The whistleblowers were right all along.
After months of testimony from athletes across disciplines, the final report from the Commission examining abuse in Canadian sport landed with the force of a sledgehammer Thursday. What many competitors had been saying for years – that the system designed to protect them was fundamentally broken – has now been officially acknowledged.
“The Commission heard repeatedly that the Canadian sport system is ‘broken,'” reads the landmark 277-page report released in Ottawa. “Athletes, coaches, parents, and sport administrators described a system that is failing to keep participants safe.”
For Sarah Douglas, who represented Canada in sailing at the Tokyo Olympics, the findings validated concerns athletes have voiced for years. “We’ve been screaming into the void about these issues,” she told me during a call yesterday. “Now there’s no denying the problems are systemic.”
The Commission, led by former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps, gathered evidence from more than 200 participants across 58 sports. Their stories painted a disturbing picture of a system where abuse was normalized, complaints were silenced, and power imbalances created perfect conditions for exploitation.
What makes the report particularly damning is how it connects the culture of high-performance sport to broader failures of governance. Sport Canada, the federal body responsible for national sport policy, comes under particular criticism for what the Commission describes as “inadequate oversight.”
The numbers tell part of the story. Since 2018, Sport Canada has provided over $1.3 billion in funding to national sport organizations. Yet until recently, this money came with almost no strings attached regarding athlete safety or welfare.
“You can’t provide that level of public funding without proper accountability measures,” says Bruce Kidd, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and former Olympian. “The report makes clear we’ve failed athletes at the most basic level.”
Among the most troubling findings was the pervasiveness of psychological abuse, which athletes described as the “most common and normalized form of maltreatment.” This included public humiliation, isolation, and excessive control over athletes’ personal lives – behaviors that would be unacceptable in most workplaces but somehow became standard practice in elite sport environments.
Gymnast Amelia Conway described training conditions that would shock most parents. “We were weighed daily, screamed at if we gained an ounce, and trained through injuries because showing pain was considered weakness,” she said at one of the Commission’s public hearings. “I was 12 years old.”
The report also highlights how financial vulnerability creates conditions ripe for abuse. Many athletes depend entirely on Sport Canada’s Athlete Assistance Program, which provides between $1,765 and $2,100 monthly to carded athletes. This dependence makes reporting abuse extremely risky – those who speak up fear losing their livelihood.
Minister of Sport Carla Qualtrough called the findings “heartbreaking but not surprising” and pledged immediate action on several of the Commission’s recommendations. “The status quo cannot continue,” she stated at a press conference following the report’s release.
The Commission’s 15 recommendations include establishing an independent body to address maltreatment in sport, implementing mandatory education programs on abuse prevention, and creating a national registry of coaches who have been sanctioned for misconduct.
Perhaps most significant is the call for a complete overhaul of funding models to ensure athlete welfare is prioritized alongside performance. The report suggests tying federal funding directly to compliance with safety standards – something athlete advocates have demanded for years.
Rob Koehler, director-general of Global Athlete, an international athlete-led movement, says the recommendations don’t go far enough. “We need immediate action, not more promises,” he said. “Athletes have suffered while the system protected itself.”
At provincial training centers across the country, the impact of the report is already being felt. Coaches and administrators are facing difficult questions about practices long considered normal in high-performance environments.
What happens next will determine whether this moment becomes a true turning point or just another report gathering dust. Previous attempts at reform have stalled when media attention faded and the Olympics neared. The difference this time may be the unprecedented unity among athletes across sports who are demanding change.
For many who testified, the Commission report represents a form of validation. “It’s vindicating to see in black and white what we’ve been saying all along,” says former national team swimmer Allison Forsyth, who has been advocating for safer sport for over a decade.
The Commission concludes that creating a safe sport environment is not merely about addressing individual bad actors but requires “fundamental cultural and structural change.” It’s a conclusion that resonates with athletes who have long insisted the problems are systemic, not isolated.
As Canadians process these findings, the conversation inevitably turns to our national identity, so intertwined with sporting excellence. The question now is whether we care enough about how those medals are won to demand real change.
For the athletes who shared their stories, often at great personal cost, the answer must be yes.
