27.11.2024
Canada, like many other countries, has made significant efforts in recent years to safeguard sport for athletes and other participants. These efforts follow a range of investigations and empirical research confirming the scope and depth of maltreatment across sport. For example, in a 2021 study of Canadian national team athletes, 69% reported experiencing neglect, 60% reported psychological maltreatment, 21% reported sexual maltreatment, and 14% reported physical maltreatment. Although such research has not been conducted at lower levels of sport in Canada, maltreatment is believed to be more prevalent at those levels based on the greater number of participants involved and national scale studies documenting the experiences of child athletes in other countries.
In Canada, several mechanisms have emerged to safeguard sport, including a universal code of conduct to prevent and address maltreatment and an independent body to manage complaints about violations of this code of conduct. This post will examine the jurisdictional limitations of these mechanisms and opportunities to improve them. However, before evaluating each mechanism, it is necessary to briefly discuss two key features of Canada’s sport system.
Key Features of the Canadian Sport System
The first key feature is that sport in Canada is governed by private, member-based organizations arranged in a pyramid structure. At the top of this pyramid, are national sport organizations (NSOs) that are members of an international sport federation. In the middle, are provincial and territorial sport organizations (PTSOs) that are members of the NSO. Finally, at the bottom, are local clubs that are members of PTSOs. Each private organization is tasked with governing its sport at its respective regional level, in accordance with its rules and any rules set by the higher-level organization of which it is a member.
In theory, this pyramid structure allows a higher-level organization to exercise authority over lower-level organizations. However, this does not always occur in practice due to tensions between higher-level organizations and their lower-level organization members. As noted by sports law scholar Richard McLaren:
The different levels [of Canada’s sport hierarchy] don’t particularly get along
with each other […] The provincial levels challenge the national organization
frequently, and there’s not a good rapport there. And the provincial levels also have difficulties with the grassroots clubs […] And that problem is common across most sports in Canada.
A second key feature of the Canadian system is that sport organizations are largely self-regulating as governments are not involved in the day-to-day administration of sport or the operation of sport organizations. Instead, the role of governments is largely limited to providing funding to sport organizations. This funding role is divided between Canada’s national government and 13 provincial and territorial governments. Canada’s national government provides funding to NSOs, and the provincial or territorial governments provide funding to PTSOs.
It is through this funding power that Canadian governments have sought to advance certain public policy objectives in sport. This is done by making a sport organization’s receipt of government funding conditional on its compliance with certain conditions, such as respect for anti-doping rules, the use of an independent arbitration to resolve sport disputes, and the implementation of good governance standards. Canadian governments have preferred this minimally-intrusive means of influencing sport policy over enacting legislation to regulate sport, in an effort to respect the autonomy of sport organizations.
Unfortunately, this bifurcated approach to funding sport in Canada involving national and provincial/territorial governments has led inconsistencies in the implementation of sport policy. This inconsistency arises from public policy misalignment between levels of government and a trepidation on the part of the national government to use its funding power to influence sport at sub-national levels, despite the lack of constitutional and legal limits on using the funding power in this manner.
Universal Code of Conduct
The Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS) defines and prohibits various types of maltreatment and other improper behaviour and sets out a framework of sanctions for violations. It was published in 2019 following an extensive consultation process and was intended to provide a harmonized set of rules to regulate maltreatment at all levels of sport following research showing that many sport organizations in Canada lacked clear and consistent rules to prohibit maltreatment.
Unfortunately, the UCCMS has not yet achieved this objective. The UCCMS has been implemented at the national level by NSOs, pursuant to funding conditions imposed by the national government. In addition, 4 provincial and territorial governments (British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the Northwest Territories) require their publicly funded PTSOs to adopt the UCCMS or an equivalent safe sport policy. However, in other provinces and territories and at the local levels of sport, the UCCMS has not been widely implemented – leaving a gap in efforts to prohibit maltreatment at those levels.
