Canada's sports system has come under intense scrutiny over the past year, with much of the discussion focused on the abuse suffered by athletes and a toxic culture of win-at-all-costs across sports. On Thursday, Federal Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge unveiled a series of reforms aimed at enhancing the voice of athletes within Canada's sports system. Professor Gretchen Kerr, dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, shares her thoughts.
Earlier today, the Federal Minister Pascale St-Onge announced several programmes and initiatives that respond to the recent barrage of athletes’ stories of maltreatment and that represent significant advancements in promoting safe, healthy and inclusive sport. This announcement reflects a much-needed cultural shift from one that centres medals and podium finishes to one that reinforces inclusive excellence, safety, health and well-being, and ensures athletes are active partners in the sport system. She has courageously responded to the loud calls for change by confronting and addressing the underlying structural problems in sport and focusing on funding, governance, representation and accountability.
Importantly, Minister St-Onge has listened to the calls from elected athlete representatives from AthletesCAN, the Canadian Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission and the Canadian Paralympic Committee’s Athlete Council, to make systemic changes to the governance of sport organizations by mandating increased athlete representation on boards and committees. To strengthen the position of athletes in the system, Sport Canada will establish an athlete advisory committee to inform programmes and decisions, and AthletesCAN will receive additional funding to strengthen their capacity to support athletes. Including athletes on decision-making bodies helps to ensure that athletes have a voice and that these voices contribute to the design and delivery of sport for athletes by athletes.
The new governance requirements also include representation from equity-denied groups to ensure that more diverse voices inform decision-making. Not only will there be greater athlete representation and diverse representation, but compliance to the new governance requirements will be assured by the creation of a new accountability measures, increased transparency and a new compliance office within Sport Canada. National sport organizations will be required to publicly post audited financial statements and minutes of board meetings. These new accountability requirements fill an important gap in the existing system as the government has given mandates to sport organizations before, but without adequate oversight and accountability, many sport organizations have not met these requirements and have not incurred consequences for failing to comply.
In addition to policy changes, important educational initiatives were announced. A national educational campaign will occur associated with the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment (UCCMS), which is a harmonized code to be adopted by sport organizations to advance a respectful sport culture that delivers quality, inclusive, accessible, welcoming and safe sport experiences. Education will be mandatory for all coaches and specialized orientation will be implemented for foreign-trained coaches. Additionally, a review of the existing safe sport-related educational programmes will be conducted with a view to ensuring they are empirically informed and evaluated. Currently, a plethora of educational programmes on safe sport exist and yet we know very little about whether they work or not and why or why not.
Although the government previously responded to long-standing calls for an independent complaint mechanism with the establishment and funding of the Office of Sport Integrity Commission, this body is currently not accessible to every athlete and participant across all levels of sport in Canada. In the Minister’s announcement today, she committed to working with all governments – provincial, territorial and federal - to have every athlete and participant protected by an independent compliant mechanism to ensure there are no gaps in the system across Canada.
To assist sport organizations, there is progress to renew the Sport Funding and Accountability Framework which will include funding directed to addressing gaps to improve governance, safe sport and equity, diversity and inclusion. It is hoped that further consideration will be made in the near future for the provision of safe, trauma-informed forums for survivors to tell their stories of harmful experiences and to have their experiences validated by their community. These are well-documented and important contributors to healing from trauma.
Taken together, the announced initiatives respond to athletes’ stories of maltreatment and their calls for culture change. They also address the research evidence indicating the prevalence, nature, forms and effects of maltreatment in sport, and the changes needed in governance, accountability, policy, education and adherence to athletes’ rights. These initiatives and associated funding will help to move the safe sport agenda forward in important ways by addressing and preventing maltreatment for all athletes and participants in sport across the country, and by helping to realize the potential for sport to be safe, healthy, inclusive, joyful and fulfilling.