26 complaints reported in 1st year of Hockey P.E.I. maltreatment rule

Hockey P.E.I. suspended 22 players during the first year of its new maltreatment and bullying rule.

For the first time, the organization used a single rule to cover maltreatment, clearly outlining how to file complaints and address them at the provincial level. There were 26 complaints made, and all were about male players. Seventy-five percent of the suspensions were for comments about sexual orientation or race.

Hockey P.E.I. executive director Connor Cameron sat down with Island Morning host Mitch Cormier to talk about the new rule and how he hopes it will help change the culture of the game. Here is part of their conversation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. This is the first year that rule 11.4 was in place. What does it give you the opportunity to do as a hockey organization?

Cameron: I think what it really does is it gives us the opportunity to measure exactly what's going on on the ice in terms of maltreatment and abuse. I think before when hockey administrators were dealing with this type of situation, they didn't necessarily have the teeth or the process in place to maybe deal with some of these issues with the level of urgency that they required.

So really that's what this rule has done. It's allowed us to track these infractions to see where they're happening, what age group, different stuff like that. And through this process [is] over a number of years, hopefully we can, you know, curtail the education, curtail the coaching clinics, kind of change in a lot of ways how minor hockey is run in terms of making it more inclusive and more diverse.

Q. Twenty-six allegations. Is there any way to compare that to what might have happened a season before this blanket rule came into effect?

Not anything concrete, there's no scientific method for that. I think this is what rule 11 is. It allows us to measure these things, and I think we would be foolish to think that every single issue was reported to us. I think we'd be foolish to think that these numbers are perfectly correct. I think we'd be foolish to think that there was some sort of uptick in the 21-22 season. So this is just kind of the first step in a journey to try to make the game a little bit more inclusive and to fix a lot of the stuff that's in the game right now.

Q. How do you feel about the number 26?

Cameron: I'm not sure. I think there's more out there. As a sport administrator, I think what keeps you up at night is not necessarily the number that's on the page, it's those ones that you're not aware of. It's those crevices in the game that allow certain things to happen and for kids to feel a certain way and that's kind of what we're hoping. We're hoping that with this whole rule 11, with the education of the officials, with Hockey P.E.I.'s education, because we've certainly made mistakes along the way, but the idea is to make it safe so that when stuff like this happens people can bring it forward. We can have a clearly-defined process to deal with the issue and make sure that people are comfortable.

Because worst-case scenario, like I said, is the situation you don't know about. And that can be everything from a Graham James incident right on down to to a young child who's just trying hockey for the first time and a word or a phrase or even body language is portrayed to them and they don't feel welcome and they go home and never come back. I hope our numbers grow this year, which may strike people as a funny comment, but just in terms of how much time we missed last year and hopefully with the promotion we've done this year, hopefully we have more complaints this year.

I would like to see more people stand up to do the right thing. I'd like to see, in the rinks, people be a little bit more kind to each other. Hockey P.E.I. executive director Connor Cameron

Q. All males. What does that tell you?

Cameron: I'm not sure. I think it tells you that possibly there's a difference between the culture in minor hockey and female hockey, but I'm not 100 per cent sure. Like I said, I think this data is the first step in the right direction. I think over the next couple of years it's gonna, it's gonna kind of grow and develop into something. But what I can say about that, that number about males, is it's consistent across the country. So there's something to it. We're just not quite sure exactly what that is.

Q. And 77 per cent of the allegations were about sexual orientation or about race.

Cameron: Yep. And I think that's not shocking to me.

Q. But are the players not getting what you're teaching?

Cameron: That's the million-dollar question I think. Are people getting it? No, I don't think they are. But what rule 11 allows us to do, it allows us to measure it and hopefully we can critique our educational platforms.

Q. And also you were tough, I mean 85 per cent of these were suspensions.

Cameron: Yeah, I mean I think that's a credit to our volunteers, you know, our different committees really dug in. I think what happened to us early on in the season last year made us realize that these things are very serious and need to be dealt with in a professional way. As we're kind of going through it, the process has changed a little bit from last year to this year. There's an independent third party now made up of a group of lawyers who deal with jurisdictional issues on this type of thing. So Hockey Canada has that process in place where if you feel as though you've been maltreated in any way, shape or form, you can bypass Hockey P.E.I. to an independent third party.

[It's an] excellent mechanism. Those folks are doing really, really good work. They've already returned a number of cases early on in the season to us, and they've dealt with a few cases as well, so there's lots of good things going. It unfortunately does feel like we're building the bike as we're riding it a little bit with membership. Certainly not easy to buck the trend and kind of update our membership as to, this stuff is no longer accepted, if it ever was. But we're trying.

Q. Do you think people have recognized the P.E.I. is changing? That more players from different diverse backgrounds are going to be on the ice now?

Cameron: I really hope so. I think there is an issue on P.E.I. I would like to see more people stand up to do the right thing. I'd like to see, in the rinks, people be a little bit more kind to each other. It's been a heck of a three years for everyone, COVID or otherwise, it's been really tough on people. And the rink is supposed to be an escape for people, a safe environment where you can go and enjoy sport and hang out with friends. And whether that's community level or you have aspirations to be the next Noah Dobson, and it's our responsibility to create that space.