When Tricia Smith took over a Canadian Olympic Committee reeling from sexual harassment allegations, the Olympic rower said she approached it with the focus of an athlete.

"I'm a rower, and when I know what the destination is, I put a plan in place and I put my head down and just get there," Smith said.

The COC president and Olympic silver medallist unveiled a series of organizational changes Sunday to strengthen the COC's structure, and was responding to complaints about their seemingly slow response to criticism.

"People say 'Why didn't you come and tell us earlier?'" Smith said, in a phone interview from Regina. "I didn't feel it was appropriate to come out until I had something to tell you."

The COC had been in a tailspin since allegations of sexual harassment levelled at former president Marcel Aubut surfaced this past fall. Aubut resigned in October, and one of Smith's first orders of business was to order a third-party workplace review.

The Thomlinson Report, released in January, made eight recommendations. Smith said that at a COC Board of Governors meeting that concluded Sunday in Regina, the COC agreed to act on all of the recommendations, including strengthening and implementing new policies and procedures on ethics, discrimination, harassment and whistleblowing.

"It's been less than 100 days since we got the review findings, which were tough," Smith said. "It's so important that we get this done. Some people would rather that we did it faster, and we did it differently. But on the other hand, I received the endorsement support of the entire sport community this weekend for the direction that I'm going and I feel this is a big responsibility and I'm not letting up until it's done."

Smith also announced five new members of the COC's Board of Governors: Olympic rower Guylaine Bernier, astronaut Julie Payette, COC VP Peter Lawless, corporate lawyer David De Vlieger, who'll also serve as chair of the Sport Dispute Resolution of Canada Board, and former CEO of PricewaterhouseCooper's Chris Clark.

Smith said there've also been new hires at the COC, including Cathy Stewart, who previously led the human resources department for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games organizing committee. Stewart is the COC's new executive director of human resources.

Rather than cleaning house, she called it a "strengthened cast of characters."

"We actually thought about: should the whole board resign? But again, with all the things that we want to achieve, that we'e committed to achieving, we thought it was best to do it this way.

"We made the decision on who was going to lead us going forward, and if people have the confidence they say they do in what I'm doing and in my integrity, and in the road we're taking, I hope they would also accept the choices that we've made after doing all our due diligence."

Other changes include a mandatory training on harassment and bullying for all board members, staff and members of Olympic mission teams.

The board and session meetings came after a roller-coaster couple of weeks for the COC that saw Jean-Luc Brassard resign as Canada's chef de mission for the Rio Olympics.

The Olympic moguls champion had questioned the committee's slow handling of the sexual harassment allegations, and said his concerns about the case caused friction with some committee members.

Curt Harnett, an Olympic cycling medallist and the chef de mission for last summer's Pan Am Games, was named Brassard's replacement.

"(Brassard) came to me and said 'I just don't think I'll be good for the athletes, I'll be a distraction,'" Smith said. "I said 'Jean-Luc, that's OK, sometimes it's a relay, and you've done your part, and you can pass the baton onto Curt.'

"I understand he would like things to be done differently, but when we got this complaint in the fall of last year, we did the Thomlinson review, we had them in and so we got the results of that review, and then we made these other commitments. When you do that, you've got to have stability in the organization, going forward, to make those changes."

Smith, who took on a mammoth challenge of turning around an organization in total disarray, she said she was feeling positive on Sunday.

"It's been tough, but I put my hand up for it, because I really, really believe in this," she said. "And I believe this is an opportunity to make us better."