Former Supreme Court justice Thomas Cromwell spoke about the nominees for Hockey Canada's new board and the need for more transparency and oversight on Tuesday.
For the first time, former Supreme Court justice Thomas Cromwell appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to discuss his report on Hockey Canada’s governance and face questioning from members of parliament regarding his recommendations.
While Cromwell did offer clarification on his purposes for the report and portions of his statements, he was unwilling to expand to give personal opinions or answer questions extending beyond the scope of his findings.
His testimony comes only one day after Hockey Canada named their nominees for a new board of directors. While Cromwell said he had “zero involvement in the selection, recruitment, or nomination of candidates,” he did say it appeared Hockey Canada attempted to follow his recommendations in relation to the composition of their interim board.
“It certainly appears that the nominating committee tried extremely hard to recruit the sort of board with the sort of profile that I recommended,” Cromwell testified.
As vice chair of the standing committee Kevin Waugh pointed out, Cromwell’s report suggested expanding the board of directors to 13 members, but only nine were recommended.
He also said there are shortcomings in the geographic composition of the nominated board, with a lack of representation in Atlantic Canada and Western Canada.
Cromwell however, asserted that it appears the nominating committee did attempt to meet his recommendations related to the composition of the incoming board.
“It’s apparent that a serious effort was made to improve diversity, improve gender balance, improve region experience,” Cromwell said.
Cromwell also said a more diverse board will be better equipped to deal with the ongoing cultural issues within hockey, whether those be related to gender, sex, race or violence.
Beyond the new board, Cromwell reasserted his belief that additional policy, which is transparent to all, is needed related to finances and sexual violence.
Cromwell also said he believes Sport Canada needs to “play a more robust role” in policy and oversight of Canada’s sporting organizations, including Hockey Canada.
He added that the first task of the board, which is set to be elected on Dec. 17, will be to hire a new CEO to replace Scott Smith.
“Undoubtedly yes, a new CEO needs to be recruited, and it will be that person’s responsibility to make sure that the rest of the staff of the organization can make up the sorts of people that are needed to carry out the mandate that the board has given them,” Cromwell said.
As for what the board and Hockey Canada has done since his report, Cromwell was unwilling to assess how effective the organiation has been to date in implementing his recommendations.
“I’m not in a position to assess how effectively my recommendations have been put into effect – my mandate ended on Oct. 31 when I submitted the report,” Cromwell said, referring to recommendations related to diversity.
While Cromwell did not wish to assess the effectiveness of Hockey Canada’s actions, he did believe the organization has acted since he produced his report.
“There are certainly steps that have been taken that are directly and promptly responsive to my recommendations,” Cromwell said.
Conservative MP Rachael Thomas responded to this statement by questioning Hockey Canada’s motives for the recent changes.
“I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that sponsors pulled so much funding and that this organization was finally publically shamed for their misconduct versus how much of that has to do with your report,” she said.
In relation to Hockey Canada’s finances and use of the National Equity Fund to pay for sexual assault settlements, Cromwell did clarify that contrary to Hockey Canada’s assertion, he was unable to state unequivocally that the organization did not use public money to pay for these settlements.
“I can’t provide any such assurance,” he said. “I cannot stand before you today and say that I did a forensic audit, I would not be qualified to do that… My task was to assess governance… not look at specific cases.”
One key piece of testimony provided by Cromwell is related to Hockey Canada’s hesitancy to become a full signatory to the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, the group “responsible to administer the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS) using trauma-informed processes that are compassionate, efficient and provide fairness, respect and equity to all parties involved.”
According to Cromwell, Hockey Canada did not wish to participate based on the requirement of providing full financial statements. He said the organization expressed concern that if their reserve, which exceeds $150 million, were to become publicly known, “it might invite claims if people recognized the size of the reserve.”
Overall, Cromwell hoped that Sport Canada, sponsors, Hockey Canada and stakeholders from this point on work collaboratively “to solve some of these very tough systemic issues.”
Following Cromwell’s testimony, Liberal MP Chris Bittle spoke in this regard, stating he did not feel the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has done enough to change systemic issues.
He recalled a question he received from media related to what recommendations the committee itself had to create safer sport and address hockey’s issues, to which he stated he was embarrassed to say, “we don’t have any.”
His statement included calls for action, more collaboration with experts and to continue looking at organizations.
This includes the CHL, who he said “has gone almost completely unscathed” in this process, despite the fact it is players from these leagues committing acts of violence.
“We haven’t even scratched the surface of problems in sport in this country,” Bittle said. “We haven’t heard from experts, we haven’t heard from academics... we’re not even mentioning other sports.
“We owe it to kids to truly expand this, I don’t know that any meeting that we’ve had, we can really say to ourselves, we’ve made sport safer for kids. Have we made hockey safer for kids? I don’t know.”