Canada’s sport integrity commissioner vows urgent action amid athlete complaints
Global News
Sarah-Eve Pelletier faces the daunting task of trying to clean up Canadian sport amid a flurry of maltreatment complaints from hundreds of former and current athletes.
Sarah-Eve Pelletier calls this a pivotal moment in Canadian sport.
The lawyer and former artistic swimmer opened shop as Canada’s first sport integrity commissioner two weeks ago and, in what feels like not a moment too soon, she now faces the daunting task of trying to clean up Canadian sport amid a flurry of maltreatment complaints from hundreds of former and current athletes.
“There’s an opportunity, if we act collectively,” Pelletier said Wednesday. “It is the most important motivating factor in me taking on this role is that I want to be part of this important conversation. But there are so many things that need to happen so that no-one ever experiences any form of maltreatment or discrimination in sport in the future.”
But Pelletier, armed with two law degrees, and what she called a positive, joyful experience in her own sport, said she relishes the challenge.
“What has been the driver of my career so far has been to be a positive agent for change in sports,” she said.
The Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner (OSIC), which will operate within the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC), will start receiving and addressing complaints on June 20 of violations of the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport.
There was a sense of urgency, Pelletier said, to begin operations amid what Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge has called a safe sport “crisis” in Canadian sport. More than 1,000 athletes have signed open letters to Sport Canada in recent weeks calling for independent investigations into the toxic culture in their sports.
“One of my biggest worries as I take on this role is that we can’t get the results soon enough for the people who’ve been waiting for them,” she said. “Whether we started two weeks ago, whether we started next month or whether we started in a year from now, the sense of urgency is there for us, and we want to work on addressing all matters as urgently as we can.”
