Hockey Canada needs to start over. But how? And who should lead the way?

It is a rare day that passes now that Hockey Canada doesn’t find itself squarely in the crosshairs of public condemnation or at the very least under critical scrutiny as the organization lurches from scandal to misstep to scandal.

It is a rare day that passes now that there isn’t a good and valid reason to disdain the organization and the men and women who lead it even more.

Tuesday was such a day as Members of Parliament for the second time this summer grilled Hockey Canada leaders and others connected to the disgraced national body about their handling of sexual assaults. Wednesday is likely to be another such day. The day after? Your guess is as good as mine.

From their botched handling of the alleged sexual assault of a young woman in London, Ontario in 2018 by eight members of the gold medal winning World Junior Championship team, to news that a settlement in a civil case brought by the victim was paid out of a fund that in part came from registrations of hockey players across Canada, to inadequate and conflicting testimony given by Hockey Canada leaders to Members of Parliament that prompted a call for them to return to Ottawa this week to answer more questions about the national hockey body’s many failings, to news of allegations of another gang rape involving the 2002-03 World Junior Championship team in Halifax, it’s been mindboggling to watch the descent of this once revered national institution.

People are angry. And they should be.

This is a violation of trust of the highest order. An entity that should have been about creating an environment of safety, establishing boundaries and creating a place where rules and standards weren’t just followed but became second nature did none of that.

In fact in turns out that Hockey Canada is complicit in the opposite. The organization is complicit in creating a culture where victims were given short shrift or no shrift at all and the overriding goal seemed to be to pump up its players as young gods to keep filling Hockey Canada coffers. That’s the one thing Hockey Canada has been great at: collecting fees and putting on a big money-making junior tournament and elevating young men to iconic status before many of them are old enough to vote or drink.

The important stuff like culture and accountability and respect of women and knowing right from wrong? Not so much.

On Monday there was another painful reminder of just how little Hockey Canada seems to understand of the position in which it finds itself when it unveiled its ‘action plan’ for addressing issues of culture within the organization and its desire to “shatter the cone of silence and eliminate toxic behavior in and around Canada’s game.”

That’s more than a little rich. A day after the multi-pronged, nicely decorated release for the action plan, there was more embarrassing testimony in Ottawa about how Hockey Canada did little to truly follow up allegations of sexual assault. But, hey, here’s this nice plan. This is a plan written on the back of a cocktail napkin delivered by the same leadership group that felt it was okay to pay out a secret settlement on behalf of a group of national junior players after they allegedly gang raped a woman in 2018.

Not sure if it’s conceit or arrogance, but it’s certainly speaks to a lack of self-awareness for such a presumptuous plan to be unveiled by an organization whose behavior and lack of credibility cries out for a complete overhaul. It’s like the local crack dealer getting busted and then on the eve of a trial or sentencing coming up with a detailed addiction treatment plan. Look, we’re doing stuff. Let’s move on.

Not sure where the plan comes from, exactly, as in who the authors are, because Hockey Canada doesn’t do much now other than send out press releases and ‘open letters’ without anyone actually answering for it.

At this stage, the question shouldn’t be whether there needs to be an overhaul of Hockey Canada’s leadership from the top on down but, rather, how deep is the rot at Hockey Canada?

If the level of mistrust of Hockey Canada as it’s currently constructed is any indication, the answer to that question is ‘very’. Certainly the mistrust is deep enough that the Canadian women’s national team, a team that relies on Hockey Canada for funding, sent out a release on Monday demanding truth and transparency and a voice in what Hockey Canada looks like going forward.

It’s a message that speaks volumes and adhering to their request should be a given in whatever comes next.

And there’s the critical question – what next?

“Tear it down” is a fine sentiment, but what or who fills the void? Who decides who should fill that void The answers to that are difficult but it’s imperative they be answered correctly. If this fiasco has shown us anything, it’s not enough to have people in positions of power in a game that is so critical to Canadian identity who simply love the game. It’s not enough to have a group of directors from across the country who have spent decades in the local rinks tying skates and making schedules and buying hot chocolate at the snack bar.

That’s a nice image, but what’s been revealed in recent days and weeks reveals this as a complete charade. In fact, such a construct may have helped foster the culture of toxicity and lack of accountability that defines Hockey Canada now.

Whatever group of people is going to lead Hockey Canada out of this wilderness will need strong voices and who can think far, far outside the box and not be afraid of asking hard questions.

I first called Andrea Gunraj, the Vice-President of Public Engagement for the Canadian Women’s Foundation, after key sponsors pulled out of the World Junior Championship – rescheduled from last Christmas for next month in Edmonton. Scotiabank, a longtime sponsor of Hockey Canada events and programs, had diverted sponsorship money from the WJC to alternate groups including the Women’s Foundation, a public foundation focused on gender equality and how to help women who have been victims of violence and poverty while also creating awareness of gender equality issues in communities across the country.

