Future of Sport in Canada Commissioner Lise Maisonneuve participates in a news conference with former Sports Minister Carla Qualtrough in Ottawa in 2024.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
An unpleasant truth is that fear is a good motivator. Only for a while, though, and it brings with it a host of negative impacts. This is why good companies don’t tolerate hectoring bosses and why intimidation is rightly seen as a form of abuse.
However, the sports world has been slow to learn this lesson. Hard-as-nails coaches are lionized and bad behaviour accepted as a reasonable trade-off for winning. But it’s not.
Bullying – to call it what it is – can have destructive effects on athletes, particularly children who are still developing.
Which is why it’s worrying to read, in a huge report from a government commission into the future of sports in Canada released last week, that mistreatment of amateur athletes is ubiquitous. According to the report, it exists at every level, from young children to national teams.
“Harmful behaviours have been able to flourish in environments where safeguards are weak, oversight is inconsistent and authority figures often hold unchecked power,” states the commission’s 952-page report, adding: “these issues are not isolated incidents from the past. They are happening now and will continue to happen unless we make significant changes.”
Future of Sport Commission calls for phased overhaul of Canada’s sport system
Some of the abuses described in the report – such as physical or sexual assault – are criminal. Laws exist to punish such behaviour and its perpetrators must be removed from the sports world and not allowed back in.
However, other abuses have been allowed to persist as part of the culture of sport. For example, hazing is a form of bullying ostensibly geared at fostering team spirit.
A survey last year by the Coaches Association of Ontario found that large majorities of coaches, parents and athletes thought hazing was a serious issue. But views about what constituted hazing diverged widely. Eighteen per cent of coaches had a positive view of mock abductions or athletes being deprived of sleep, food or water, and 15 per cent approved of hazing involving yelling, screaming or cursing. For each of these behaviours, only tiny minorities of athletes and parents, under 5 per cent, agreed.
Because institutional culture is hard to regulate directly, last week’s report seeks a number of governance improvements that could lead to change. Among them are a call for a universal code of conduct in sports, auditing of federally funded sports organizations and a national background screening policy for officials in the sports system.
All worthy ideas. And so is the call for a national registry of people sanctioned by a sport. This could prevent bad actors from turning up in a new sport or a new province, without anyone being aware of their past.
The report notes that “others before us have made many recommendations to improve safe sport,” without success. To help boost chances this time around, the report clusters its suggestions into three categories: within the first year, the first two years and within five years. And it calls for quarterly updates and annual public reports.
Such urgency is valid, indeed, overdue.
Many young athletes dream of a professional sports career. The hard truth is that few will make it that far. But the value of youth sports goes way beyond a lottery-ticket dream of playing in the NHL or NBA. It gives children goals, it teaches them discipline and commitment, it helps keep them healthy.
There is another benefit, too, something intangible but at least as important. Sport can bring joy. The pleasure of activity, the pride of achievement, the camaraderie of the team and the thrill of victory. Sport can help people feel alive, even as it helps them live longer.
All of this is threatened by abuses within the system
There’s no doubt that the coach-athlete relationship has a necessary tension. Good coaches try to get the most from their charges and being stretched, being pushed to do better, is not always fun. But there are ways to be encouraging that do not stray into bullying, to motivate without abusing.
It was once entirely normal to hit animals as a form of training. As was parents belittling their children to teach them a lesson. However, both approaches have become less common as the harms became known. Better techniques were developed, methods that were not just more humane but also more effective.
It’s not acceptable to bully an athlete to get the best from them. Nor is it necessary. It’s past time the sports world recognized that.