‘Will the lights stay on in the rink?’ Hockey Canada executives double down on defiance in Parliament Hill hearings

Content warning: This article discusses sexual assault.

Former Hockey Canada chair Michael Brind’Amour and his interim replacement, Andrea Skinner, appeared Tuesday (via video conference) in front of the Canadian Heritage Committee on Parliament Hill to answer questions related to the organization’s handling of sexual abuse claims and, more specifically, on whether major leadership changes needed to happen. They opted for delusion and defiance in many of their statements Tuesday.

Hockey Canada has been at the center of a nationwide scandal in recent months in the wake of revelations that it used a discreet account called the “National Equity Fund” — supported, in part, by player registration fees — to settle claims of sexual abuse.

A recent Globe and Mail report indicated Hockey Canada also set up a secondary fund — the “Participants Legacy Trust Fund” — for similar purposes, earmarked for “matters including but not limited to sexual abuse.”

Brind’Amour resigned from his position with Hockey Canada in August in the wake of reports alleging members of Canada’s 2003 and 2018 World Junior teams were involved in group sexual assaults, with the governing body settling a lawsuit related to the 2018 incident.

Both Brind’Amour and Skinner addressed the 2018 settlement in front of the Canadian Heritage Committee, with Brind’Amour saying the organization settled the lawsuit because it “felt inappropriate to victimize the young woman in court.”

Skinner covered largely the same ground as Brind’Amour, saying Hockey Canada had “compassion” for the unnamed woman who filed the lawsuit and “wanted to do what we viewed as being responsible and respectful.”

Multiple members of the Canadian Heritage Committee asked Skinner about the current state of leadership at Hockey Canada. Skinner’s answers were almost uniformly defensive. The interim chair said she grades CEO Scott Smith’s current performance “as an A, under these circumstances” and said he presented the gold medals at the Women’s World Championship with the endorsement of a woman in a leadership position at Hockey Canada.

She said removing the current leaders “will be very impactful in a negative way to our boys and girls who are playing hockey. Will the lights stay on in the rink? I don’t know. We can’t predict that, and to me that’s not a risk worth taking.”