Damien Cox: It might take a boycott to prevent Hockey Canada from hiding behind the world junior tournament

So what happens now?

The politicians have had their TV time making Hockey Canada executives squirm, and there are ongoing investigations into the conduct of players with Canadian national junior teams in 2003 and 2018. But, right now, there’s no definitive understanding as to how this crisis will be addressed, let alone resolved.

Nobody at Hockey Canada has lost their job. CEO Scott Smith says he’s not going anywhere after taking the post on July 1. We still don’t know the identities of anyone involved with these alleged incidents, which means it’s quite possible a player who was involved might again suit up for Canada and we’d never know it.

The world juniors will go ahead as scheduled next month, with Hockey Canada undoubtedly planning to bask in the glory of one of its most successful programs once more and make a lot of money doing it. There will be a national women’s camp, with the finest new prospects mixing with the group that won Olympic gold last winter.

So it’s just carry on with business as usual?

Of the many strange aspects of this Hockey Canada controversy, that’s one of the strangest. There doesn’t seem to be any real oversight with what the national hockey federation does. Ostensibly, it’s the federal minister of sport who is in charge, or can at least shut down the flow of federal funds to Hockey Canada, but that doesn’t represent a very large percentage of the organization’s revenues.

So Hockey Canada apparently just plans to continue doing what it does. Smith, who joined Hockey Canada’s head office in 1997, wants to stay. Will everyone else at Hockey Canada, including the male-dominated board of directors, remain in place? That seems preposterous. But in the absence of an authority with power to tell Hockey Canada what to do, that seems to be what is going to happen.

The only thing that will force Hockey Canada to change, it would appear, is public disgust. The organization has admitted to settling sexual assault lawsuits for decades and presumably would have continued to do so if the 2018 incident and the existence of this slush/hush fund had not become public knowledge.

Smith et al didn’t create the “action plan” they unveiled this week because they came to understand that there was something seriously wrong with the way in which Hockey Canada was dealing with sexual assault cases. The action plan was directly the result of information surrounding the 2018 case becoming public knowledge.

If that hadn’t happened, Hockey Canada would have continued doing exactly what it has done, complete with multimillion dollar payouts to alleged victims and nondisclosure agreements designed to buy the silence of victims.

Scott Smith, second from right, who took over as Hockey Canada CEO at the start of the month, says he isn’t going anywhere. And the world junior tournament will go ahead as scheduled. It appears to be business as usual after the news of alleged sexual assaults and quiet settlements.

Now, it appears only more public pressure will move a defiant Hockey Canada. That, or perhaps a boycott of next month’s world junior tournament by the fine citizens of Edmonton and anyone planning to attend the competition. You know that, once the tournament begins, TSN will do what it does, which is paint a lovely portrait of fine young men and their families sacrificing just for the chance to play for Canada.

This tournament will become part of Hockey Canada’s damage control effort, part of its effort to polish its brand and soiled image. So if you’re a hockey fan disgusted with what you’ve read and heard about Hockey Canada and it’s grotesquely named National Equity Fund, maybe this is the year you shouldn’t watch.

An Edmonton fan boycott, you can imagine, would be horrifying to Smith and the other Hockey Canada executives who need the 2022 world juniors to fill the organization’s coffers and bring a golden shine back to the organization. If there was a boycott, perhaps then we might see somebody at Hockey Canada lose their job. Perhaps then we might actually see some accountability.

The other development that might convince Hockey Canada that it can’t just wait for this storm to die down would be more allegations of misconduct, which seem almost inevitable. We’ve been made aware of the 2003 and 2018 incidents, and it seems likely more will follow. Now that everyone knows Hockey Canada would rather pay than go to court, that’s going to be an incentive for other accusers to come forward.

Public pressure and more ugly accusations. Otherwise, Hockey Canada appears to believe it can simply dig in its heels and refuse to change a thing.

There are hopes this will be Hockey Canada’s “Me Too” moment. But it’s not hard to get the feeling when it comes time to cheer again at the world juniors, or the world championships, or the Olympics, Canadians will cheer as loudly as ever, buy Hockey Canada merchandise with Hockey Canada logos and forget that they learned that the people in charge thought it was OK to use registration fees to finance a secret fund to pay off sexual assault victims.

Pascale St-Onge, the minister for sport, seems engaged now but that can change with the next news cycle. Or the next cabinet shuffle. Who will make sure that, if Smith does indeed keep his job, the vague promises he has made in his action plan are actually kept?

It’s a great question to which no one seems to have an answer.

Back in 1972, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau lobbied to have Bobby Hull included on Team Canada for the Summit Series despite the fact he had jumped from the NHL to the upstart WHA. Trudeau argued it was in the national interest to have one of the game’s great superstars playing for his country.

The PM was ignored, and even chastised by tournament organizer Alan Eagleson. Hull wasn’t allowed to play.

Nobody, but nobody, in this country has ever been able to tell the people in charge of hockey what to do. And everyone knows it.