Debate over naming banned coaches stirring at new agency probing abuse in sports

A new federally funded agency created in June to independently receive and investigate allegations of abuse and maltreatment in Canada’s elite amateur sports system is being heralded by the government as evidence that the issue is being treated seriously.

But advocates for abuse survivors are concerned that the Montreal-based Office of the Sports Integrity Commissioner (OSIC), which will receive about $5.3 million in annual funding from the federal government over the next three years, has yet to declare whether it will create a public registry of banned coaches, officials, athletes and others, or follow the lead of some sports organizations that keep those names confidential.

“Sanctions happening in secret are a huge problem,” said Rob Koehler, director general of Global Athlete, a Montreal-based lobbying group for athletes. “This is the reason athletes have lost confidence in the reporting system. Scandals get covered up. Coaches and officials quietly move on to other sports or teams. Doing all of this in secret means the same thing will keep happening. Without full transparency, you might as well not do it.”

Canada’s amateur sports system is facing a watershed moment. As a growing number of abuse survivors come forward to share current and historical allegations, sports teams, leagues and governments across the country are grappling with how to better safeguard athletes.

While many national sports organizations (NSOs) have historically kept abuse investigations and results in-house and hidden from the public, the OSIC wants to create a public registry, its officials say.

“The OSIC is establishing a searchable registry of participants whose eligibility to participate in sport has in some way been restricted,” OSIC commissioner Sarah-Eve Pelletier wrote in an email to TSN. “The intention is for that registry to be publicly available, subject to applicable laws.”

The problem, sources involved with the OSIC’s creation tell TSN, is that Canada’s privacy laws may prevent the disclosure of the names of those who have been sanctioned unless they agreed to that possibility when they have signed up as a coach or participant.

Lawyers consulting the OSIC have cautioned the organization against introducing a public registry unless the federal government passes a legislative amendment to make it clear the OSIC is within its rights to do so.

Koehler, a former executive with the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency, said several national sports organizations, including Athletics Canada and Gymnastics Canada, already have public registries of banned participants and pointed out that athletes who have tested positive for banned substances have been named publicly for decades.

“With anti-doping there is public reporting,” he said. “Yet we have coaches or officials suspended for abuse or misconduct and we are not telling the public? It’s ridiculous.”

Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge has said that NSOs must become OSIC signatories by April 2023 in order to continue receiving federal funding. Signatories to date include Hockey Canada, Volleyball Canada, Gymnastics Canada, and Weightlifting Canada.

A source familiar with the matter told TSN that organizations that join are expected to provide the OSIC with the names of all people who are currently banned or face restrictions. The OSIC has also asked for an assurance that the sanctions were levied after due process, the source said.

The source also said that about a dozen NSOs have yet to contact the OSIC to discuss becoming signatories and that complaints regarding NSOs that aren’t signatories will be kept on file and pursued if and when those organizations do join.

The cost to NSOs to become a signatory will range from a floor of $5,000 per year to more than $100,000 for large organizations, the source said.

If the OSIC decides against a public registry, Quebec offers a roadmap for what the OSIC’s disclosure policies would ultimately resemble.

Hockey Quebec, the governing body for amateur hockey in the province, disciplined at least one person at some point this year after a complaint of sexual misconduct was made in connection with a girls’ team. But that detail is all the public is entitled to know about the incident. The identity of those sanctioned and what penalties were levied remains confidential. A second sexual misconduct complaint is currently being investigated.

“We have laws that stop us from divulging personal information,” said Lise Charbonneau, the director of Regroupement Loisir et Sport du Québec, a non-profit agency hired a year ago by the province to oversee investigations into abuse and maltreatment allegations connected to Quebec’s 91 sports and leisure federations.

Charbonneau’s office has received 330 complaints related to abuse and maltreatment since it began receiving reports on Feb. 1, 2021. To date, 45 investigations have resulted in sanctions. The results of those investigations remain confidential.

The OSIC has already heard from several complainants during the five months it has accepted complaints of abuse and maltreatment. Between June 20, when it began accepting complaints, and Sept. 19, the OSIC received 24 reports of alleged abuse, the OSIC wrote in a September report.

