The Decibel - After a year of scandal, Hockey Canada gets its funding back

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

The federal government has restored its funding to Hockey Canada after removing it following the revelation that it settled a lawsuit accusing eight members of the 2018 world juniors hockey team of sexual assault. Since the scandal broke a year ago, Hockey Canada has endured audits, board resignations, and investigations. Its executives and board members have been called to Parliament Hill to testify at hearings, and big sponsors, like Tim Hortons and Canadian Tire, have fled.So, how much has the organization changed within the last year to justify this restored funding? Investigative reporter Grant Robertson explains the recent developments and the current state of Hockey Canada.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

On Sunday, as the women on Team Canada competed for the gold medal in the World Championships, there was some other hockey news happening. The federal government reinstated Hockey Canada's funding. It said Hockey Canada met requirements to get its funding back. So what has actually changed at Hockey Canada met requirements to get its funding back. So what has actually changed at Hockey Canada? And what's happening with the investigations into alleged sexual assault? And just a quick warning here, we are going to get into some of the specifics of these allegations. Today, I'm speaking with Grant Robertson.

He's an investigative journalist with The Globe, and he's been leading our coverage on Hockey Canada. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Grant, thank you so much for joining me again. Thank you. So we are going to get into why the government decided to give Hockey Canada its federal funding back. But first, I just want to recap the allegations of sexual assault that really started all of this controversy that came out last year. Can you just remind us, Grant, what were those allegations? Yes, it's remarkable.

We're coming up on a year from when this story broke next month. So last May, TSN reported that there was a lawsuit settled from a young woman who alleged she had been sexually assaulted by eight members of the 2018 World Junior Team after a hockey gala function in London, Ontario. And once that came out, it, of course, got a lot of attention. The federal government called hearings into it. The first set of hearings happened in June. And really, it started to blow up because when Hockey Canada appeared at those hearings, a lot of the questions the government was asking of them, transparency, how this was handled, why it was handled a certain way and not other ways, and really where is the accountability here. I think most people would ask, these are horrific allegations, why were the police not advised into the evening?

Why did you have those internal discussions first, including advising your insurer? Is there a mechanism for accountability right now where the players are responsible for their actions when they're there representing Hockey Canada? Whose decision was it in June of 2018 to keep this quiet? And why did you keep it quiet for four years? The players were interviewed. We heard prior to the NHL Stanley Cup series

one of the star players on the team said, I'm not involved, but I was interviewed. Who made that decision to keep this quiet? Hockey Canada didn't have good answers for those questions. And that really inflamed the process to where we saw hearings happen all through 2022. And we still see hearings going on today. And we still see this story continuing to unfold. And of course, this story is kind of the impetus for why the government initially pulled its federal funding for Hockey Canada last June. They made that decision. And this week, in April now, it restored that funding.

So Grant, what was its reasoning for giving Hockey Canada that funding back? Sport Canada, which is the arm of the government that funds sports organizations like Hockey Canada, it really operates as a funding body. It's less a regulatory body, but it gives them money. And so really, it's the one sort of hammer they have on sports organizations. So when the controversy erupted last year, the one thing the government could do quickly is pull its funding back until they got better answers from Hockey Canada and more transparency. And so what they did was they said, okay, we're going to suspend your funding and we want you to do certain things.

Now, they've reinstated the funding. And I think really what that shows is the conditions they put on it were met, but you could argue that the conditions the government put on Hockey Canada to get their funding back weren't really that onerous. At the time, they wanted to know where the money came from to pay the lawsuit, but that was a question that was able to be answered eventually. And so now that they've met those conditions, the government has reinstated the funding, but there's still a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of lack of accountability on this issue that continues, even though the government has reinstated the funding. Yeah. And we're going to get into those three conditions that

Hockey Canada met. There were three that the government set out. But just first, Grant, I just want to clarify, I guess, some of the money details here. So how much funding are they actually getting from the government? They get about $7.7 million, $7.74 million in 2022. That was up from roughly $5.7 million in 2021. And is that a lot for the organization? It's a lot for national sports organizations. So Hockey Canada would be one of the ones in Canada that gets more funding than other sports organizations do. Now, for Hockey Canada, that's not a lot. It's really a

drop in the bucket because this is such a wealthy NSO, as they're called, National Sports Organizations. We did an analysis of their finances in November, and it was remarkable for what is considered a nonprofit organization, somewhere in the magnitude of $120 million of basically surplus money on their books, carrying over from previous years. Now, that dropped slightly because they lost a lot of sponsorship money last year. It's roughly, I think, around $100 million. And so pulling back the federal money from them is really a symbolic move more than it is something that would actually cause their operations to be disrupted in any way. And so when you say symbolic, if it's such a small part of their funding,

why is it important to get that money back? I mean, what we're seeing is Hockey Canada in their statements in recent days say, well, this is a vote of confidence from the government. This shows we're on the right track. But really, you could look at it the other way and say, well, the criteria that the government set last summer has been met. So the government kind of painted itself into a corner, really. Let's talk a little bit about that criteria, then, that the government set out for Hockey

