Trudeau is noticing abuse at Hockey Canada all of sudden and he wants to see change. Trudeau said, “We need to see Hockey Canada demonstrating a level of transparency, accountability (and) understanding of the situation they’re faced with, … There needs to be a real reckoning with what we saw from that organization, and the wilful blindness to something that other organizations have been faced with — struggled with — but made good decisions around.”
We have very little transparency when it comes to charities and non-profits in Canada. This allows people to use them inappropriately and there is very little accountability. To put it another way, if you have almost no transparency in non-profits and charities it is easier to sweep issues under the carpet and no one knows about them. When you have a sector with $300 billion in revenue, 2.5 million employees, and over 15 million volunteers this means a lot of people can be hurt.
In addition to the lack of transparency, we have very weak protection for whistle-blowers in this country. People may believe in the fairy tale that a person acting as a whistleblower will be greeted as a hero but often they are demonized, attacked, sued, harassed, and shunned – often by those people who have done inappropriate and/or illegal things or the professional advisors representing the perpetrators. It is a death wish to be a whistle-blower in Canada. Many people who are aware of huge problems will keep their mouths shut and say nothing about the problems – they are not happy about that but the alternative is to have their lives destroyed. This silence is very costly for our country and society.
Trudeau seems to forget that he is the Prime Minister and he has the ability to have greater transparency and accountability in the charity and non-profit sector. It actually costs almost nothing to dramatically increase transparency. But he does nothing to increase transparency and actually has reduced transparency over the last six years. Trudeau is not acting alone. There is a whole cadre of professional advisors and lobbyists working to reduce transparency and accountability in the non-profit and charity sector. While other countries have increased transparency, Canada is one of the few countries going in the other direction.
Here is an interesting quote from an article by Kathryn Blaze Baum from the Globe and Mail:
“Ms. St-Onge was unable to provide MPs at the time with details about those complaints, but her deputy minister said the department would provide further information to the committee. The minister will likely be asked next week about the financial audit she launched to ensure Hockey Canada didn’t use taxpayer dollars in the settlement. She told the committee last month a draft of the audit report is expected at the end of August.”
It seems that the Canadian government is more concerned that taxpayer money was not used to pay out settlements than they are in having greater transparency and safeguards put in place to prevent abusive situations from occurring. I guess, if it is just Canadian donor money, that is not a problem.
We are trying to increase transparency when it comes to RCAAAs in Canada. Here is our 2015 RCAAA Transparency Project. Ten days ago we published Registered Canadian Amateur Athletic Associations and their financial statements. We have a directory on transparency in the non-profit and charity sector. We also have maintained CharityData.ca, which is the largest portal of data on registered charities in Canada. These efforts are bandaids. The federal government and provincial governments should act to increase transparency.
Here are some articles in the media:
Trudeau says sports organizations have work to do to restore Canadians’ trust
Trudeau: Hockey Canada needs a ‘real reckoning’ in wake of scandal
Hockey Canada needs a ‘real reckoning,’ Trudeau says
Parents, minor-league associations question transparency of Hockey Canada’s equity fund