Swimming Canada had no idea.
It took an anonymous whistleblower in September to alert the national sport organization that a man it hired a few months earlier had recently been suspended from working or attending any sanctioned hockey games or events for about two years over inappropriate behaviour, a person familiar with the matter told TSN. The man had previously worked for the Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF), a governing body for amateur hockey in the province.
Swimming Canada spokesman Chris Dornan confirmed his organization conducted an internal review after receiving the tip and “decided to bring the employment of this employee to an end.”
In an email to TSN, OHF president Phil McKee characterized the case as a “human resource” matter. Neither Swimming Canada nor the OHF would identify the man. Both refused to disclose the details of his sanction.
The case shows how easily a sanction can go unnoticed. When sport organizations don’t disclose who has been banned or suspended, why, or for how long, other employers have little chance of finding out during hiring.
That is the norm among Ontario’s taxpayer-funded provincial sport organizations (PSOs). Of the 24 that each received more than $200,000 from the province in 2025-26, TSN found five that publicly disclose misconduct sanctions against adults.
The province doesn’t require such transparency and that means parents and athletes may also have no way of knowing whether an adult working in their sport has faced serious disciplinary action elsewhere.
“The default position [of provincial sport organizations] is to keep maltreatment and abuse cases quiet,” Peter Donnelly, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and a long-time researcher of sport policy and governance, said in an interview with TSN. “The thinking is, ‘If nobody knows about this, and it’s dealt with in-house and the bad guy goes away, then we’re good.’ They care a lot about keeping cases secret to stop bad publicity but they don’t care enough about what might happen to anybody else down the road after a sanctioned person is gone.
“The secrecy around misconduct cases has been embedded in sports for 100 years. We’ve seen 15 or 20 cases over the past few decades where national sport organizations (NSOs) have faced scrutiny when abuse cases have become public, but provincial sport organizations have received far less attention. I would imagine there have been hundreds of abuse cases at the PSO level that have been kept quiet and that the public has never heard of.”
There has been at least one recent call for greater transparency. In May 2024, the Future of Sport in Canada Commission was established by the federal government to scrutinize Canada’s amateur sports system after the Hockey Canada scandal unfolded. This spring, the commission published a report recommending more transparency for publicly funded sport federations.
The commission, chaired by former Ontario Court chief justice Lise Maisonneuve, urged the government conduct more audits of publicly funded sport organizations, and direct them to publicly disclose details including the annual compensation to top-paid executives, board meeting records, and summaries of adults who have been sanctioned for misconduct.
The commission specifically wrote about the need for a public registry to help prevent sanctioned individuals from moving between jurisdictions or continuing to participate in sport while suspended. It cited the U.S. Center for SafeSport’s database as an example of an existing registry. That database gives American sport organizations and members of the public a way to search for individuals and review publicly available disciplinary information.
A TSN review of the U.S. database identified 2,775 individuals listed as suspended or otherwise ineligible. The Center for SafeSport has also begun issuing weekly announcements about people added to its database, a move announced in July to make disciplinary information more visible.
In Canada, the federally funded organization Sport Integrity Canada maintains a public registry that includes adults who have been banned or suspended for misconduct by NSOs. Most of the 82 names on that registry are those who are connected to national teams. While NSOs including Athletics Canada and Gymnastics Canada are providing the names of sanctioned adults for the registry, other organizations, including Canoe Kayak Canada, Judo Canada, and Hockey Canada, refuse to do so.
A Hockey Canada spokesman told TSN its lawyers have advised the organization it could face liability for publicizing the names of people who are banned or suspended. The federal government does not make contributing names to the registry a condition for receiving taxpayer money.
At the provincial level, where Donnelly said the majority of maltreatment and abuse complaints in Canadian amateur sport are referred, it’s common practice to keep details of sanctions secret.
While NSOs oversee Canada’s elite programs and national teams, PSOs often play a more direct role in sports that children and families encounter in their own communities. Their decisions can affect which coaches are permitted to work with young athletes, what information affiliated clubs receive about suspended adults, and whether parents can find out about serious misconduct before enrolling a child in a program.
A national registry is an important safeguard, but its effectiveness is limited if disciplinary information originating at the provincial level remains hidden, Donnelly said.
The public accounts of Ontario’s annual report show Alpine Ontario’s $1 million in funding in 2025-26 was more than any other PSO, followed by Athletics Ontario ($765,896), Boxing Ontario ($425,095), Canoe Kayak Ontario ($344,636) and Cross Country Ontario ($342,850).
TSN’s review of the 24 PSOs found that the five that publicly disclose sanctions imposed on adults are Athletics Ontario, Boxing Ontario, Field Hockey Ontario, the Ontario Baseball Association, and Ontario Volleyball. Other organizations have a varied approach to transparency.
