Introduction
The Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS) was introduced to the Canadian sport system at the national level in 2022. It may be time to think about its role across the entire sport spectrum from the national level to the provincial and territorial level and to the local level.
A range of investigations and research has confirmed the scope and depth of maltreatment across sport. For example, in a 2021 study examining the experiences of Canadian national team athletes, 69% of athletes reported neglect, 60% reported psychological maltreatment, 21% reported sexual maltreatment, and 14% reported physical maltreatment (Willson et al., 2022). These findings are consistent with other studies conducted in European countries (Hartill et al., 2023; Vertommen et al., 2016). Some have called maltreatment in sport an epidemic.
The UCCMS was implemented at the national level in order to help address maltreatment in Canadian sport. Sport Canada requires national sport organizations (NSOs) and national multi-sport service organizations (MSOs) receiving federal funding to incorporate the UCCMS into their policies and procedures. The UCCMS defines and prohibits various types of maltreatment and other improper behaviour and sets out a framework of sanctions for violations of the Code.
Although the UCCMS is a positive step forward, it has not been widely implemented at the provincial, territorial, and local levels of sport where there are a greater number of participants and where maltreatment may be more prevalent (McLaren Global Sport Solutions, 2020).
Context
The structure of the Canadian sport system has been described as a pyramid and provides a mechanism for implementing the UCCMS at all levels (see Figure 1).
At the top of the pyramid are international sport organizations. NSOs and some MSOs are members of these international sport organizations and sit below them in the pyramid. Next in the pyramid, are provincial and territorial sport organizations, many of which are members of their respective NSOs or MSOs. At the bottom of the pyramid, are local organizations, such as clubs, teams and schools, that are members of their respective provincial and territorial organizations. See Figure 2 for examples of organizations in the pyramid.
Each organization in the pyramid has rules that affect its members – rules such as who is eligible to be a member and the rights and obligations of members. Through the pyramid structure, higher-level organizations can use membership rules to regulate lower-level organizations. For example, a higher-level organization may require its own member organizations to comply with certain rules and require those member organizations to ensure that their members comply with the same rules.
This approach has been used by the volleyball organizations listed in Figure 2. Volleyball Canada has a policy requiring its provincial and territorial organization members to adopt the UCCMS (Volleyball Canada, 2022) and these provincial and territorial organizations have policies requiring their local organization members to adopt the UCCMS (OVA, 2023). The provincial and territorial organizations must comply with Volleyball Canada’s policy in order to maintain their membership in Volleyball Canada, and the local organizations must do the same in order to maintain membership in their respective provincial or territorial organization.
Although the pyramid structure has been used to incorporate the UCCMS into the rules of volleyball organizations at the national, provincial, territorial and local levels, many higher-level sport organizations in Canada have not leveraged the pyramid in the same way. As a result, the UCCMS has not been adopted at all levels of Canadian sport. Several factors may be contributing to this.
- Before the creation of the UCCMS, many higher-level organizations did not have clear rules to prohibit all types of maltreatment, which made it challenging for them to impose such rules on lower-level organizations (Donnelly & Kerr, 2018; Mazzucco, 2012).
- Higher-level organizations may lack the human, financial and information resources necessary to assess a lower-level organization’s compliance with rules (Mazzucco & Findlay, 2024).
- The board of directors responsible for governing a higher-level organization may lack the expertise and experience needed to carry out an oversight role over lower-level organizations (Cromwell, 2022).
- Higher-level organizations may be reluctant to regulate lower-level organizations due to a narrow view of their oversight mandate, a focus on preventing maltreatment in their own organizations, and/or some resistance from lower-level organizations that see themselves as independent from higher-level organizations (Mazzucco & Findlay, 2024). As noted by sports law Professor Richard McLaren in his testimony to the Government of Canada’s Standing Committee on the Status of Women:
The provincial levels challenge the national organization frequently, and there’s not a good rapport there. And the provincial levels also have difficulties with the grassroots clubs […] And that problem is common across most sports in Canada.
An underlying reason for these factors is that sport organizations in Canada are largely self-regulating and the various levels of sport can operate independently from one another. As a result, many higher-level organizations have not changed their approach to governance without a push from external sources.
Two Avenues of Action
1. Role of Government
One potential solution to address this gap in the implementation of the UCCMS at all levels of Canadian sport is for Sport Canada to require federally funded NSOs and MSOs to ensure the UCCMS is adopted by their lower-level organizations. However, to take such action, Sport Canada must move beyond a belief that its funding power should only be used to regulate sport at the national level, and not (indirectly) at the provincial, territorial or local levels of sport. As noted by Canada’s former Minister of Sport (Pascale St-Onge):
[T]he reality is that the sport system touches multiple jurisdictions [federal, provincial, territorial, local] and I [as the Minister of Sport, on behalf of the federal government] can’t fix it [the sport system] alone. There needs to be coherence in this system, and what we are seeing is that there is no coherence right now (Burke, 2023, paras. 10-11).
