Non-disclosure agreements complicate reporting on safe sport in Canada

TORONTO — The past few months have seen a wave of Canadian athletes speak out against mistreatment and abuse in their sports.

But how many other athletes have been silenced by non-disclosure agreements? And how will these gag orders affect the work of agencies hoping to clean up the sport?

Canadian Sports Minister Pascale St-Onge launched the Office of the Sports Integrity Commissioner (OSIC) in June, as an independent, one-stop-shop complaints investigator. And the Standing Committee on the Status of Women recently unanimously passed a motion to undertake a study on the safety of women and girls in sport.

But the rules regarding NDAs for both remain murky.

“The existence of an NDA would not in itself preclude a complaint from being admissible to OSIC,” the commissioner’s office said in a statement to The Canadian Press. “Before a complaint is filed, the OSIC Legal Aid Program may be consulted for advice on the applicability of a specific NDA.”

The Status of Women study follows repeated calls from hundreds of current and retired Canadian gymnasts for an independent investigation into their sport.

Committee chair and Conservative MP Karen Vecchio said she was consulting legal counsel on the NDAs.

“It’s very, very important that we have a better understanding of what an NDA is. Are we going to be able to talk to these athletes? We see what options we have.

Among the potential options, Vecchio said, is conducting interviews behind closed doors without recognizing an athlete’s name. The danger is that some national sports organizations are so small that it could be “pretty easy to connect the dots”, which could jeopardize an athlete’s privacy.

“There are a lot of things we are looking at right now. We don’t have a definitive answer,” Vecchio said.

AthletesCAN – the association representing Canadian athletes – and Sport Solution surveyed more than 60 national sport organizations for The Canadian Press, and of the number of respondents, approximately one-third had an NDA or NDA-like clause in the agreement of the athlete himself, or the sports federation’s social media policy.

Athletes must sign agreements in order to compete for their national team.

St-Onge spoke out against NDAs in June, telling The Canadian Press that nondisclosure agreements contradict the “very principle of safe sports.” It was responding to concerns from bobsleigh and skeleton athletes about a non-disparagement clause in their athlete agreement.

“As minister responsible for sport, I will always be an ally of the athletes. My priority is to make sure they are safe,” St-Onge said. “If any of them feel uncomfortable in a situation or think they are being mistreated or abused, they should be given the freedom to speak up. We need to break the culture of silence in sport and j expect all national sports organizations to participate actively.

AthletesCAN drafted a Model Athlete Agreement in 2019 in partnership with Sport Canada and a working group comprised of athletes, lawyers and several national sport organizations. It did not contain a non-disparagement clause. The group’s goal was for 100% of National Sport Organizations (NSOs) to adopt it by 2022.

Only a few, including Water Polo Canada, Athletics Canada, Gymnastics Canada and Canada Snowboard, have them.

The NDAs were the subject of Hockey Canada’s latest round of testimony before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in Ottawa.

Asked repeatedly by MPs about the non-disclosure agreements, former Hockey Canada President and CEO Bob Nicholson confirmed that former women’s coach Dan Church and two assistants signed NDAs after leading the program ahead of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

“It was a number of very sensitive topics,” Nicholson said. “I’m sure that’s why it came back to my desk to get (the) NDA signed.”

Nicholson added that he doesn’t believe any player has signed an NDA in his 16 years in charge.

Rob Koehler, chief executive of Montreal-based advocacy group Global Athlete, said athletes should never be forced to sign NDAs.

“The fact that athletes risk being sanctioned for speaking out against their own sport is clearly designed to oppress athletes and deny them their rights,” Koehler said. “The power imbalance between sports organizations and athletes must be corrected. Sport has taken away rights from athletes by refusing to engage in an employer/employee relationship, and on top of that they are forcing them into silence.

“Silencing athletes fosters a culture of fear and abuse and that needs to stop.”

Vecchio said the Women’s Committee has already heard from “a lot of people” eager to talk about their negative experience in the sport.

The committee was scheduled to hear from knowledgeable trauma experts on Thursday before beginning to conduct interviews.

“(Because) we have to recognize that they are victims that we don’t need to victimize again. We have to be very, very careful to speak to everyone appropriately,” Vecchio said.