Minority rights recognition missing from sport bill

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Federal legislation that is within days of being passed into law does not protect the equality rights of Aboriginal, female or disabled athletes.

That's what a Liberal Party member who works in the federal bureaucracy has told Windspeaker. Paul LeMay broke the unwritten rule of bureaucratic silence to speak out on a government position that he says violates Canada's Constitution.

"I felt it was my moral duty to alert a number of Aboriginal news outlets about [the bill] as its passage could have a number of beneficial impacts on various under-represented groups, if its wording is amended," he said. "Few people can be reasonably aware of the fine details that go into every piece of legislation that makes its way through Parliament, even those that can have a direct impact on Aboriginal communities throughout Canada."

The Ottawa resident contacted this publication to inform us that, as presently worded, Bill C-1-an act to promote physical activity and sport-leaves the decision to provide equal funding for minority athletes to the discretion of the secretary of state responsible for Sport Canada. LeMay said the wording of one section of the bill has been the subject of a lot of political backroom dealing. It has become apparent, he believes, that the Liberal government wants to avoid committing itself to spending money on minority athletes-women, the disabled and Aboriginal people-even though the rights of minorities to equal treatment is enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

LeMay was a policy advisor to Senator Joseph Day when Bill C-12 (formerly Bill C-54) was introduced into the House of Commons in April 2002. He has followed the bill closely ever since.

"Having also worked as the special assistant to Senator Sheila Finestone before her retirement, and in the year prior to that, having been involved in the preparation of briefing notes for a Cabinet minister, I had also become acquainted with the sensitivities of working in the political realm. But nothing quite prepared me for what I was about to witness," Paul LeMay said.

The problem as LeMay sees it comes down to one word in the act. Many sports groups wanted Article 5 to say the minister "shall" provide equal funding to minorities. The Liberal government, represented in this case by Secretary of State (Amateur Sport) Paul DeVillers who assists Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, has insisted the word will be "may," leaving a matter guaranteed in Canada's Constitution to the discretion of the minister of the day.

Having been passed by the Commons, Bill C-12 is currently before the Senate in the final third reading stage. It will be one of the first bills dealt with when the Senate resumes sitting on Feb. 4. After receiving third and final reading in the Senate, the bill will be proclaimed the law of the land.

LeMay said the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity was prepared to take on DeVillers in a very public fight over that one word. But then something happened.

"Hours before the woman's group was to plead their case for a more definitive amendment in the act before a House of Commons sub-committee studying the bill, they had a mysterious conversion experience which saw them endorse the bill without amendment." LeMay alleges the group had received private assurances from the secretary of state, the precise terms of which remain undisclosed to the public.

"This of course came as a surprise to many of the MPs on the committee who were expecting a hard-nosed showdown with the minister over his unwillingness to bend on the subject of including any gender equity conditions. As the government held most of the purse strings to these organizations, one can only presume that he made them an offer they could not refuse."

Once the bill got to the Senate, the government continued to push to get its wording through unamended.

"Realizing that such an amendment was more likely to succeedif it were proposed by aLiberal Senator, I wrote letters to about 20 Liberal Senators, encouraging them to support an amendment of Article 5," LeMay said. "And I also specifically brought the matter to the attention of Alberta Senator Thelma Chalifoux, one of six Aboriginal Senators in the Senate, in the hopes she would sponsor the necessary amendment. Though she was most sympathetic to doing so, it would appear that the secretary of state for amateur sport has little incentive to negotiate away the sweeping discretionary powers his office would win with the passage of this bill. Nor do Liberal Senators seem willing to go eyeball-to-eyeball with one of their own, even if the bill sacrifices the longer term interests of women, Aboriginals and the disabled."

Senator Chalifoux told Windspeaker on Jan.29 that she planned to raise the issue before the Senate committee when she returned to Ottawa the following week.

"I haven't caved on anything," she said, in repsonse to LeMay's suggestion that Liberal senators weren't willing to take on the minister. "I will raise this issue in committee."

Attempts to arrange an interview with Secretary of State (Amateur Sport) Paul DeVillers before publication deadline were not successful.