Canada’s new Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner (OSIC) is not equipped to effectively investigate mistreatment, former gymnasts and advocates say, amid growing calls for urgent action and accountability into alleged abuse of athletes.
The Standing Committee on the Status of Women began its hearings on the safety of women and girls in sport on Monday.
Gymnastics Canada as well as other national sporting bodies have been under pressure to work with the new sport integrity commissioner, whose responsibility is to probe alleged abuse and mistreatment in sport.
Appearing before the MPs on Monday, co-founders of Gymnasts for Change – a group of more than 500 current and former gymnasts – pressed instead for a national, independent, third-party judicial investigation led by human rights experts.
“I don’t believe athletes do trust the system that has been set up,” said Amelia Cline, a former gymnast and co-founder of Gymnasts for Change.
Cline said the OSIC, which was created in June, was “still very deeply embedded within the sport” and is being overseen “by the very people that would need to be investigated.”
“A good example of that is that the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner is overseen by the SDRCC (Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada),” she said.
“On the SDRCC board appointed earlier this year is a person who also sat on the Board of Gymnastics Canada. When he was initially appointed to the SDRCC board, he in fact was still an active board member of Gymnastics Canada.
“That (SDRCC) is the body that oversees the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner. So how does any gymnast have any trust in an office that is being overseen by the very people that would need to be investigated?”
The former elite gymnast from British Columbia claimed that the OSIC does not have the power to subpoena individuals nor compel National Sport Organizations (NSOs) to participate in any culture reviews or enforce its recommendations.
“We understand that the office is working hard to try to shore up some of those gaps, but at the moment, it is not equipped to investigate the types of abuses that we are seeing come forward,” Cline said.
In May 2022, Cline was among more than a dozen former Canadian gymnasts to launch a class-action lawsuit against Gymnastics Canada and provincial governing bodies in B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. They claimed lasting physical and psychological damages suffered over many years.
Since March 2022, current and retired gymnasts have been calling for an independent third-party investigation into their sport. Many have spoken about abuses they allegedly faced during their athletic career and a “toxic environment” plaguing Canadian gymnastics.
Also appearing at the parliamentary committee meeting Monday was Kim Shore, a former member of Gymnastics Canada’s board of directors, who said there was a “human rights crisis happening in sport.”
“Gymnastics is rotting from the top down and the bottom up,” she told MPs.
“We call upon this government and this committee to enact a judicial inquiry into human rights violations against athletes and a lack of mechanisms protecting children in Canada.”
Shore and Cline said other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Switzerland and Norway, were ahead of Canada in having completed independent investigations into their own gymnastics programs.
Gymnasts for Change have repeatedly called for urgent action by the federal government in a series of open letters addressed to Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge.
In June, Gymnasts for Change sent an email to St-Onge that detailed numerous examples of alleged abuse, including child rape by coaches, sexualized touching during stretching and sexual grooming in the guise of coaching.
In July, the federal government froze funding for Gymnastics Canada with the condition that the national body needed to accelerate its process to sign up with the OSIC.
Gymnastics Canada confirmed last month that it had signed an agreement to join Abuse-Free Sport, and work with the OSIC starting Dec. 2. It is currently undergoing a transition period.
Canadian sporting bodies have until April 2023 to sign up to use the services of the OSIC. So far, Hockey Canada, Volleyball Canada, Weightlifting Canada Haltérophilie and three other organizations are listed as program signatories.
A Canadian first, OSIC was launched in June. Commissioner Sarah-Eve Pelletier has been tasked with receiving complaints about alleged maltreatment in sports and where necessary, launching independent investigations.
— With files from The Canadian Press