More funding needed to teach young hockey players about consent: advocate
Jacob Pries runs OHL Onside program for Kitchener Rangers
Teaching young hockey players about issues like consent will fix many problems within hockey culture, but consistent funding needs to be in place for the training to be truly effective, a Kitchener, Ont., advocate says.
Jacob Pries runs the Ontario Hockey League's Onside program for the Kitchener Rangers. Onside was developed to help OHL teams talk to athletes about topics like consent, health relationships, healthy masculinity and bystander intervention.
Onside was developed in partnership with the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region — where Pries works as a project facilitator in the Male Allies Program — the Kawartha Sexual Assault Centre, and the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres.
"Currently it's only a single session with the OHL," Pries said of Onside during an interview on CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition. "We also have our Leading by Example program which is a little bit broader than that. It's a three-session program where we get to go a little bit more into depth with some of the key issues."
Pries spoke to CBC News a few days after a brief court apperance for five former Canadian world junior hockey team players. The five players currently face charges of sexual assault stemming from an alleged incident that occurred after a Hockey Canada gala in London, Ont., in June 2018.
The charges are still before the courts and a publication ban is in effect to protect the identities of the woman who is a complainant in the case and two witnesses.
Players 'hungry for conversations'
Pries said the players who have gone through the programs have had positive feedback.
"I think players overall are really hungry for conversations about consent," he said. "They really want to know what consent means, how to sort of engage with it on a day-to-day basis to make sure they're not making mistakes."
He added, "We know the best way to sort of avoid that for folks is to have a really solid understanding of what consent is, how to practice it."
In fact, the Leading by Example program has expanded, and as part of a pilot project, training is now offered for players as young as 13 years old.
"Since the beginning of January we've been working with three local minor hockey teams to have those conversations at a bit of an earlier age," Pries said.
"When we were working with the older players and when we've been working with Hockey Canada, we heard from players that the majority of them had never done a workshop [on] consent with their team."
WATCH: Jacob Pries describes how to teach young hockey players about consent:
Funding needed
And while Pries said a lot of issues with hockey culture can be fixed if players are given this kind of education at a younger age, they also have a big hurdle in that there's a lack of funding for programs like Lead by Example.
"A lot of our funding sort of comes here and there, small grants maybe from the region," he said.
"It's really frustrating when we know Hockey Canada does have a lot of money, [the] NHL has a lot of money that they could be investing in the players' futures, to making sure that players have a solid understanding of these important pieces in their lives."
Pries said the lack of funding is not just an issue affecting the Waterloo region.
"We've had other leagues and teams reach out, because their local centres don't have a lot of capacity," he said. "A lot of sexual assault centres across the province don't have the capacity to run programming in their community, unfortunately, and largely because there's been a lack of funding for for our sector."
Pries said the Ontario government cut $1 million in funding that was earmarked for 42 Ontario rape crisis centres in 2020.
Pries said he also had conversations about the issue with Kitchener Centre MP Mike Morrice, who forwarded a letter written by the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region to Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, Marci Ien.
Morrice said he and Ien had "a good conversation" that also included then-Minister of Sport Pascale St. Onge, but the dollars weren't re-allocated in the federal budget.
"I don't think it's for lack of interest on behalf of the minister," Morrice said. "But when it came to the final decision in in the budget, that's where we see more progress needs to be made."
Morrice said he continues to advocate for groups like the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region to reallocate funding that had been paused for Hockey Canada — which in past years was as much as $14 million a year and in the most recent fiscal year with $7 million — to programs like OHL Onside.
CBC News contacted Hockey Canada for comment on these kinds of programs, but did not receive a reply.
LISTEN | Pilot program talks to young hockey players in Waterloo region about consent:
