because hockey is a really important sport for a lot of Canadians and a lot of kids, and right now this mess isn’t doing kids across the country any favors.”

St-Onge suspended federal funding for Hockey Canada in June and said she would not consider a restore until the organization agrees to work with the new sports integrity officer’s office.

The body set up by the federal government as an independent body to investigate allegations of abuse in sport began work in June.

But hockey is far from the only sport with problems. St-Onge only took over as sports minister last October, but within the first few months, hundreds of athletes from at least eight sports had come forward with allegations of abuse, mistreatment and misappropriation of funds.

Bobsleigh, skeleton, rowing, boxing, rugby, soccer and alpine skiing are just a few of the sports in which athletes have excelled. In 2018, some former skiers filed a lawsuit against Alpine Canada, alleging it covered up sexual abuse by a coach, in part to prevent the loss of sponsorship money.

That lawsuit was settled out of court in 2019. Coach Bertrand Charest was convicted in 2017 of multiple sexual assaults and exploitation of young athletes.

In March of this year, 70 current and former gymnasts wrote an open letter to Sport Canada asking for an independent investigation into a toxic culture in their sport. That number has now grown to over 500, and more and more gymnasts are speaking out publicly about the physical, mental, and sexual abuse that coaches often endure.

As with Hockey Canada, St-Onge has suspended federal funding for Gymnastics Canada until it registers with the Sports Integrity Commissioner.

She has given all sports organizations until April to register with this office, but so far only five have done so, including Volleyball Canada, the Canada Games Council, Canadian Sport for Life, Canadian Sport Center Atlantic and Weightlifting Canada.

Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan, who served as sports secretary in 2018 and 2019, said in a speech at the University of Saskatchewan last month that Canada conducted an inquiry into allegations of widespread doping by athletes in 1989 after Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal from the Seoul Olympics after testing positive for steroids.

She said Canada now needs “a commission of inquiry into abuse, harassment and sexual assault in sport. To give people a voice, show the scale of the problem and get actionable recommendations for government implementation.”

She is not alone.

Liberal MP Chris Bittle, who sits on the House Inheritance Committee currently trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on at Hockey Canada, said he was not opposed to the idea of ​​a broader inquiry.

“We need to expand the study well beyond Hockey Canada and well beyond what we’re looking at,” he said. “And I think there’s a strong desire on the committee to go ahead and keep asking questions, because at the end of the day, it’s about protecting children.”

Family Minister Karina Gould said a public inquiry into abuse in sport was “not a bad idea”.

“The question here is how do we ensure the protection and safety of athletes, but of course what we’ve seen with Hockey Canada and athlete behavior and I think, you know, all of us as Canadians want to make sure that this type of behavior is (a) unacceptable and (b) will not occur again.”

St-Onge said the Sports Integrity Commissioner is the organization with “the authority to conduct independent investigations into culture and it’s really important to change what’s happening at Hockey Canada.”

She said her office is also currently investigating all sports organizations to look for misuse of public funds.

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on October 5, 2022.