TSN reporter Rick Westhead was reporting in Belgrade, Serbia, when a source recommended he take a look at a file: Hockey Canada had settled a lawsuit filed against the organization by a woman who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by junior-aged players. The first article on the subject, published on the TSN website in May, had the effect of a bomb. Hockey Canada has never been so much under the scrutiny of the media and the political class.
Few Canadian journalists have covered the crisis at Hockey Canada as diligently as Mr. Westhead over the past eight months. At the end of the line, the main interested party prefers not to take all the credit for the revelations with regard to the sports federation. “We must recognize the work of Bloc Québécois MP Sébastien Lemire, who called Hockey Canada before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage,” he said. “Without the committee testimony, there are a lot of things we wouldn’t have known,” he continues.
Sébastien Lemire, MP for Abitibi-Témiscamingue, suggests that Rick Westhead is one of the personalities of the decade. The testimonies of Hockey Canada officials — which perhaps would not have taken place had it not been for the TSN article in May — have indeed had a significant effect on the credibility of the sports federation in the country and have allowed to understand new elements in the file. The journalist’s work has opened the door to a change of culture in sport, argues Sébastien Lemire.
Testimony on Parliament Hill highlighted the lack of professionalism of federation executives, who eventually walked out the door after repeated demands from MPs. On October 8, interim board chair Andrea Skinner tendered her resignation, followed by CEO Scott Smith. “The public’s level of trust in Hockey Canada has fallen to dangerously low levels,” former Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell wrote in a memo delivered to the board on October 10.
In July, Hockey Canada tried to redeem itself: the federation presented an action plan to improve the sport in the country. In October, however, Hockey Quebec disavowed it and announced that it would stop transferring certain funds to its parent organization. Ottawa had already taken the lead in July by freezing its federal funding. The freeze is still ongoing: the federal government is waiting for the federation to complete a financial audit to ensure that no government funds have been used for Hockey Canada settlements related to sexual assault cases.
Rick Westhead seeks to make an impact through his work. “Otherwise, what is it good for? he wonders. “If people tell you stories of abuse, it has to count for something,” he reasons. When reflecting on a story, the TSN reporter wonders if it will cause “real change.” Has there been such a change at Hockey Canada since his articles were published? “I don’t know yet,” he replies. “Nothing is won yet”, says Sébastien Lemire.
Mr. Westhead’s work has also prompted other media to take a closer look at the operation of Hockey Canada. “It’s encouraging,” comments the journalist. He hopes this will continue. “I would like to see more competition between media on topics like this, but I don’t know if that will happen,” he said. On November 17, Rick Westhead was named sports journalist of the year in Canada by the Canadian Sports Press Association.