Ontario Soccer Association spokesman Cory Woron said his organization advises its member clubs about misconduct cases involving suspensions of one year or more. Tennis Ontario president Richard Mainella wrote in an email to TSN that his organization “looks forward to receiving further guidance” from Tennis Canada about publicizing sanctions for misconduct, while Canoe Kayak Ontario did not respond to questions about its safe sport policies. Its website directs people to send any complaints to a Gmail account.
Cross Country Ski Ontario has not levied any misconduct sanctions against adults but would make such discipline public “in accordance with our policies” and the decision of an adjudicator, executive director Stephanie Marler wrote in an email. Those policies say sanctions “may” be disclosed to the public.
Football Ontario has had four “major misconduct” cases that have resulted in sanctions since the start of 2025, chief executive Aaron Geisler wrote in an email to TSN. Geisler wrote that misconduct complaints are forwarded to ITP Sports and Recreation, an Ottawa-based company that receives and investigates complaints for a number of PSOs and NSOs. Football Ontario posts sanction details “based on the recommendation of the ITP,” Geisler wrote.
ITP Sports chief executive Ilan Yampolsky, however, said in an interview with TSN that his company doesn’t make those decisions; he said he would advise organizations to follow their disclosure policies.
“It’s never up to us, but my advice would always be to disclose,” Yampolsky said.
Yampolsky said he recalled joining Scouts Canada in 2012 as a safe sport officer shortly after the organization navigated a scandal involving a Canadian pedophile and scout leader named Richard Turley, who was twice jailed in the U.S. for sexually abusing children before he returned to Canada and abused more children.
“It was insanity. Nobody connected the dots,” Yampolsky said. “It was a case that highlighted why we need to be transparent. I understand defamation concerns about publishing names of people [who have been sanctioned] but if my name is going to be in the newspaper, I want it to be there because I’ve done the right thing. You have to take a stand.”
Athletics Ontario chief executive Paul Osland said in an interview that his organization overhauled its complaints process after recognizing that its previous system, which relied on volunteers to investigate complaints and make disciplinary decisions, was too slow.
Some cases took more than a year to resolve. In 2021, Athletics Ontario introduced a safe-sport levy of $5 per athlete to help fund a more independent complaints process. Osland said the organization received about 10 complaints this year, compared with one to four complaints per year previously.
“Perhaps the growing number shows our members have a greater trust in the system,” he said.
Osland said he wants the Ontario government to direct other sport organizations to be more transparent and would like to see branches of government communicate better.
“You can have a bad sports coach who moves from the school system to the club system and vice versa,” Osland said. “Why is that happening? Why are the ministries of sport and education not doing a better job of communicating and sharing information?”
Osland said it’s also too hard for members of the public to find details on people who have been suspended or expelled. Some PSO websites require people to click through numerous web pages to find records of people who have been sanctioned, and sometimes those records are provided as PDF files, which makes them harder to search.
Ontario Sport Minister Brian Saunderson declined an interview request and did not respond to questions about why the government does not make publishing sanctions and other moves towards transparency a condition of receiving taxpayer money.
The Ministry of Sport wrote in a statement to TSN that PSOs “must have policies and procedures in place that establish a code of conduct, complaint management, discipline, and dispute resolution. These organizations are responsible for administering their own disciplinary and governance processes…”
Donnelly said the Ontario government should make funding conditional on best-in-class practices for transparency and accountability, but doesn’t because sport is not seen as a significant government portfolio.
“Sport is not an important area,” Donnelly said. “The government views the sports ministry as the toy department.”
The Ontario Volleyball Association (OVA), which oversees more than 1,400 teams in the province, also publishes information about expulsions and suspensions involving adults. In a new policy adopted this past summer, the organization wrote it would not delete details about serious suspensions from its website for years after the suspension period is finished.
The OVA also publishes details about adults who do not pass its screening measures and in recent years has made its screening questions to applicants more rigorous. For instance, the OVA not only does a criminal background check on would-be coaches, volunteers and officials, but also scrutinizes whether they have ever been accused of misconduct.
“We want to do our best to identify red flags and not all bad behaviour is criminal and wouldn’t show up in a criminal record check,” said OVA executive director Jo-Anne Ljubicic. “If you only look for a criminal record you don’t find a teacher who lost their teaching license or a coach who was suspended from another sport association.”
Boxing Ontario publishes both detailed information about adult sanctions and board meeting minutes, according to its public disclosures. Rod Power, Boxing Ontario’s chief executive officer, said his organization’s approach to transparency reflects an effort to improve both governance and public confidence in a sport that has struggled with negative perceptions.
Power, a Brampton city councillor and former boxer, said Boxing Ontario’s board wanted to demonstrate that its finances and operations were being managed responsibly.
“The more transparency you have, the more willing people are going to be to follow along on the trip,” Power said in an interview with TSN.
Power said secrecy can create an environment in which rumours flourish and people become suspicious of an organization’s motives. Greater disclosure, he said, allows an organization to explain its decisions rather than leave members and the public to speculate.
Donnelly said Boxing Ontario’s approach provides a useful example for other provincial organizations.
“If boxing can do it, why can’t hockey and others do it?” he said.