Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport

Creating an environment free from harassment and bullying is a topic that Canadians have found themselves considering over the past year. Sport is not immune to societal trends and incidents of inappropriate behaviour are frequently discussed in sport boardrooms across the country. While the focus tends to be about the conduct we see on the playing field by athletes and coaches, we also know that malconduct extends into the executive offices and boardrooms of our sport governing bodies.

Four organizations have collaborated to bring sport leaders a blog series exploring the topic of harassment and bullying. The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES), the Coaching Association of Canada (CAC), the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport and Physical Activity (CAAWS) and the Sport Law & Strategy Group were motivated to share their thoughts through this blog series with a view of:

• informing: offering up a perspective on the standards of care now in place in many organizations;
• sharing: providing helpful links to programs, tools, and best practices that can serve as a source of motivation when considering what more sport organizations can do to deal proactively with this topic; and
• inspiring: providing ways to monitor and evaluate progress on creating safe, welcoming and harassment-free environments for all participants.

I’ll be sharing these blog posts on this page as they become available. We hope that they will help to stimulate conversations about what we want more of and create the space for the implementation of practical solutions that can have a significant impact on the cultural health of sport organizations.

Look for our blog series to be published in four parts; one post per month in the following sequence:

Part 1: Harassment and Bullying – A retrospective look on what have we done in the past (December 2015)

Part 2: Learning from Best Practices – What are we doing now and to what effect (January 2016)

Part 3: Our Accountability – Looking ahead to identify what more we can do to move forward (February 2016)

Part 4: Your say – We’d like to hear your thoughts on the blog posts and your ideas to keep the conversation flowing (March 2016)

For more information contact:

Lorraine Lafrenière, CAC, 613- 235-5000 ext. 2363 or 613-769-6772
Dina Bell-Laroche, Sport Law & Strategy Group, 613-591-1246
Karin Lofstrom, CAAWS, 613-562-5667
Paul Melia, CCES , 613-521-3340