It is, admittedly, tough to come up with a satisfactory answer to these questions. There’s a reason these fellows, notably the now-retired chief executive Tom Renney and president Scott Smith, are not doing media interviews.
Tuesday’s testimony suggested that letting the matter drop was not a thing exclusive to Hockey Canada. Michel Ruest, senior director at Sport Canada, a department of the federal Heritage ministry, said it was made aware of allegations of sexual assault after Hockey Canada informed it about them in late June, 2018. That was a week after Hockey Canada first learned of the alleged incident, and a few weeks before London police opened their investigation.
I will concede that I have never worked in the federal bureaucracy, but I would have thought that a phone call from Hockey Canada about a possible sexual assault at one of its galas — even if the full details of the alleged incident hadn’t been shared — would have been something that sets of the klaxons and goes all the way up the organizational chart. Instead, it doesn’t even seem to have generated a sticky note.
Things are happening now, at least. Robitaille says she has now spoken to the alleged victim and has a detailed statement from her. She plans to speak to the holdout players, and Hockey Canada says they face lifetime bans if they do not agree to talk. Renney and Smith will be back before the Heritage committee to try to explain themselves.
The thing is…Hockey Canada cant compel anything. If a player doesn’t want to talk, they dont have to. The risk of a lifetime HC ban doesnt mean much to a non star player who doesn’t have Team Canada in their future.