Canada to meet. The first condition was signing on to Abuse-Free Sport and the Office of the Sports Integrity Commissioner. So why was something that the government wanted Hockey Canada to do? They want all the national sports organizations to do this because if there was something that went wrong, if there was a complaint from an athlete about abuse, they could investigate it internally. And so the government is introducing this new office as a way to bring in external investigations when these things happen. But the minister has said, you know, for more than a year that this was going

to be mandatory for all NSOs. So when they attached it as a condition to Hockey Canada, it really wasn't news. This was going to happen anyway. I think they just put it on there to sort of force Hockey Canada to hopefully do it sooner. That's basically to, you know, increase transparency. I want to focus on the third one though, Grant, because this is actually the really interesting one. The third condition is implementing recommendations from the Independence Governance Review. So can you remind us, I guess, what were the most essential points from that report? So essentially what happened was when this controversy really started to blow up, and that was when we uncovered that Hockey Canada had undisclosed funds built by player

registration fees, that it was setting aside for situations where they wanted to settle allegations of sexual assault without really telling anybody. This is the National Equity Fund that you did a lot of investigating on. That's right. That's that fund. When that came out, it was retired Supreme Court Judge Thomas Cromwell who came in and examined Hockey Canada. And what was fascinating about his analysis of Hockey Canada was, okay, so he was hired by Hockey Canada to come in and critique their governance. It was a critical assessment that essentially said, I'll sum it up here,

completely reconstitute your board, bring in more diversity, bring in better skill sets, more accountability to the organization. All these things lacked in the old structure on the old board. More disclosure, more financial disclosure. Essentially, if I was to sum that up in one sentence, he wanted Hockey Canada's board and its governance structure, its executives, to start acting more professionally and not like this organization that it apparently ran for decades as they were running it themselves without sort of outside criteria being applied to it. Okay. So I want to come back to the National Equity Fund because Grant, a lot of your reporting has been around this and how Hockey Canada used player registration fees. So money that families are paying when they register their kids for hockey across the country. They use that money to fund settlements for lawsuits involving allegations of sexual assault. So Grant, what else have you

learned about these fees since we first reported on it last year? We've learned quite a lot about them. And you know, you're right. They did all of that without telling anybody and without disclosing it. Not only did we uncover that in our reporting, but late in 2022, two audits happened that also uncovered this. Now, the government had called an audit to determine whether taxpayer money or government grant money was used to pay the lawsuit, the settlement on the sexual assault lawsuit. And they found that, no, it actually came from the National Equity Fund. Then we had Cromwell's report that came out last fall. And what he found was that, yes, there was not proper disclosure. And what's also interesting about that is we've never really seen the number that

they settled this lawsuit for. It was initially filed as a $3.55 million lawsuit. This is the one that we talked off the top about the 2018 World Junior Team, right? Correct. The alleged sexual assault in London, Ontario. And what we could see from the financials that Hockey Canada disclosed last year, and this is part of their new push for financial disclosure. They're starting to put out their financials now. We could see on the books that they paid out $2.9 million in sexual assault settlements last fiscal year. So what that tells us is, okay, they use plural as settlements, so we don't know what other settlements they would have had in the organization. But what we know is 2.9 million or less was what they settled this lawsuit for. But we're starting to see a bit of

transparency come through, and it's really been forced upon Hockey Canada. We'll be back in a moment. So Grant, there were a few investigations into the allegations of sexual assault that we talked about earlier. Which ones are still ongoing? I think at this point, the most important one is the one being conducted by the London police, because that's the one that could lead to charges. Other investigations include the NHL is conducting investigation. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said, you know, they were very close to finishing that investigation. Then I think in December or January, he said they were almost finished. So they keep finding new ways to say we're almost there.

But here we are a year later and nothing. Can you just remind me, why is the NHL investigating at all? Well, the players who aren't named in the lawsuit are said to be, several of them are said to be playing in the NHL. Currently. So the NHL might need to look at sanctioning or suspending players if it's determined that a crime was committed. The NHL has suspended players for things like allegations of domestic assault. Now, really, I think what we're seeing is the NHL doesn't want to be the police. So it's trying to buy itself time because it doesn't want to complete its investigation ahead of the police. It wants to, you know, determine whatever it does after it sees what the London police do. And then other investigations, you know, Hockey Canada conducted a third party investigation. It hired the law firm Heenan Hutchinson. And is that report done then, that investigation?

