“We are hitting that tipping point where we need to take a hard look at how our system is structured, how we fund sport, and the win-at-all-costs mentality we’ve built into sport,” she adds. Instead, there should be more diversity throughout all sport management levels, she says, adding change will need to start at a grassroots level before working its way across the system. “You really can’t solve problems like this when you have the same people and mindsets that created the problems in the first place,” she says. If the organization wants to regain the trust of Canadians, Pegoraro believes its leadership needs to resign. Hockey Canada’s leadership has thus far shown no accountability amid the organization’s sexual misconduct scandal, she says. Such actions have become normalized within sport, she adds. The revelation that Hockey Canada has paid millions to victims alleging sexual misconduct points to a reckoning with exceptionalism in sport – the notion that organizations and elite athletes are excused from bad behaviour and accountability in how they govern themselves, she says. “And the timing of the release is a bit suspect,” she adds, noting the recommended changes are long-awaited. “It should’ve been out earlier,” she says of the action plan. She is also the co-director of the National Network for Research on Gender Equity in Canadian Sport and the director of the International Institute for Sport Business and Leadership.

Ann Pegoraro is a professor in the Department of Management and the Lang Chair in Sport Management in the Gordon S. The release of Hockey Canada’s action plan to address “toxic behaviour” is too little, too late, says one University of Guelph sport management researcher, who believes more fundamental changes are needed.ĭr.

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