This gap in the adoption of the UCCMS could be remedied by leveraging the funding powers of national, provincial and territorial governments, and the inherent authority that higher-level sport organizations, such as NSOs and PTSOs, have over their lower-level organizations. For example, as a funding condition, the national government could require NSOs to ensure that their lower-level organizations (PTSOs and local clubs) adopt the UCCMS. Provincial and territorial governments could reinforce this funding condition by requiring publicly funded PTSOs to ensure that their local club members also adopt the UCCMS. The foundation for such cohesive government action was agreed to by federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for sport in 2019 through the Red Deer Declaration For the Prevention of Harassment, Abuse and Discrimination in Sport; yet, the governments have not followed through on their commitments.
Independent Complaint Management
As another measure to safeguard sport in Canada, the national government agreed to fund the creation of an independent body to manage complaints about violations of the UCCMS. This idea arose from consensus among sport stakeholders and subject-matter experts that an independent body is needed to accept, investigative, and adjudicate allegations of maltreatment in order to avoid the conflicts of interest that would result if a sport organization was responsible for these activities and the chilling effect this would have on the reporting of complaints.
Initially, the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC) was selected by the national government to create and house this independent body – known as the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner (OSIC). OSIC began delivering its complaint management services in June 2022 through the “Abuse-Free Sport Program”. OSIC’s operations were partially funded by the national government and the sport organizations that used it services as signatories of the Abuse-Free Sport Program. These signatories included all NSOs funded by the national government, as well as PTSOs funded by the province of Nova Scotia, and volleyball organizations at all levels. OSIC had plans to onboard additional PTSOs and local level sport organizations over time.
However, due to concerns that SDRCC was not sufficiently independent of the sport community, the national government decided to transition OSIC and its Abuse-Free Sport Program out of SDRCC and into Canada’s national anti-doping organization, known as the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES), effective April 2025. To facilitate this transition, CCES embarked on a multi-stage consultation plan, which recently included sharing draft rules that will govern a new “Canadian Safe Sport Program” to replace OSIC’s Abuse-Free Sport Program. The draft rules describe the Program’s jurisdiction over participants (including athletes, coaches, and sport organizations) and processes for making complaints of maltreatment, investigating complaints, adjudicating violations, appealing outcomes, and publishing and enforcing sanctions.
The consultation on the draft rules has revealed that the new Program will be a step-backwards in efforts to have an independent body to manage complaints of maltreatment in Canadian sport. The Program will be limited to national-level sports and will not be available to organizations or participants at the provincial, territorial and local levels. In addition, any sanctions issued under the Program, such as the suspension of an athlete, coach or administrator, will not be binding on provincial, territorial or local sport organizations. As a result, there will be no penalty for a provincial, territorial or local sport organization that hires a coach who is suspended under the Program.
The narrow scope of the new Program will likely put pressure on provincial and territorial governments to either finance the creation of parallel independent bodies to manage complaints of maltreatment in their respective jurisdictions or to fund PTSOs to retain their own independent complaint management services. The risk in either case is a further fragmented safe sport system with gaps and inconsistencies that will undermine efforts for a harmonized pan-Canadian approach to managing complaints of maltreatment.
Next Steps: Future of Sport in Canada Commission
In summary, efforts to prevent and address maltreatment in Canadian sport through the creation of a universal code of conduct and an independent body to manage complaints of maltreatment have been stunted by various jurisdictional barriers due to Canada’s federal system of government and the autonomy of sport organizations.
These barriers are not unsurmountable and are not necessarily unique to sport. In fact, lessons can be learned from how Canada has implemented pan-Canadian solutions to tackle other topics of national importance, including universal health care.
Such solutions may emerge from the “Future of Sport in Canada Commission” – a three-person panel retained by the national government to review the Canadian sport system and make recommendations relating to improving safe sport, among other matters. Only time will tell whether this review will result in meaningful change or support for the status quo.
Authored By: Marcus Mazzucco, Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Toronto.
Edited By: Anamika Shukla and Souniya Dhuldhoya
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