Yeah, it was handed over in December to this adjudication panel. And it's a bit of a mystery. Last month, Conservative MP Kevin Waugh put forward an order for them to turn over this report. Hockey Canada's lawyers sent a letter to the committee saying, if you force us to turn over this report, we will. But we want to warn you that if any of the details of this were to leak, it could affect the London police investigation. And they said if that were to happen, that would really be on the committee. I mean, surely they can handle sensitive documents, though, right? national security documents sometimes. They can set up a room where, you know, the MPs can go into a room to read it, but they can't bring their phones in. There's somebody in there monitoring them. They can't leave with the document. So you can have a situation for this. But they decided to just put the process on pause and, you know, I think give Hockey Canada more time. So the

document hasn't been turned over yet. You end up in a holding pattern, I think give Hockey Canada more time. So the document hasn't been turned over yet. You end up in a holding pattern, I think, until the London police move. Okay. So it sounds like, yeah, both of those, the NHL investigation and the Hockey Canada one are kind of waiting on the London police here. So let's actually talk about this investigation. It was reopened in July. That was after police originally looked into the allegations in 2018, then closed the case without charges in 2019.

They reopened it last summer. It's now been eight months since then. Do we know how far along it is? We don't. But we got a very interesting glimpse into the London police process in about December. And, you know, full credit to my colleague, Robin Doolittle, who knows the legal process for these stories so well. She knew that document existed. And when we went through it, one of the most interesting things in there was it said, police believe there's reasonable grounds

to charge five players. Wow. That was the first time we had seen that. At hearings last summer, Hockey Canada was asked why they settled this case on behalf of the players. Very unusual Hockey Canada would settle a case like this on behalf of the players while claiming they didn't really know what went on or which players were involved. Hockey Canada said, we believe harm was caused. We recognize that the conduct was unacceptable and incompatible with Hockey Canada's values and expectations and clearly caused harm. There were a few other interesting things in that ITO document. One, it indicated that Hockey Canada may have given some sort of heads up to one of the players. That's huge. Wow. Yeah, especially because, you know, if you go back to those hearings, the first set of hearings last June, Hockey Canada executives were saying, you know, we don't know what happened and we don't know which players are involved. We settled the claim quickly because we felt a moral obligation to respond to the alleged behavior that occurred at one of our events

by players who attended at our invitation. Well, we don't know exactly what occurred that night or the identities of those involved. So that was really revelatory. So this document said that Hockey Canada gave this player a heads up, essentially. What happened after that? Well, it's interesting. What we saw from a series of text messages that came out last summer was the player then started texting the young woman, essentially saying, you need to make this go away.

And so that is also a very important part of this case now. Yeah. Grant, with all these investigations ongoing and so much media attention, too, I think a lot of people would expect that, you know, we would know the names of the players facing these allegations of sexual assault by now. But we don't. Why not? Yeah, it's very interesting that you see such a high profile case that, you know, so many people know about it's been in the news, and yet we're still not talking about the names of the people the allegations are against. Now, there's two ways in which the names of the people the allegations are against. Now, there's two ways in which the names of the accused typically come out in these cases. One, you know, the victim names their alleged attacker. And two, the police press charges. What makes this one unique is that,

you know, neither of those things have happened. But for me, you know, to suggest that no one knows the names of these players or doesn't have an idea of some of the players involved, as Hockey Canada tried to suggest last summer, I think that's highly unbelievable. To suggest that people in the hockey community aren't very aware of the names, to suggest that people in government don't have an idea of who the names are and that Hockey Canada doesn't know who the names are. It's just a matter of, I don't think we've seen charges laid yet. Grant, just to end here, I want to come back to the issue of public trust that we've been talking about previously, especially when it comes to this situation, because I think a lot of Canadians lost faith in Hockey Canada, especially last year when people learned that their kids' registration fees are going towards paying off settlements for sexual assault lawsuits.

What's left for Hockey Canada here to do to really, I guess, rebuild trust with the public and with Canadians? Yeah, rebuild is the operative word there. They're essentially rebuilding, you know, the organization from the top down. But what's interesting is, is how they go about doing that. You know, people have asked me, is this a good board? Are these the right people? Do you think, you know, that these changes will solve the problems? And the answer to that question is that can't be determined now. They're going to have to prove that and how Hockey Canada is run going forward will prove that out.

If this new board, if the new executives that come in to run Hockey Canada, if they end up with controversies, you know, with terrible governance, with, you know, these sort of egregiously bad decisions that we've seen made over the past couple of years at Hockey Canada that have, you know, resulted in people accusing them of cover ups, then, you know, we're going to be right back here in the future. Grant, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thanks so much. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wellms. Our intern is Andrew Hines. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.