Minister St-Onge holds emergency roundtable to address safe-sport crisis in Canada

In the five months since Pascale St-Onge was appointed Canada’s Sport Minister, there have been allegations of either maltreatment, sexual abuse or misuse of funds levelled against at least eight national sport organizations.

St-Onge is certain there’ll be more. Sport, she said, is in “crisis.”

Two days after vowing to accelerate the independent mechanism for reporting maltreatment in sport, St-Onge and

Parliamentary Secretary, Adam van Koeverden held a roundtable discussion of Canadian sport leaders and athlete representatives, and in an exclusive interview with The Canadian Press, she said there was a sense of urgency among everyone in attendance.

“We do believe that we are going to hear about more cases,” she said.

“It just reinforces my mindset that we need to rethink about the whole system as athlete-centred, and athlete-oriented. I think that what’s coming out right now in this crisis is that the athletes haven’t felt heard, or sufficiently supported.”

On Monday, 70 current and former gymnasts wrote an open letter to Sport Canada calling for an independent investigation into the toxic culture of their sport. The number of signatories has since grown to more than 150.

In a feeling of floodgates opening, the gymnasts were the latest in a growing chorus of complaints from athletes in bobsled and skeleton to rowing, rugby, synchronized swimming, women’s soccer, among others. They’re calling for a cleanup of the toxic culture in their sport, saying they’ve felt scared to speak out until now.

St-Onge had previously called for a financial audit into Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton after a similar open letter signed by more than 90 athletes called for the resignation of their national sport organization’s acting CEO and high performance director.