Canada spends millions on safe sport. It's not going where it's needed

This story is part of a continuing investigation by CBC News and Sports into abuse in amateur sport in Canada. Read all of the reporting here.

Canada's sports system remains in a crisis — at a breaking point even — as parents, sports organizations and officials at all levels continue to struggle with keeping players safe from abuse. 

It's been four years since a CBC News and Sports investigation revealed more than 200 coaches — mostly at the local level — had been charged with a sexual offence against athletes under their care since 1998. Since then, CBC has found 83 other coaches have been charged or convicted across multiple sports, provinces and jurisdictions. 

Experts say those charged — which include a tennis coach in Toronto, a figure skating coach in St. John's, a trio of basketball coaches in Montreal and a football coach in Winnipeg — likely represent only a fraction of what is occurring.

"The world of sport in general is still in crisis, because we are still hearing about the stories of abuse and maltreatment and I don't think it's the end of it," Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge told CBC.

Among the recent allegations — on July 12, 2022, police charged 33-year-old Jamie Ellacott with sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl at the Lethbridge Gymnastics Academy, which he owned and operated with his wife. Ellacott had spent nearly a decade working in gyms across Alberta.

"From the parent's side of things, I know a lot of people were shocked and horrified," said Lindsay Vandergouwe, who had only recently enrolled her four-year-old daughter in classes at the club. 

"Our initial thing was, 'Oh God, what's going to happen next?' Because there will be more. Our initial thought was if this is the first kid who's come forward, it's not the first kid who's been abused, there will be others."

A few weeks later, police charged Ellacott with sexually assaulting three other girls at his gym, ages 10, 12 and 14.

"There is lots of talk about how this keeps happening," Vandergouwe said. "How do we enact meaningful change so that this doesn't continue to happen to kids?"

Most abuse happens at the local level, but most of the resources to prevent it go to national organizations and, contrary to popular belief, do not trickle down to the smaller clubs and their younger players. 

"It remains an absolute blind spot in the system; 99-plus per cent of the cases happen at the community level, but 90-plus per cent of the attention and the effort goes at the elite level of sport," said Marco Di Buono, president of Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities, one the largest youth sports charities in Canada. 

Calls for an independent inquiry into safe sport — which, broadly, guards against everything from sexual abuse, poor parental behaviour, bullying, concussions and toxic culture — have recently grown louder. The latest came from dozens of Canadian sport scholars who, in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, cited "widespread reports of sexual, physical and psychological abuse of athletes throughout the nation's sport system."

Gymnasts have been among the most vocal.