Ontario funding new research on sports-related traumatic brain injuries

Ontario's Minister of Sport Neil Lumsden said Wednesday he intends to one day donate his brain for concussion research, while announcing new funding for a provincewide study on traumatic brain injuries.

Lumsden, the MPP for Hamilton East–Stoney Creek, played for 10 years in the Canadian Football League as a fullback and running back. He won three Grey Cups as a player with the Edmonton Elks and another as an executive with the Hamilton Tiger Cats before entering politics.

"I'm privileged to have had a long career playing a high-collision sport, and I am fortunate to have not experienced the negative long-term effects of concussions. But many of my teammates and others that I have played with and against haven't been so lucky," Lumsden said at a morning news conference in Toronto.

"It is my hope that with my donation, and many others like me, we can find out why that is. We need to find answers. We have the ability to find answers," he said.

Lumsden announced $52,500 in provincial funding for research to better understand the patterns and risk factors for sports-related traumatic brain injuries and their impacts on mental health. The project will be led by Jesse Young, a research scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and former junior hockey player.

"I've seen first hand the impact that repetitive traumatic brain injury in sports can have," Young said.

Concussion Legacy Foundation Canada, a charity that supports athletes, veterans and children living with traumatic brain injuries, will be a partner in the year-long research project.

Young said the work will integrate multiple provincial data sources with the aim of better understanding the prevalence of concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head, in Ontario.

"We have a lot of work to do to understand the size of the problem. We know it's large, but we don't know exactly how large it is," Young said.

"Second of all, we want to understand how we can use that information effectively to prevent these things from happening. And thirdly, we want to also then inform our response in terms of Rowan's law, and actions around identification and treatment of people who do have repetitive traumatic brain injury from sports."

Rowan's Law, passed by the previous Liberal government in 2018, mandates all coaches and team trainers in Ontario review provincially-approved concussion awareness resources each year before serving in sports organizations or at schools. It also establishes removal-from-sport and return-to-sport protocols for players to ensure they are taken out of a game if they are suspected of having a concussion.

It was named for Rowan Stringer, an Ottawa teen who died in 2013 after suffering multiple brain injuries playing high school rugby.

Tim Fleiszer, executive director of Concussion Legacy Fund Canada and former CFL player, said he hopes the research will encourage other provinces and territories to enact concussion-related legislation to better protect young athletes.

"My hope is that we look back at the fall of 2024 as the moment we finally started to get ahead of this issue in Canada. We still have the opportunity to be the world leader, but if we don't move fast, we now risk falling behind," he said.