Opinion | The change needs to come from the top, whether Hockey Canada is ready to admit it or not

At one point Andrea Skinner was asked if she was afraid of change. She is the first female chair of Hockey Canada’s board of directors, albeit on an interim basis, and isn’t even 40. The obvious answer could have been that change isn’t something she worries about.

But that isn’t the answer you give when defending an institution, regardless of what it’s done.

“I believe that we have changed, we’re continuing to change,” Skinner said, midway through two hours of testimony alongside former chair Michael Brind’Amour, to the House Standing Committee on Heritage. “I think that there is a significant risk to the organization if all of the board resigns, and all of senior leadership is no longer there.

“I think that will be very impactful in a negative way to our boys and girls who are playing hockey. Will the lights stay on at the rink? I don’t know. We can’t predict that.”

In isolation it could have been a slip; in the course of testimony from Hockey Canada leaders this year it was another example of the arrogance that grows when you believe too strongly in the faith. Will the lights stay on at the rink? Will the skate blades rust, the pucks crumble, the ice melt and flow out into the streets? Whomever will save hockey, who, before the lights go out?

It was such an insult, such an overstuffed hockey bag full of self-importance, such an insult to the good people who volunteer their time and money, who don’t share in the money-making superstructure, and who believe in this sport for the right reasons. Hockey Canada hired PR giant Navigator Communications to help in all this. Jeez, imagine if they hadn’t.

It was all part and parcel of another day in which the leadership of Hockey Canada seemed to conflate the goodness in the sport with the people who govern it. Skinner said Hockey Canada was a victim of “substantial misinformation and unduly cynical attacks,” without specifying exactly how. That fit with the survey Hockey Canada sent to members which asked, among other things, whether they believed the media criticism of the organization was overblown.

But Hockey Canada has an information problem, doesn’t it? Skinner defended Hockey Canada only delivering board meeting minutes to the committee one day before the hearing, saying staff were overwhelmed by the governance review commissioned by Hockey Canada and headed by former Supreme Court justice Thomas Cromwell. The so-called Participants Legacy Trust Fund, as unearthed by The Globe and Mail, was not disclosed to the committee, and questions surround just why it continues to exist.

Above all, Skinner seemed to be there to defend the idea that the status quo was the best path to change, that now that Hockey Canada has seen the error of its ways it is uniquely qualified to fix them. Strangely, both times Skinner was asked to enumerate the invaluable qualities of Hockey Canada CEO Scott Smith, she was momentarily flummoxed, as if she had found a moose in her kitchen.

But she said this was not the moment to remove leadership, endorsed Smith, and defended the competence of the board. And, perhaps notably, Skinner defended the jumping-off point of this entire scandal: the 2018 group sexual assault in London, Ont., involving eight players after a world junior championship team gala. That case was settled out of court earlier this year with a fund in which the money comes from player registrations.

She portrayed the settlement as victim-centred, even as Hockey Canada didn’t know the full facts of the case, or even which players had been accused. And as Liberal MP Anthony Housefather noted, the board meeting approving the settlement does not seem to have been formally recorded because the board went in camera (or behind closed doors), where minutes don’t have to be taken. As with so much, it was kept in the dark until dragged to the light.

One path here has always been clear: transparency above all. Hockey Canada alone can’t solve the cultural issues woven into hockey’s fabric in this country, because they run deeper than a distant, seemingly out-of-touch governing body. The action plans Hockey Canada says it has introduced are paper until they’re anything more.

But if you want to repair hockey’s cultural chasms you should be willing to throw open the books and explain exactly how you are being mischaracterized, and what decisions have been made, and why. Smith didn’t reveal the existence of the so-called National Equity Fund, which was used to pay out the 2018 settlement, in his testimony in June. Skinner wouldn’t go beyond a stated intention to consider waiving any previous nondisclosure agreements on an individual basis, as Hockey Canada did with the victim of that 2018 gang assault.

Skinner is a lawyer, played hockey at Cornell, and comes from a hockey family — her brother Jeff is in the 12th year of his NHL career, and played in three world junior championships for Canada. She clearly cares about the sport.

But it’s not an argument to rightly say that all of society has a sexual assault problem, which Skinner did, because nobody is saying that we should only focus on Hockey Canada to the exclusion of all else. It’s not an argument to claim misinformation on behalf of an organization that has hidden a hell of a lot of information. These Parliamentary committee hearings are helpful because the federal government can’t force change to a federation that has enough sponsors to overcome the freezing of federal funding; it is the members and sponsors that can effect change, and nobody else. The hearings force accountability, of a limited sort.

So far, the current leadership of Hockey Canada cannot seem to come up with a reasonable defence as to why it should remain the leadership of Hockey Canada. And that has to change.

SHARE: