Hockey Canada faces ‘long road ahead’ as organization seeks new leadership
Global News
Hockey Canada's nominating committee now has the task of finding potential candidates to replace its current board of directors, who will be stepping down in the near future.
After a summer of scandal, Hockey Canada faces a “long road ahead” in reestablishing itself as an organization worthy of governing the sport, experts say.
Following months of calls for change, the organization announced Tuesday its chief executive officer is gone and its entire board of directors would follow suit due to outcry over its handling of alleged sexual assault cases.
Hockey Canada now has to find new leadership to enact the reforms many Canadians have been seeking, but finding the right people to oversee that change must be the top priority for the organization going forward, said Richard Leblanc, professor of governance, law and ethics at York University.
“What you don’t want is a new board that has the same problems as the old board,” he told Global News.
“It’s a long road ahead. A lot of reputational damage has been done to our national sport by Hockey Canada, and it’s going to take time to recover. This can be done, but this turnaround will not happen overnight – it’s a matter of months, and that also presupposes that you’ve got the right directors.”
After hearing calls for leadership changes for months and seeing its major sponsors and provincial counterparts walk away over the past week, Hockey Canada announced on Tuesday its CEO, Scott Smith, was exiting the organization effective immediately, and that the board of directors would be leaving as well.
As a result, an interim management committee would be created to run Hockey Canada until a new board appoints a CEO to lead the organization, the statement read. Furthermore, Hockey Canada said its current board will ask its members to select a new slate of directors no later than Dec. 17, which is the scheduled date of an upcoming virtual election.
The current board will not seek re-election and will fulfil its “its fiduciary duties until such time as a new board is elected,” the statement said.
