Hockey Canada’s toxic secrecy has come to light | CBC sport

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The start of a new NHL season brings excitement and optimism to Canadian ice hockey fans this week. Connor McDavid’s hat-trick in Edmonton and the Habs’ dramatic win over the Leafs in Montreal last night were two quick examples of the joy the pro game can offer. Meanwhile, boys and girls across the country are returning to the ice and reuniting with friends on their own teams. Hockey is back. And it feels good.

At the same time, the darker side of the nation’s favorite sport also became painfully visible this week. On Tuesday, Hockey Canada announced that CEO Scott Smith and his entire board would be stepping down, eventually capitulating to months of pressure from sponsors, politicians and the public. The angry calls for the national governing body to clean the house stemmed from the controversial handling of a young woman’s $3.5 million lawsuit alleging a 2018 sexual assault by a group involving players of Canada’s Junior World Championship team. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reflected the country’s frustration at the organization’s leadership when he said last week: “If these individuals continue to be so deluded that they believe there is a way forward to continue running Hockey Canada, then they have Canadians have no choice but to look for another structure to operate our national winter sport.”

The main reason Canadians are outraged at Hockey Canada is the use of an opaque reserve fund — funded in part by the children’s registration fees — to settle these and other lawsuits where Hockey Canada either couldn’t get its insurance provider to cover or didn’t want to make the payments to the beneficiaries. Aside from the 2018 lawsuit alleging the group’s alleged sexual assault, which was settled this year for an unspecified amount, Hockey Canada has paid $8.9 million to 21 complainants since 1989. About three-quarters of that money was linked to the case of Graham James, the former junior hockey coach accused of sexually abusing players on his teams. Hockey Canada officials told a parliamentary committee that $7.6 million from what it called the National Equity Fund was needed to make those payments, while the other $1.3 million came from insurance.

Following these revelations, Hockey Canada hired former Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell to review both its governance structure and the use of the National Equity Fund. Cromwell’s final review isn’t due before the end of the month, but an interim report was released to the public by Hockey Canada today after CBC News ran a story last night summarizing the key findings.

While the concept of a semi-secret pool of cash for settling court cases may seem unsavory to many of us, Cromwell says there’s nothing wrong with it per se. Indeed, not only is it prudent to maintain a fund to “address uninsured and underinsured liabilities … to fail to do so would be a serious oversight,” he writes.

The problem, Cromwell points out, is the way Hockey Canada has managed the fund. For starters, it never told players and/or their parents that any portion of their registration fees was earmarked for the National Equity Fund — let alone exactly how much (he found that $13.65 of the $20.80 insurance fee , which the players were supposed to pay annually, went there ). There were also no policies and procedures to govern how the money was used. Although Hockey Canada is required to report to its members when a new settlement, claim, or judgment could cost more than $500,000, Cromwell has identified six instances since 1999 where the organization has failed to do so in a formal, verifiable manner.

CLOCK | Using Hockey Canada funds to pay sexual assault claims is flawed: Report:

Using Hockey Canada funds to pay sexual assault claims is flawed: report

A report commissioned by Hockey Canada found serious shortcomings in the organization’s handling of a fund used to pay for sexual assault claims.

The common thread here is secrecy. That caused the initial moral outrage from hockey parents and politicians, and caused all of those corporate sponsors to abandon ship. Now we have Cromwell taking apart this lack of transparency in a colder, more mechanical way, listing and detailing the precise nature of the sloppiness in some of Hockey Canada’s practices.

Election for a new board has been postponed a month to December 17 to allow everyone time to digest Cromwell’s full report once it is delivered. The fact that Hockey Canada released the preliminary report today and pledged to implement Cromwell’s recommendations regarding the fund “as soon as possible” are promising signs that the organization is interested in restoring its reputation and public confidence to win back. But that’s a pretty low bar, and a lot more changes will be needed to ensure Hockey Canada finally emerges from the shadows. Read more about Cromwell’s results and next steps for Hockey Canada here. You can read Crowmell’s report here and his memo here.