Newly announced reforms to make sports safer in Canada represent a step forward but more needs to be done than offer “Band-Aid solutions” to regain the trust of Canadian families involved in youth athletics, experts and advocates say.
Last week, federal Sports Minister Pascale St-Onge unveiled a slate of measures to improve the accountability of national sports organizations and bring about a “culture change” for athletes.
Among the steps Ottawa is taking is the setting up of a public registry of people who have been sanctioned or suspended within the sport system, as well as new funding to screen national coaches.
The government is also looking to make sure non-disclosure agreements or non-disparagement clauses can’t be used to prevent athletes and other sports participants from disclosing abuse or harassment they’ve experienced or seen.
“I think what we’re seeing is sort of this chipping away of small things and instead of really addressing the bigger systemic issues,” said Laura Misener, professor and director of the School of Kinesiology at Western University.
For many parents it might come as a surprise that some of the steps such as thorough screening of coaches were not already being enforced, she told Global News.
It’s a confusing and concerning time for Canadian parents who want to get their kids involved in sports, Misener said.
“Parents are hearing a lot of things on the news and what’s happening, and it’s very muddy waters.”
“They’re not quite understanding what kinds of things they should be doing in order to ask the right questions, sign up with the right programs, make their kids accountable and safe and feel that they belong.”
How will a sanctions registry work?
In recent years, a growing number of current and past athletes in Canada have alleged maltreatment and abuse, including sexual assault, in their sport.
Many of them, including dozens of gymnasts, have come forward and recounted their past experiences facing abuse from coaches when they were young.
“I think with the barrage of stories that have come forward about maltreatment in sport, it does raise questions about the public trust in the sport system,” said Gretchen Kerr, dean of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education.
A public sanctions registry could help parents make informed decisions for their kids and help curb the trend of sanctioned individuals jumping from one sports club to another or between provinces, she said.
“The registry goes a long way in terms of providing transparency so that parents who are interested in registering their children for sports programs can check that registry to see if there are any names that are identified on that list.”
However, the implementation of such a registry public could run into legal challenges and privacy concerns, advocates say.
“There are all kinds of issues of privacy that go along with this,” said Misener. “And how do we make this a situation that continues to be safe and then also meet the privacy regulations associated with it?”
For instance, the national sex offender registry is not public in Canada.
Currently, only Canadian police services have access to this database through their provincial and territorial sex offender registry centres.
Sylvain Croteau, executive director of Sport’Aide, said another creative way to use the sport registry could be to document “positive practices” of coaches with annual statements about their training and references to improve accountability.
“It’s not just the coaches that need to be looked at for training. Our youth, they need to be able to recognize what’s acceptable or not,” Crouteau told MPs in French at a parliamentary heritage committee meeting on Monday.
“The administrators of our sports organizations have to realize that they’re accountable for the decisions that they make.”
'Win-at-all-cost' approach
Within weeks of St-Onge taking on the sport portfolio in October 2021, she was faced with what she called a safe sport crisis.
Accusations of maltreatment, sexual abuse or misuse of funds were levied against at least eight national sports organizations in her first five months in office.
Amid an avalanche of complaints, there have been calls for an independent national public inquiry, which St-Onge has so far resisted.
Those calls were reiterated at Monday’s parliamentary meeting discussing safe sport.
“We continue to believe an independent national inquiry is needed to examine the culture of sport and to produce recommendations on how to eliminate maltreatment in sport at all levels,” Jeremy Luke, president and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, said during the meeting
Own The Podium CEO Anne Merklinger said the organization would back a public inquiry into the entire sports system in Canada.
Meanwhile, the way sports are funded in Canada with the “win at all cost” approach indicates further steps need to be taken to ensure safe experiences for athletes, argued Kerr.
“As long as sports are funded based on performance or medal counts or medal potential, without consideration of the ways in which those medals are achieved, it’s going to be really tough to change the landscape, to prioritize athlete health and well-being and their rights.”
— with files from The Canadian Press
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