Kirsty Duncan says she was told to pivot from safe sport crisis, calls for inquiry – National | 24CA News
Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan instructed a committee of MPs that when her time as sport minister led to 2019, she had been instructed the position wanted to “get back to what sport was really about” after she requested about plans for tackling protected sport reform.
Duncan spoke earlier than the standing committee on Canadian heritage, and answered questions from her fellow MPs about why it appeared the federal government was not embracing the concept for an inquiry, in addition to her exit from the position in 2019.
“At that time I did ask what we would be doing on safe sport going forward, and I was told that we had to get back to what sport was really about. I said, ‘So not protecting children,’” she instructed MPs.
She added that whereas there seemed to be some momentum constructing for motion on protected sport by athletes testifying earlier than the committee, there has additionally been the presence of “absolute resistance to moving forward on safe sport initiatives,” particularly by sporting our bodies.
In addition to resistance to a nationwide assist line, she stated there was pushback to a third-party investigator.
The Etobicoke North MP served as Minister of Science and Sport from 2015 to 2019.
Sport Canada is overseen by the federal Canadian Heritage ministry.
In calling for a nationwide public inquiry, Duncan stated following previous testimony by athletes, motion must occur now.
“I think we are finally at a moment in time where we cannot lose this moment,” she instructed MPs. “There is an understanding that this is a problem and we cannot afford to fail our children. The time is now.”
Fencer Emily Mason has added her voice to these calling for an inquiry, alongside soccer gamers Ciara McCormack and Andrea Neil, and Olympic boxer Myriam Da Silva Rondeau. Mason instructed the Canadian heritage committee in April that pressing motion is required.
“With every passing day, there are more children who are placed into these environments. More children who are experiencing the same things that we have and continue to every single day that a national inquiry is not called and we’re not taking action. That is not acceptable,” Mason stated on the time.
The hearings started final yr after media reviews that Hockey Canada had paid out a considerable authorized settlement after eight members of its 2018 males’s world junior crew had allegedly sexually assaulted a girl.
“These stories are decades old, this has been going on for decades, but if we do not have an inquiry we will not get to the bottom of this,” Duncan stated on Thursday. “In sport, abuse is decades old. It’s entrenched, it’s complex.”
Hockey Canada and different nationwide sports activities organizations, together with Gymnastics Canada, Boxing Canada, and Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton have had vital turnover of their management as a result of poisonous and abusive cultures.
Ottawa has taken steps to deal with security in sport, together with establishing a public registry of individuals sanctioned or suspended inside the sport system, in addition to new funding to display screen nationwide coaches.
But Laura Misener, professor and director of the School of Kinesiology at Western University, instructed Global News in May there’s nonetheless greater strikes that ought to be made.
“I think what we’re seeing is sort of this chipping away of small things and instead of really addressing the bigger systemic issues,” she stated.
Duncan introduced on Jan. 26 that ought to can be taking a medical go away, however would stay as member of Parliament for Etobicoke North.
She referred to as for an inquiry into Canada’s protected sport disaster the subsequent day.
— with information from Global News’ Saba Aziz and The Canadian Press
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
