Over the past few years, Canadian national team athletes have increasingly called for accountability from sports leaders. The Canadian Soccer Players Association (CSPA), which represents players from the senior women’s team, is the newest team to take legal motion against their organization.
CSPA In late February, he filed a $40 million lawsuit against 15 current and former Canada Soccer board members for alleged “negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.”
The lawsuit alleges that a contract signed by Canada Soccer in 2018 with a non-public organization (Canadian Soccer Business) affected the primary organization’s ability to operate.
The move follows similar actions by athletes in the country artistic swimming team in 2021 AND water polo team in 2022. These athletes have filed lawsuits alleging various forms vicarious liability through their associations.
Liability issues at Canada Soccer
In reviewing the events leading as much as the CSPA lawsuit, most issues point to an absence of accountability on the a part of the board. The roots of the event date back to March 2018, when approx Canada Soccer has signed a controversial contract with Canadian Soccer Businessowned by the owners of the Canadian Premier League.
The agreement includes the transfer of sponsorship and broadcast rights to Canadian Soccer Business to Canada Soccer in exchange for an annual fee of $3-4 million per yr. Canadian Soccer Business uses a few of the money to fund the Canadian Men’s Premier League.
In 2023, a labor dispute began cuts have been made to funding for men and ladies national teams. In February of that yr The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has begun taking a look at the Canada Soccer Business deal and The Canadian women’s national soccer team went on strike issues related to equal pay.
In May 2023 the federal government has said it’s considering an audit of Canada Soccer. The government had earlier ordered an audit to search out out whether Hockey Canada used public funds to resolve sexual assault cases.
As the yr progressed, increasingly of Canadian soccer’s financial problems began to come back to light. In June 2023, interim Secretary General Jason deVos announced that Canada Soccer was considering filing an application for bankruptcy protection before signing latest tender agreements with the lads’s and ladies’s teams.
In February 2024, it was revealed that Canada Soccer did didn’t submit financial statements with Corporations Canada in accordance with the necessities of the Canadian Not-for-Profit Corporations Act.
In the identical month CSPA filed a lawsuit against Canada Soccer board members for breach of fiduciary duty to Canada Soccer in stepping into an agreement with Canadian Soccer Business.
Duties and responsibilities of the Management Board
When it involves improving accountability, Canadian sports organizations and governing bodies can learn rather a lot from national team athletes. These athletes are held to many standards, including:
Canada Soccer has the potential to model, each nationally and globally, the identical standards of accountability and leadership excellence expected of national team athletes.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Scott Barbour
As political science experts Eric Champagne and Alex Beraskow wrote in 2022, governance is a key lever for positive change in Canadian sport.
The rule that “directors are liable for supervising the corporate’s activities” is codified in Canadian law. Boards are monitors, not managersand are liable to the extent that they knew or should have known concerning the potential problems and did not treatment them.
Boards have been held vicariously liable in Canada for failing to take preventive measures against foreseeable ones financial failures Or sexual abuse and incidents of harassment.
Like coaches and athletes, it’s the board’s responsibility to adopt an accountability framework – governance policies and techniques – that requires verifiable evidence of policy implementation and achievement of standards of conduct.
Independence, transparency and accountability are essential to stop corrupt or negligent behavior and activities. By taking a look at sport itself, we will find the governance principles needed to align our sporting system with Canadian values of exertions, diversity and respect.
Non-hierarchical leadership is required
Sports work best if you follow through principles of proper managementsimilar to those shown in report on sports governance from the Sports Information Resource Center, the national sports organization. A brand new partnership model is required – one which uses an accountability framework based on shared values and goals, transparency and independence.
My research with colleagues on mentally protected AND non-hierarchical leadership models demonstrates that the coach-athlete partnership is critical to achieving optimal performance in all features of sports organizations.
Coach-athlete relationships are inherently non-hierarchical because coaches and athletes are experts with distinct roles and responsibilities which are interdependent. These relationships should function as a real partnership, governed by equality and respect and based on a shared goal of excellence, not power or control.
We can scale this coach-athlete partnership model from the grassroots to the systemic level and apply it to any governing, governing, accrediting or funding body.
(Jennifer Walinga)
For example, in a boardroom, the coach-athlete relationship could possibly be replaced by any of the next relationships: board-CEO, CEO-staff, CEO-stakeholder, or board member.
The most successful coach-athlete relationships, like the perfect board-member and board-CEO relationships, are based on accountability to agreed standards of practice, similar to these Long-term development plan for Sport for Life.
Accountability requires independence of roles and responsibilities, transparency of standards and criteria, and evidence of results and achievements. We only need to have a look at sports to see where our sports system is failing; you simply need to have a look at sports to see the best way to address this.