While the above statement might reflect the federal government’s historical position on how it spends money, it might be too narrow. The federal government’s funding power does allow Sport Canada to indirectly regulate sport at the provincial, territorial and local levels of sport, even if such regulation would not be possible directly due to the constitutional limits of the federal government’s law-making powers (Mazzucco & Findlay, 2024; Mazzucco & Donnelly, 2024).
Similarly, provincial and territorial governments could impose conditions on publicly funded provincial and territorial sport organizations that require them to adopt the UCCMS and ensure that their lower-level organizations do the same.
Limited examples of such government action can be seen in select provinces and territories. British Columbia, for example, has created its own version of the UCCMS and requires publicly funded sport organizations to adopt their own safe sport policies that align with it (viaSport BC, 2023). Similarly, Quebec requires publicly funded sport organizations to have an integrity protection policy respecting abuse, harassment, negligence and violence that is substantially similar to the UCCMS (Sports Quebec, 2024). Finally, Nova Scotia’s sport funding agency (Nova Scotia Sport) requires publicly funded sport organizations to adopt the UCCMS (Spencer, 2023), and the Northwest Territories will require its publicly funded territorial sport organizations to do the same by 2026 (V. McKay, personal communication, June 12, 2024).
To date, other provincial and territorial governments have not followed suit even though they have made commitments to safeguard sport under the Red Deer Declaration For the Prevention of Harassment, Abuse and Discrimination in Sport (the “Red Deer Declaration”).
The above examples involving British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia and the Northwest Territories are also limited, as the governments’ funding conditions do not require provincial and territorial organizations to ensure that the UCCMS (or an equivalent code) is adopted by lower-level organizations.
2. Role of UCCMS
As another measure to ensure that the UCCMS is incorporated at all levels of Canadian sport, the UCCMS itself could be modified by adding a rule that requires an organization to ensure that its lower-level organizations also adopt the UCCMS. In other words, an NSO would be required to ensure that its provincial and territorial organization members adopt the UCCMS, and that those provincial and territorial organizations require their own members to also adopt the UCCMS.
This type of cascading requirement is used elsewhere in sport to ensure the consistent application of rules across all levels, including rules about how a sport is played and rules against doping. Anti-doping rules stem from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC). The rules in the WADC must be followed by each sport organization that has signed it, such as international sport federations and national Olympic committees. Importantly, the WADC also requires these organizations to ensure that their lower-level organizations also comply with the WADC. This requirement allows for international anti-doping rules to trickle down to all levels of sport.
In the maltreatment context, similar obligations could be included in the UCCMS by requiring higher-level organizations to ensure that lower-level organizations adopt the UCCMS.
Recommendations
To support the implementation of the UCCMS at various levels of Canadian sport, the following 3 recommendations are suggested:
- Sport Canada should continue to require the adoption of the UCCMS by all federally funded NSOs and MSOs. Sport Canada could also consider requiring these organizations to ensure that their affiliated provincial, territorial, and local bodies adopt the UCCMS. NSOs and MSOs could comply with this funding condition by revising their membership rules accordingly.
- Provincial and territorial ministries responsible for sport and education could consider requiring publicly funded provincial and territorial sport organizations to adopt the UCCMS. As an additional funding condition, these organizations could be required to update their membership rules to ensure that their member organizations at the local level also adopt the UCCMS.
- Consideration should be given to revising the UCCMS to include provisions that require higher-level organizations, such as NSOs, MSOs, and provincial or territorial bodies, to ensure that their affiliated organizations also adopt the UCCMS.
Currently, the responsibility for revising the UCCMS rests with the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC), which oversees the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner (OSIC) and handles complaints related to UCCMS violations. However, this responsibility will soon shift to the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES), which is scheduled to inherit OSIC and the Abuse-Free Sport Program by April 2025 (Government of Canada, 2024). CCES has previously expressed that the mandatory adoption of the UCCMS by NSOs is not sufficient (CCES, 2022) and is engaged in a consultation process with sport stakeholders to gather feedback on enhancing the OSIC and the Abuse-Free Sport Program.
Conclusion
The proposed recommendations may face resistance from some organizations that perceive themselves as independent from higher-level bodies or do not see themselves as regulatory authorities. However, with time, these challenges may be addressed as organizations clarify their roles and responsibilities, and receive appropriate resources and support, potentially with government financial assistance.
While the adoption of the UCCMS at all levels of Canadian sport may not, in itself, solve the issue of maltreatment, it represents a key step. Other measures, such as the independent handling of maltreatment complaints and the implementation of good governance standards in sport organizations (see Mazzucco & Findlay, 2024; Mazzucco & Donnelly, 2024), should also be considered to further safeguard participants.