(OTTAWA) In 2021, the year of their Olympic triumph, the players of Canada’s soccer team learned that male players were being paid five times as much as they were. And when captain Christine Sinclair told the former Canada Soccer president about it, she came away offended.
“The future should be brighter than ever. However, while the popularity, interest and growth of women’s soccer have swept the world, our toughest fight has been with our own federation, trying to get fair and equitable treatment in the way we are supported and paid,” the athlete told the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on Thursday.
The fight has been going on for more than a decade, as the players tried to gain transparency from the organization on the financial side, but in return they were treated to “secrecy and obstruction”. “said Christine Sinclair. By dint of persisting, they ended up having answers. And what they learned in 2021, the year the women’s team won gold at the Tokyo Games, saw them off.
“Imagine our shock when we found out that players on the men’s team were being paid more than five times what a player on the women’s team was getting,” she added before recounting, “on a personal note. “, the time she has” never felt more insulted “.
It was last year, during a meeting with Nick Bontis, the former president of Canada Soccer.
“He listened to me, and a little later in the meeting, he referred to my comments by saying, and I quote, ‘what was Christine crying about? [bitching about] ? “. For me, it said a lot about Canada Soccer’s lack of respect for the women’s team, ”told the elected officials who wears the number 12 on her jersey.
PHOTO JUSTIN TANG, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Sophie Schmidt, Janine Beckie, Christine Sinclair, and Quinn
She then passed the floor to her three teammates Janine Beckie, Quinn and Sophie Schmidt. She said the women’s team seems to be “an afterthought” for the federation, wondering what message this sends to young girls.
Receptive elected officials
The athletes had a conquered public of deputies around them.
They all expressed their indignation and sadness, but also and above all their admiration for the success achieved by the women’s team.
In the conservative camp, Marilyn Gladu asked them if the Minister of Sports, Pascale St-Onge, had done anything to ensure that pay equity was a condition of the granting of federal funding.
“Nothing, as we speak,” he was told.
The minister in question is working on it.
“We are going to review the requirements that we put in the contribution agreements, particularly with regard to governance […] and financial transparency”, she argued in an interview with La Presse before the meeting.
A funding freeze like the one imposed on Hockey Canada does not appear to be the solution advocated by Ms.me St-Onge in the case of Canada Soccer.
“For the moment, we are not planning that, because basically, each time we suspend funding, it can ultimately end up penalizing the athletes,” she said.
A new draft collective agreement
Barely hours before the appearance of the quartet, Canada Soccer unveiled its draft collective agreement.
The employment contract provides that the two teams will receive the same match compensation and that they will equally share the prize money of the competitions, according to the federation.
The Olympic champion women’s team would become the second highest-paid women’s national team among FIFA’s 211 member associations, presumably behind the USA team.
With The Canadian Press