Former skier Allison Forsyth, now safe sport advocate, says major change is needed
He was granted parole in 2020.
Forsyth said Alpine Canada ignored their complaints about the coach’s behavior during their competition.
“The reality is that our sports system has accepted and encouraged mistreatment and abuse for decades,” said the 44-year-old from Nanaimo, BC
“Cases come in and brave survivors come forward faster than we can investigate and take hiring safeguards. Coaches are afraid of coaches and officials, we lose them every day.”
A wave of athlete complaints of mistreatment and abuse that gathered pace in the wake of the Beijing 2022 Olympics has continued to accelerate over the past summer, in large part because of Hockey Canada.
A furor erupted when news broke about Hockey Canada’s handling of alleged sexual assaults.
The federal committees on the heritage and status of women have held hearings and heard from tearful athletes from the sports of gymnastics, soccer, track and field, water polo, cycling and boxing.
Heads of national sports organizations, including Hockey Canada, as well as federal sports minister Pascale St-Onge and new sports integrity officer Sarah-Eve Pelletier were grilled by MPs at these hearings.
Fencing will be another next sport to be called to the carpet.
Heritage Committee deputies Thursday voted in favor of a motion to convene the Canadian Fencing Federation’s board of directors and have it submit financial records and minutes for the past five years.
While Forsyth spoke to the Status of Women committee about her experiences as an athlete in December, Thursday her knowledge of working in the safe sports field was sought.
“Progress has been far too slow,” she said. “We’ve seen some organizations stand up and embrace safe sport.
“But unfortunately, we also saw that far too many other safe sports programs offered only because they had to do so as a condition of receiving funding. And we’ve seen organizations that just put in place the minimum standards to tick the box and then move on.”
Forsyth says a safe-sport policy and online training module in non-sports activities is not enough.
She is Chief Executive Officer of ITP Sport and works with sports organizations to educate leaders and athletes and to assess the sports environment.
ITP is also responsible for processing and processing complaints.
Alias Solution does the same work for 90 sports organizations in Quebec.
President Vicky Poirier and Vice President Danny Weill told the committee Alias had received 500 complaints since February 2021, 12 percent of which concerned sexual abuse.
There have been calls for a judicial inquiry into Canadian sport, but there were disagreements on the issue on Thursday.
“A judicial investigation is a powerful mechanism for uncovering the truth to promote accountability and transparency in government and other public institutions that receive funds,” said Teresa Fowler, assistant professor at Concordia University of Edmonton.
“Exercise is unhealthy. I think we all agree, that’s why we’re all here. That’s why all this time and energy is flowing.”
But Gretchen Kerr of the University of Toronto believes a forensic investigation will eat up valuable time needed to implement changes in the sports system.
“We’re going to lose time and money and we’re going to lose progress,” Kerr said. “We have all the information we need to move forward.”
Kerr’s U-of-T colleague Bruce Kidd, 1964 Olympic runner, says he’s seen the greatest advances in safe sport in the last four years than ever in his 60 years as an athlete, researcher, athletic director and chairman of many sports federations .
“Progress can be undone,” he said.
It needs an aggressive campaign for passage of the universal code of conduct to prevent and combat abuse in sport and a mass signing of the new office of the Sports Integrity Commissioner (OSIC), Kidd said.
Randall Gumbley, an advisor to the World Association of Ice Hockey Players Unions, said OSIC could be an advantage for the big junior hockey players in the CHL, but says the CHL operates as a professional league.
“The CHL operates in a vacuum,” he said. “They are not covered by the NSO, Hockey Canada. They are a professional league. The NSO and the federal government cannot enforce laws with the CHL.
“Some governance changes would need to be made within the policy of the federal government, the NSO, to bring the CHL under this umbrella.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on March 23, 2023.
The Canadian Press