Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Hockey Canada scandal which has caused CEO Scott Smith as well as the board of directors to step down.
Hockey Canada has been embroiled in a massive scandal after it was revealed from TSN that the organization settles a lawsuit with a woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted by eight players in 2018, including members of the U20 men’s junior team.
Since this story broke and the lawsuit was reported there has been nation-wide fallout for Hockey Canada. There has been a lot of pressure from politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who has called for a complete leadership change at the top of the organization. Despite that, Hockey Canada chairwoman Andrew Skinner defended CEO Scott Smith and the rest of the leadership team in a hearing before the Canadian Heritage Committee. This was disappointing to see, as in many of these very public cases oftentimes never end well for the victim.
WATCH: An Ipsos poll done for Global News showed that most Canadians think the blame falls largely on those in positions of power — managers, directors and coaches — for Hockey Canada’s series of scandals around sexual abuse allegations.
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— Globalnews.ca (@globalnews) October 26, 2022
Because of the extent of this scandal and the way Hockey Canada has been handling this situation, they are beginning to lose some of their biggest sponsors. Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Scotiabank and Chevrolet Canada have all pulled their support since the scandal broke. Canadian Tire even went so far as to release a statement saying it would refuse to be associated with Hockey Canada anymore if it refused to change.
I feel it was this pressure from the corporations terminating their support of Hockey Canada which led to the entire Board of Directors announcing they were going to step down immediately. The Canadian Government as well as the NHL are still investigating how far Hockey Canada’s sexual assault claims go, however one thing is certain, change is definitely in the air and it’s nice to see the countries biggest corporations step up in this way.