Gymnastics Canada has submitted the names of 22 people banned from the sport to a new national public registry created to help prevent ineligible coaches and officials from resurfacing in positions in other sports, youth-serving organizations or volunteer programs without their histories being publicly known.
Other national organizations including Badminton Canada, Archery Canada and Cycling Canada have also begun providing Sport Integrity Canada, which maintains the registry, with the identities of people who, after due process, have been found responsible for serious misconduct.
Hockey Canada has not.
The country’s largest, richest, and most influential national sport organization refuses to participate in the registry unless the federal government indemnifies it against possible defamation lawsuits, Hockey Canada chief of staff Jeremy Knight wrote in an email to TSN, creating a divide between Hockey Canada and other sport bodies that say the risk of keeping the names of banned individuals a secret is greater than the legal risk of publishing them.
Sport Integrity Canada’s registry is meant to give parents, athletes, and sport organizations a centralized way to identify people who have been suspended or banned from working in amateur sport. Some of the sanctions are recent; others are historical.
The importance of a registry has been highlighted repeatedly. In March, the Future of Sport in Canada Commission recommended a national, mandatory public registry of sanctioned individuals in its 950-page final report. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and the Standing Committee on the Status of Women have also pushed for a registry, in 2024 and 2023, respectively.
For some sport leaders, the decision to participate has been straightforward.
Badminton Canada chief executive Bryan Merrett said his organization provided former referee Ian Lagden’s name to Sport Integrity Canada several weeks ago.
Lagden, who is from Ontario, was made permanently ineligible to participate in events sanctioned by Badminton Canada on May 6, 2025, following an investigation related to a “sexual maltreatment” allegation, his registry listing says.
Merrett said his organization, which has an annual budget of $2.7 million and spends about $30,000 a year on legal expenses, intends to continue cooperating with the federally funded agency, even if that exposes it to potential legal risk, because the larger obligation is to protect children in badminton and in sport more broadly.
“Anyone can sue anyone – regardless of whether they have a case or not,” Merrett said in an interview with TSN. “We are trying to be good citizens in the sports world. We want to make sure that people can participate in all sports harassment free. We believe publishing names in this registry not only protects our players and volunteers but also those in other sports.”
Hockey Canada takes a different position, saying it will not provide names to Sport Integrity Canada unless Sport Canada first shields the organization from liability, Knight wrote in an email to TSN. The standoff comes as Hockey Canada continues to face public scrutiny over how it has handled abuse, misconduct, and transparency in the sport.
“Hockey Canada continues to strongly advocate for the development of a national registry to enhance safety across the Canadian sport system that will not place any sport organization at legal risk,” Knight wrote.
“All individuals who are banned or suspended by Hockey Canada and/or our members are tracked securely within the Hockey Canada registry to ensure their restrictions are upheld and they are not able to participate in sanctioned hockey programming anywhere in the country.”
Knight declined to say how many people are currently suspended for misconduct or have been permanently banned by the organization. Knight wrote that Henein Hutchison Robitaille, the law firm hired by Hockey Canada to investigate allegations of sexual assault involving members of Canada’s 2018 world junior team, also conducted three other investigations on behalf of the organization between 2019 and 2022.
Knight wrote that those investigations involved “non-national level matters which Hockey Canada deemed warranted an independent external investigation.” The results of the Toronto-based law firm’s investigations haven’t been made public. In 2022, Hockey Canada established its Independent Third Party to receive and investigate maltreatment complaints.
Janice Forsyth, a sociology professor at the University of British Columbia who studies safe sport issues, said maintaining a secret registry is not in the public interest.
“Hockey Canada might have banned some people but if that information is kept secret there are still entry points – like high-school hockey or programs in Indigenous programs that are not Hockey Canada-sanctioned – for those people to get access to kids,” Forsyth said.
Secretary of state for sport Adam van Koeverden declined to say whether federal funding to Hockey Canada or any national sport organization should be conditional on participation in the registry or whether Hockey Canada has formally requested indemnification from the federal government. Van Koeverden said he is “strongly encouraging” all national sport organizations to cooperate with Sport Integrity Canada.
Van Koeverden said Hockey Canada is currently complying with federal requirements for funding by maintaining a registry, even one that is secret from the public.
“At present, all national sport organizations are meeting requirements to be signatories to the CSSP (Canadian Safe Sport Program.) That includes having a registry,” Van Koeverden said in an interview with TSN.
Marcus Mazzucco, a Toronto lawyer, and adjunct kinesiology lecturer at the University of Toronto who researches safe sport, said in an interview with TSN that the legal risk to Hockey Canada of sharing names seems low.
“Hockey Canada is an outlier, and, given their history of secrecy, it doesn’t look good,” Mazzucco said. “The risk of a lawsuit seems to be low here. One legal defence would be that publication is justified because it’s substantially true. Another defence would be that it’s responsible communication that’s in the public interest. Publishing these names is clearly in the public interest.”
Mazzucco said that he wondered whether Hockey Canada’s caution was related to the sheer number of suspensions that have been issued, or possibly whether they have agreed to a number of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with people who have been banned.
“If there are a lot of cases and a number of people sued, their cases may be meritless, but they would still have to be defended,” Mazzucco said. “Also, if there are a number of NDAs, then the nature of the lawsuits would be different. The plaintiffs would then be arguing about an alleged breach of contract. If that’s the case, it would also raise questions about who at Hockey Canada authorized NDAs. Was it an executive, or the board, or a lawyer on their own?”
Conservative Member of Parliament John Nater, who represents Perth-Wellington, said that Sport Canada, which announced $660 million in new funding for national sport organizations on Apr. 28, should not “give a dollar” to any organization until they provide Sport Integrity Canada with relevant names for its sanction registry.
“I don’t believe Hockey Canada or any NSO should receive federal funding unless and until they publicly disclose disciplinary sanctions applied within their organization,” Nater told TSN in an interview. “It’s about ensuring sports are safe for everyone across all regions and all sports.”
Sport Integrity Canada expanded its national public sanctions registry in March to include individuals who have been permanently or indefinitely barred from sport.
Of the 93 national sport organizations that have adopted the Canadian Safe Sport Program (CSSP), 80 agreed to provide sanction data for the registry. Eight more were considering whether to participate Sport Integrity Canada said at the time and five NSOs, including
Hockey Canada, either indicated that they would not voluntarily provide this information or did not respond.
Over the past two months, an initial list of 20 names has expanded to 43, which includes 16 people banned by Volleyball Canada. Racquetball Canada, Archery Canada, and Cycling Canada also recently forwarded names of people who are permanently ineligible to Sport Integrity Canada.
Cycling Canada chief executive Mathieu Boucher wrote in an email to TSN that his organization complied with Sport Integrity Canada’s request after consulting with lawyers and updating its privacy policy. Boucher wrote it’s possible that contributing to the sanctions registry could lead to legal action.
“The risk is never zero; however, we believe this was the right decision to protect athletes and our sport system,” Boucher wrote.
