NDP MP wants women's Olympic soccer coach, staff to testify on drone scandal
David Baxter | CBC News | Posted: August 8, 2024 10:38 PM | Last Updated: August 9
Niki Ashton wants to call national women's soccer coach Bev Priestman before the heritage committee
NDP MP Niki Ashton has put forward a motion to call the leaders of Canada's national women's soccer team and Canada Soccer to testify on the drone spying scandal before the House of Commons heritage committee.
"This goes far beyond this one incident, and it even goes beyond the the women's soccer team. This is about Canada's reputation in soccer and about Canada's reputation in sport," the Manitoba MP said in an interview with CBC News on Friday.
"We as members of Parliament and Canadians deserve to know how we ended up in this situation and more importantly how we can fix it."
A Canada Soccer analyst was caught operating a drone to spy on the New Zealand's team's practice ahead of the women's national Olympic opener on July 25. Canada won that game 2-1.
"We need to make sure that at the highest level, we are making it clear that you win because of the hard work," Ashton said.
"You don't win from cheating, from spying and then and then tarnishing other people's reputations. That's not what soccer is about, that's not what sport is about, and that's not what Canada is about."
WATCH | How big is the impact of Canada's soccer drone-spying scandal?:
As first reported by TSN, Ashton's motion seeks to call head coach Bev Priestman, assistant coach Jasmine Mander, analyst Joey Lombardi and former coach of both the men's and women's national teams John Herdman.
"The athletes are absolute heroes for giving it their all," Ashton said. "When the governing body, FIFA, deducts points and takes disciplinary measures, that's the worst it can be. And yet our players still gave it their all."
"They were let down by their team officials because of this kind of spying and cheating. The arrogance we saw from from Team Canada officials following following this drone scandal really speaks to the fact that we need to put our athletes at the centre of of this issue. And we need to make sure that this never happens again and that we support them to the hilt to meeting their dreams and meeting all our dreams as Canadians."
Ashton stressed the importance of getting soccer in Canada "back on track" as the nation prepares to co-host the 2026 World Cup with the United States and Mexico.
"It's going to put Canadian soccer on the world stage in in a huge way," Ashton said. "We need to make sure that that we get back on track, fix our reputation and make sure this never happens again."
CBC news has reached out to Canada Soccer for comment, as well as other members of the heritage committee.
Discipline for Team Canada
On July 28, FIFA levied a six-point penalty against the Canadian team, making it difficult for the defending Olympic champions to make it out of the tournament's group stage.
The international soccer federation's ruling cited emails from Canada Soccer coaching staff — including Priestman — which suggest using drones to spy on practices is more than an one-off occurrence.
"It's something the analyst has always done and I know there is a whole operation on the men's side with regards to it (we had [redacted] in with us recently and he was outstanding in this area)," says a March 20 message from Priestman cited by FIFA.
"Yesterday in a meeting when discussing, I asked [redacted] to propose a [sic] alternative solution as for scouting it can be the difference between winning and losing and all top 10 teams do it."
WATCH | Emails suggest routine soccer spying as Canada's women advance to quarterfinals:
Team Canada unsuccessfully tried to appeal FIFA's point deduction.
Priestman, Mander and Lombardi were all sent home from the Olympics by the Canadian Olympic Committee. FIFA later suspended all three from soccer activities for a year. Canada Soccer did not appeal those punishments.
Priestman served as head coach when the Canadian women's team won gold at the 2020 games in Tokyo.
FIFA has said it will conduct a further investigation into the spying practices, starting with the Olympic incident.
Despite the six-point penalty, Canada was able to advance to the knock-out round with additional wins over France and Colombia. Germany eliminated Canada in the quarterfinals last Saturday on penalty kicks.