A source said the OSIC, which has eight staff members and pays a number of independent contractors, has not yet completed any investigations or levied sanctions.

After an intake coordinator reviews and receives a complaint, it is forwarded to the director of investigations, who makes a preliminary assessment, such as whether a complainant may be in immediate harm and whether a complaint may be suited for mediation.

From there, credible complaints are given to investigators who, after their fact finding, present their reports to the OSIC’s director of investigations. The OSIC’s commissioner vets the results before forwarding the results to the organization’s director of sanctions and outcomes, who decides on an appropriate sanction.

Respondents may appeal to an OSIC arbitrator, who can decide to uphold or overturn a decision on whether there was a violation. Even if the arbitrator upholds a decision, a respondent can still appeal the term of their sanction to OSIC’s three-person appeal tribunal.

It’s unclear how long it may take for complaints to make their way through OSIC.

Peter Donnelly, a professor emeritus of sports policy and politics at the University of Toronto, said he’s concerned OSIC’s investigators are not indemnified as are officers of the courts, such as judges and crown attorneys. Indemnity means those people are protected from being sued for defamation or libel by people they investigate and/or discipline.

It’s also concerning that OSIC investigators do not currently have subpoena power, Donnelly said, meaning they have no authority to demand the production of documents, emails and other records from an NSO in connection with an investigation.

Pelletier said her office would have the option of publicly shaming organizations that refuse to turn over material related to an investigation, and that could lead to consequences with funding agencies such as Sport Canada.

“What we have in terms of an incentive to participate is that any lack of collaboration or cooperation by organizations or their leaders will most certainly be highlighted in an assessment report, which is going to be made public,” Pelletier said.

St-Onge said the government is open to a legislative amendment to address issues of transparency, indemnity and the ability to compel organizations to produce documents.

“We're building something that never existed before,” St-Onge said in an interview. “I’m not sure a system like OSIC exists in any other jurisdiction around the planet. It's not going to be perfect right from the get-go, and we are going to have to make adjustments.”

Sandra Kirby, a former Olympic rower who is now a professor at the University of Winnipeg who studies abuse in sports, said she’s skeptical about OSIC’s promises because of the government’s historical refusal to hold national sports organizations accountable.

During the summer of 1996, Kirby released a survey that revealed one in five Canadian national sports team members reported they had had sex with a coach or authority figure in sports. The survey, which was paid for by Sport Canada, also disclosed that one-quarter of the athletes who responded said they were "insulted, ridiculed, made to feel like a bad person, slapped or hit, beaten or punched" by the aggressor.”

Kirby was quoted in news media across Canada saying that abuse in sports was “an open secret” that needed to be confronted.

Within two months, Sport Canada announced a series of new policies it promised would help to better safeguard the country’s amateur athletes.

To continue receiving what was then a collective $48 million worth of government funding, 56 national sports organizations (NSOs) would be required to have two independent harassment officers – one male and one female – to investigate complaints of misconduct.

In the nearly three decades since those conditions were introduced, however, not a single national sports organization followed through with the requirements, Kirby said.

According to a 2018 study authored by Donnelly and fellow University of Toronto researcher Gretchen Kerr, none of the 42 national and provincial sport organizations surveyed had hired third-party harassment officers.

“It makes Sport Canada look pretty powerless,” Kirby said. “It’s inept, like buffalo in winter standing back to back to protect one another. In Europe there are new studies and research all the time on athlete safety and new groups created to help make better policy. In Canada, we still don’t look outside to groups like the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. We are not looking to experts outside of sport on how to do this.”

Kirby said creating an effective agency such as OSIC will only be a part of the solution. She said Canada’s sports system is also in need of governance reform, beginning with how NSOs and other organizations constitute their boards.

“We need to be looking for different kinds of leaders,” she said. “In many sports, if you were good at the sport you played, you go on the board. That is your credential. But it may not be the best way to build a board that is competent at creating proper governance.”