The Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner has made public a registry of people barred or provisionally suspended from participating in sport.People walk past the Olympic rings in Whistler, B.C., Friday, May 15, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
OTTAWA – The Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner has made public a registry of people barred or provisionally suspended from participating in sport.
The establishment of a public searchable database of individuals who have been sanctioned under the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent Abuse and Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS), or whose eligibility to participate in sport has been restricted, was announced in June 2023 by former federal sports minister Pascale St-Onge.
The purpose of the registry is to alert organizations and prevent the rehiring of abusers. Sport bodies quietly parting company with abusers, which allowed them to be hired elsewhere, was a common complaint of athletes at parliamentary committee safe-sport hearings in 2022 and 2023.
The registry, maintained by OSIC, can include a person’s name, province, sport, category and nature of violation, sanction or provisional sanctions imposed and date and length of sanction.
All federally funded sports bodies must be signatories of OSIC, and thus subject to the UCCMS, or risk losing their funding.
Only OSIC and designated representatives of those organizations had access to the registry before it was posted Thursday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 28, 2024.
