Megan Savard, counsel for Carter Hart, speaks to reporters outside the courthouse after the verdict in the Hockey Canada trial in London, Ont., on Thursday.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Jennifer Llewellyn is a professor of law and chair in restorative justice at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law, and the director of the university’s Restorative Research, Innovation and Education Lab.
After the verdict of not guilty was handed down in the Hockey Canada trial, Megan Savard, counsel for one of the accused, Carter Hart, emerged from the courthouse. “Instead of pursuing restorative justice,” she said, ”the Crown forced a distressing and unfair trial to the detriment of Mr. Hart, his co-accused, the complainant and the Canadian public.”
Some will dismiss this call for restorative justice as a self-serving bid for leniency for the accused. But amid all the commentary that has followed the ruling – some lauding the judge’s careful legal reasoning, others decrying the decision’s potentially chilling impact on survivors – there was one common thread: that the justice delivered by Canada’s legal system felt inadequate to all involved.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Hockey Canada sexual-assault trial
The key legal issues at the heart of the Hockey Canada verdict
Seven years after the alleged events and following an eight-week trial – including nine gruelling days of testimony from the complainant – we now know the legal conclusion. But that verdict means only that the accused were not found legally blameworthy beyond a reasonable doubt – it does not declare that there was no harm, no troubling behaviour, or no cultural conditions that contributed to what happened.
None of that was at issue in the trial. But all of it is central to what justice should mean.
Unlike criminal proceedings, which focus narrowly on individual actions and legal blame, restorative justice allows us to ask broader and deeper questions. It is designed to deal with complexity – including cases like the Hockey Canada trial, which was entangled with culture, power and systemic failure.
Restorative justice is often misunderstood as a simple meeting between victims and offenders. While such meetings can be part of the process, they are not the whole of it, and are not even always required. Restorative processes begin with different questions: Who was harmed? Who is responsible – not just legally, but morally, culturally and structurally? Who needs to be part of the conversation to understand what happened and to ensure it never happens again?
In the Hockey Canada case, a restorative process would not have required anyone to choose sides or decide whom to believe. It would have created space to hear how the complainant experienced the events, to understand the perspectives of the accused and, crucially, to engage others who share responsibility for the context and culture that allowed harm to occur.
What we got instead was a rigid, adversarial trial, focused only on whether the individuals could be held criminally responsible – a binary decision for a profoundly complex problem.
Restorative justice is not about leniency – in fact, when done well, it’s anything but easy. It would have demanded a hard and honest examination of what happened, the harms that resulted, and the individual and collective responsibilities involved – not just to make things right now, but to prevent future harm.
Our criminal legal system is not equipped to address these factors. Even when such trials are conducted flawlessly by prosecutors, defence counsel and judges, they can still fail to deliver justice. The Hockey Canada case is a stark example. After seven years, we are no closer to a just culture in hockey, and the verdict may have taken us further from it. The not-guilty decision risks sending a message that no harm occurred and that no one bears responsibility – not the individuals, not the institution, not the culture.
Yet Canada is internationally recognized for its leadership in restorative justice. We have a track record of using this approach in complex and painful contexts. Nova Scotia led the first restorative public inquiry into institutional abuse at the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. Dalhousie University responded restoratively to systemic sexism in its dental faculty. Canada’s military is now engaging in restorative processes to confront its culture of sexual misconduct. There are efforts underway to advocate and take this approach to justice in response to sexual violence in Canada that need to be supported and expanded. The Restorative Lab at Dalhousie University is leading efforts to take a restorative approach to address and prevent abuse in Canadian sport, including next month at the Canada Games, where Team Nova Scotia is piloting a restorative approach to team culture and discipline.
We have the know-how. We have the experience. What’s needed is the will.
If we are serious about confronting the culture of sexual harm in hockey, and in Canada more broadly, we must stop dismissing restorative justice as a soft or secondary option. It is a rigorous, demanding and credible path to truth, accountability and meaningful change.