A judicial inquiry into junior hockey might get the answers MPs haven’t
When the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage last week wrapped up two days of hearings on Hockey Canada’s response to allegations of sexual assault in 2018, there were indications that some of its members hoped the topic would be revisited in the fall.
And it certainly could be. There remain some significant unanswered questions.
Parliamentary committees do a lot of important work, and in this case the Heritage committee has forced Hockey Canada’s leadership to explain themselves, with sometimes alarming results. But as an investigative tool, committee hearings have drawbacks.
The flaws are immediately apparent when watching one. The members of Parliament each have five minutes for a round of questions, which includes the answers.
These short windows allow MPs from each party to have a turn. As the hearing continues, the windows become shorter to try to squeeze in more opportunities for questions: two and half minutes, sometimes even more brief than that.
It does not allow for a lot of back-and-forth, especially when MPs have a number of questions they want to ask. Some of them also use a lot of their time for preambles and speech-making.
Politicians gonna politician.
But with so many people getting the microphone and so many different points to address, it’s often the case that a good question doesn’t get a followup, or much of one, before the clock runs out.
Which is why, two months after TSN first broke the story of the quick settlement of a lawsuit alleging group sexual assault after a Hockey Canada gala in London, Ont., four years ago, there is still a lack of details about what Hockey Canada did, or didn’t, do in the days and weeks that followed.
John Kryk wrote about the possibility of a federal judicial inquiry as a way to get to the truth of the story, and it’s easy to see the appeal of such a venue.
At the least, the inquiry would have all the time it needed to put witnesses on the record and get the required evidence from them.
There are some obvious areas where it could start.
Begin with the decisions that Hockey Canada took in July of 2018.
The Heritage Committee heard last week that Hockey Canada hired a third-party investigator, the Toronto law firm Heinen Hutchinson, almost immediately following the alleged incident in June of that year.
Lawyer Danielle Robitaille said she had spoken with 10 of 19 players on Canada’s World Junior team who attended the gala by July 11, but once the London Police Service opened an investigation on July 12 , the remaining players declined to speak with her.
She also said the woman at the centre of the case, then 20 years old, did not want to take part in Hockey Canada’s investigation.
Robitaille told the committee that she did not pursue further interviews with the players who had not spoken to her, because she felt she needed the woman’s statement first.
The police investigation was closed, without charges, six months later. Nothing more came of the allegations until a lawsuit was filed this past April.
But why did Hockey Canada allow its own investigation to remain incomplete? Tom Renney, the recently retired chief executive officer, and Scott Smith, who replaced him, have told the Heritage Committee that they both contacted police and hired their third-party investigators because of the seriousness of the allegations.
And yet, in their June appearance before the committee, neither knew how many of their players had participated their own investigation. They said, incredibly, that they — the top two executives at Hockey Canada at the time — also hadn’t learned the identities of which players had been accused of the sexual assault.
Why not? How could they have imagined that letting the matter drop just months after the alleged incident was a suitable response? Even if police decided against criminal charges, didn’t Hockey Canada at least want to know what had happened involving its players and a young woman after one of its events?
And if Hockey Canada decided it was fine not knowing anything more, that its own investigation would end up stuck in becalmed waters, then who made that call? Who decided to embrace the bliss of ignorance?
Beyond the national sports organization, what of the Canadian Hockey League, where the players toiled when they weren’t on the World Junior team?
Did any of their member teams know that players had been investigated? Were they as unmotivated to find out what happened as was Hockey Canada?
Maybe the members of the Heritage Committee will find themselves with another crack at getting to those answers.
Maybe Hockey Canada, which has so far stuck to prepared statements and the evidence that its executives have had to provide to Parliament, will explain the rationale behind its actions in some other form. One can hope.
Or maybe it will take something with more investigative muscle.