During our first conversation, we talked about the trigger effect a story like the 2018 gang assault in London has on victims of sexual assault everywhere. The media attention that comes with a story like this, including the lurid details of the attack and now the questioning by lawyers for some of the players about whether there was consent, often leads victims to reach out to help lines and organizations like the Women’s Foundation.

The problem is that often these moments of surge challenge a system that is thin to begin with in terms of staffing and monetary support.

The victim blaming by lawyers representing the eight Canadian players, none of whom has as yet been named, also reinforces why so many victims of sexual assault never report their assaults. It’s perhaps why the woman in the alleged 2018 assault initially declined to speak to investigators. She has since reconsidered after new investigations were launched by police in London and by a third party group hired by Hockey Canada.

Gunraj described a recent poll of victims of sexual assault asking what factors led them to withhold reporting their assault(s) to friends or family, let alone police or other people in positions of power.

“Victim blaming was still a really valid concern,” Gunraj said.

“Every action is going to be miscast,” she added. “Everything you do is going to be scrutinized. It’s going to be about your behavior and now what was done to the victim.”

As for the accused perpetrators of the attack? None of them paid any part of the settlement agreed to by Hockey Canada and many have gone on to NHL careers. Beyond that, some may at some point become leaders within the sport. Some will become coaches or attain other levels of import within the game.

“Are we really okay with that?” Gunraj asked.

I asked for a follow-up chat after the news of the 2002-03 gang assault allegations broke in part through a press release released by Hockey Canada and after more reporting by TSN investigative reporter Rick Westhead as well as the release of the Hockey Canada action plan and the letter from the women’s national team.

I wondered what Gunraj thought about next steps and how important it was for the victims of sexual assaults, assaults that Hockey Canada has acknowledged have been a historic problem for the organization, to be heard. I wondered how important it was to have someone at the reconstruction table who can speak to the damage done by incidents like those in 2018 and 2002-03.

“Practically more survivors being asked to give their sense of what they went through and what would have helped them, what stopped them from getting help and why they weren’t supported,” is critical to addressing years of oversight on this matter, Gunraj said. “It can’t be ‘We’re going to handle this all internally.’”

The action plan suggests there are those at Hockey Canada who still believe that a day of reckoning is not coming. In fact the Minister of Sport Canada, Pascale St-Onge, testified Tuesday she didn’t believe current Hockey Canada leadership understood the severity of the situation and wondered aloud if they were fit to continue to lead.

It seems the answer is unequivocally no. But that day of reckoning is coming.

A group like Hockey Canada – and Gunraj is quick to point out Hockey Canada isn’t the only high profile organization that has had to confront its own shortcomings when it comes to culture and sexual violence and failings to address those issues – has to make the hard decisions when it comes to charting a new path.

“You have to be open to criticism,” she said. You have to look into the past and acknowledge where things went wrong and why.

You have to be open to making reparations and making apologies.

“It is a difficult process,” Gunraj said. “You have to crack open the system.”

That’s why people like Gunraj and organizations like the Women’s Foundation should be at the table, too, when the new Hockey Canada is constructed.

Someone should also be calling Princeton educated lawyer Greg Gilhooly, who was also a victim of sexual predator and hockey coach Graham James. Gilhooly has, over the years offered to help Hockey Canada with these kinds of thorny issues. But as he noted, he wasn’t part of the Hockey Canada gang and so his offers went ignored.

We know now what being part of the Hockey Canada gang means, and people like Gilhooly should be on speed dial for the reconstruction. His perspective and understanding of the dysfunction of hockey culture will be invaluable in rebuilding this. Gilhooly believes that Hockey Canada should have shut down the junior program as soon as the 2018 incident came to light. But Hockey Canada believed, erroneously, that it was doing the right thing in settling the 2018 sexual assault civil case.

“Yet there’s an overall moral problem sitting out there,” Gilhooly said. “Who did this and is there going to be any accountability?”

Accountability on the individual level for those players who were involved and those who might have known and yet did nothing and then institutional accountability.

We are at the beginning steps of addressing a massive institutional problem, “and hockey has a massive institutional problem,” the Gilhooly added.

Who else?

Sheldon Kennedy, another of James’s victims and long-time advocate for victims of sexual assault, is a natural. In fact Kennedy called Tuesday for the resignation of current leadership including CEO Scott Smith, who took over for the retired Tom Renney just as this scandal was breaking earlier this summer.

What about Brock McGillis, a powerful voice in the LGBQT community and a former player who also understands the dark side of hockey culture?

Ask Westhead and fellow investigative reporter Katie Strang to be part of the process. Ask as many brave and smart people to come to the process as can be found. If the plan is to make meaningful change, then these are the kinds of people who must be invited to take part in what will be a long and difficult road to redemption for the disgraced Hockey Canada brand.

And the sooner the better.

Hockey Canada needs to start over. But how? And who should lead the way?

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