Scott Oakman knows the time for change is now.
The Greater Toronto Hockey League’s executive director has begun a “head on” approach to erasing incidents of racist, misogynistic and homophobic language in Canada’s largest youth hockey league.
“Recent events brought forth the issue, and people’s experiences have come out, and them wanting to speak out, so we wanted to expedite our approach,” Oakman said in a telephone interview Friday after the GTHL announced an upcoming town hall, while releasing data tracking gross misconduct penalties for inappropriate language used by players during GTHL games the past three seasons.
Oakman was responding in part to the worldwide protests that have followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. GTHL players, current and former, have come forward as well with accounts of racist language from players, parents and coaches.
Data on gross misconduct penalties released by the league Friday revealed that, in the 2019-20 season, there was one misconduct for language referring to religion, five relating to race, 16 for comments about sexual orientation, 172 related to gender, and one regarding a disability. The total of 195 gross misconducts marked a sharp increase from the two previous seasons, when the totals for the five categories came in at 51 (2018-19) and 49 (2017-18).
Oakman said the GTHL sees an opportunity to tackle the issues by releasing data that was previously shuttered from the public. The league said in a statement its former policy was to prevent the release of “information connecting to identifiable individual players, (an approach) consistent with the policies of school boards and with Canada’s youth criminal justice system.”
“We had this policy in place,” Oakman said, “but we heard from players past and present, and we listened. We heard from parents past and present, and we listened. It is time to get this information and put it in the public domain.
“We want people to know we’re listening and dealing with this, and that we need to address a way for parents and players … to bring their concerns and issues forward and not face repercussion moving forward.
“There’s the sense that, for players, they shouldn’t distract from the team, the team-first mentality. That creates issues, where we’re dealing with racist issues now, because a player may feel they were taking away from the team concept … We want to find a way to make them feel they can come forward and speak about (issues) and that we as an organization and as people will listen and do better.”
Oakman said the league has selected two people to co-chair its town hall. They are currently getting approval from their employers to assume their positions. The co-chairs, and the date of the town hall, will be announced in the coming weeks.
“We want them to explore a number of issues and what we as an organization can do better … how we deal with racism and how we can do better,” Oakman said.
The GTHL, which staged a summit on culture, diversity and inclusivity in November 2019, will also review its misconduct penalty approach to the use of inappropriate language. Previous penalties ranged from five to eight games on average.
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“This will involve a lot of difficult conversations, but those are conversations we need to have in order to change what’s going on,” Oakman said.
“We don’t have all the answers, we don’t understand the lives of other people, we have blind spots, so we need to listen to (others) so we can understand what needs to be in place, and how we can better deal with this head on.”
