Sports integrity commissioner says safe sport gaps exposed in 1st year of office

Sarah-Eve Pelletier's first year as Canada's sport integrity commissioner showed her that her reach doesn't extend far enough.

Federally funded sports bodies are among the 86 organizations now under the umbrella of the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner (OSIC), which was established in June 2022 to administrate the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport.

OSIC is designed to be one remedy to the country's safe sport crisis. Athletes have testified before parliamentary committees in recent months about the sexual, emotional and physical abuse they've experienced pursuing their sport at the highest level, and their fears of repercussions if they reported it.

The federal government's 2022 budget provided $16 million to fund Pelletier's office over its first three years of operations.

Once signed with OSIC, the sport and the people in it are bound by UCCMS, which covers grooming, neglect, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, as well as retaliation, failure to report maltreatment, false allegations and misuse of power.

National sport organizations were ordered to sign on to OSIC's Abuse-Free Sport program by April 1, lest they lose federal funding. But provincial and territorial, university, college, high school and club sports were under no such deadline.

"That big puzzle of making sure that every sport participant has a safe space to go if they have a concern is still incomplete," Pelletier told The Canadian Press on Wednesday. "As of today, there are still some missing pieces to the puzzle."

"A lot of people have paid attention to that statistic," Pelletier said. "For the mandate we were granted, the mandate was to address matters at the national level.

"We are able to see the