Question Period Note: Government of Canada imposes new funding conditions on Canada Soccer

The Government of Canada has imposed new conditions on Canada Soccer’s funding to ensure accountability and transparency.

• The Government of Canada is committed to building a sport system that is safe and inclusive.

• That is why we are taking additional and concrete actions to:
o improve the governance and increase the accountability and transparency of sport organizations;
o Enhance safe sport practices including addressing gender equality; and,
o Prioritize the voices of athletes in the sport system.

• The funding to Canada Soccer will be accompanied by greater monitoring, accountability and reporting measures. This is to move towards a positive organizational culture change.

• On June 5, 2022, the Canadian Women’s National Team released a statement and explained it had been bargaining in good faith with Canada Soccer since January 29, 2022. It desired equal pay to members of their team relative to the Men’s National team.
• On March 2, 2023, Canada Soccer announced that a deal in principle had been reached with the Women’s National Team players on an interim funding agreement, for 2022. The terms of the interim agreement mirrored a similar deal with the Men’s National Team players that included per-game incentives and results-based compensation.
• On May 30, 2023, the then Minister of Sport imposed payment conditions to Canada Soccer until it: completed a recipient compliance audit on their finances, hired a fully independent third party to conduct a governance review, and lastly, that Sport Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee, and Own the Podium work together and create an external advisory group that would offer support to Canada Soccer for addressing the audit recommendations and governance review as well as other priority areas such as operational and financial transparency.
• Since June 15, 2023, the Office of the Chief Audit Executive within the Department of Canadian Heritage has been working on the recipient compliance audit on Canada Soccer with external auditors, which is expected to be completed in the 2023–24 fiscal year.
• Canada Soccer is in the process of publishing a Request for Proposal to seek expertise on the Governance Review. It will begin following the selection of the independent third party. The final report will be submitted by April 2024.

None