A former chair of both BC Hockey and Hockey Canada says British Columbia’s provincial hockey federation has failed to show leadership in response to a scandal rocking the national organization.
Hockey Canada is facing mounting calls for its entire board of directors to resign in response to the organization’s handling of sexual assault allegations related to the 2018 junior hockey team.
Multiple hockey federations in Ontario, Hockey Quebec and Hockey New Brunswick have all announced they’ve lost confidence in the national organization, and are withholding player fees while the national governing body is under review. Numerous sponsors have also dropped the organization.
BC Hockey has yet to make a similar call.
The organization did not respond to a request from Global News for comment by deadline.
But in a statement on its website it says it continues “to monitor the challenges in our game and all of the developments in recent months.”
“There’s no leadership shown whatsoever by BC Hockey at this point in time — BC Hockey should have taken a leadership role in the last couple of days and had a resolution passed by the board requesting …. the resignation of the entire Hockey Canada board of directors,” Frank Lento told Global News from his home in Fernie B.C.
“That is the first step. Then they can deal with the staff and management issues from there. It’s quite apparent there’s been no accountability, and that’s probably reflective of the governance structure.”
Lento, who was inducted into the B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010, is a past president of BC Hockey, and sat on Hockey Canada’s board of directors between 1991 and 2000. He served as board chair of the national organization from 1995 to 1998.
In April 2022, the allegations of sexual assault involving eight unnamed players on the 2018 junior team were revealed when the complainant filed a $3.55 million suit against Hockey Canada.
The crisis deepened over the summer when Hockey Canada executives revealed at a parliamentary hearing that the organization had paid out $7.6 million in sexual assault and abuse settlements since 1989 from a fund that drew on player registration fees.
Hockey Canada has been grilled by Ottawa over why president and chief executive officer Scott Smith, who’s held the position since July 1, has not been fired amid the string of scandals. Interim chair Andrea Skinner defended Smith this week and said hockey shouldn’t be made a “scapegoat” for toxic culture that exists elsewhere in society.
Lento said he has been “fretting and grieving” since the news broke, and dumbfounded that executives appear to be unwilling to take responsibility and step down.
“I’ve been grieving about the entire process and the way it was handled. Those individuals (the accused players) immediately should have been suspended pending an investigation, criminal, and they should not be participating in any Hockey Canada events,” he said.
“And if there’s heads that should be rolled in management for giving wrong decisions, then those heads should roll. There must be some accountability, because I feel the board at Hockey Canada has failed the association, they’ve failed the game, they failed the participants and actually they failed the country, so I’m so disappointed in that whole process.”
Hockey Canada has retained retired Supreme Court of Canada justice Thomas Cromwell to review its governance structure, but Lento said that is not enough.
He said the organization’s leadership needs to resign, and should be replaced by a pair of male and female co-chairs who can lead it until Cromwell’s report is complete and Hockey Canada can start to rebuild.
In the meantime, Lento said he hopes problems in the C-Suites of Hockey Canada don’t destroy what decades of work by thousands of people in the organization, volunteers and families have built.
“My plea is not to abandon the minor hockey associations in registering your kids,” he said. “Keep them in there.”
— with files from the Canadian Press and Paul Johnson