Former Hockey Canada CEO and current Oilers Entertainment Group executive Bob Nicholson has been subpoenaed to appear at the next Safe Sport hearings in Ottawa, to be held Nov. 15.
Also called to appear is Pat McLaughlin, senior vice president of strategy, operations and brand at Hockey Canada.
It is unclear as to whether Nicholson and McLaughlin will appear in person or virtually. In the previous hearing, on Oct. 4, then-Hockey Canada chair of the board Andrea Skinner and former chair Michael Brind'Amour both appeared via video conferencing.
"With respect to Mr. Nicholson, he had a very long involvement with the organization and was there during the 2003 incident in Halifax, among other things," Parliamentary committee member and Liberal MP Anthony Housefather told Sportsnet via email as to why Nicholson was called.
Nicholson, 69, was Hockey Canada’s president and CEO from 1998 until 2014, when he left for Oilers Entertainment Group, where he is now CEO, and was replaced by Tom Renney. From 1979-89, Nicholson was the technical director of the British Columbia Amateur Hockey Association. He then took the position of vice-president of technical operations for the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, and he was a senior vice-president when the CAHA merged with Hockey Canada in 1994.
Nicholson is credited with fostering Hockey Canada’s successful business model by negotiating lucrative TV deals for tournaments, enhancing the women’s teams and programs as well as instituting methods of building team chemistry in short periods of time, which panned out for many of Canada’s international entries. He has also been with the IIHF as regional vice-president for the Americas since 2012. Nicholson was in charge of Hockey Canada when an alleged group sexual assault occurred in 2003 in Halifax allegedly involving members of the 2003 Canadian world junior team, almost all of whom went on to play in the NHL.
The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which has been overseeing the hearings into how Hockey Canada handled the settlement of a lawsuit brought by a woman accusing players from the Canadian world junior team of group sexual assault in London, Ont., in 2018, is also requesting key documents surrounding the severance pay of former CEO Scott Smith.
MORE FROM SPORTSNET
Specifically, the committee is sending for documents from Hockey Canada and the Hockey Canada Foundation, around, according to the minutes from their last meeting, "minutes of all Board meetings that have taken place since the last minutes were sent to the committee, including in camera minutes, whether in approved or draft form," "Scott Smith’s employment agreement as amended from the first date until the last date of his employment with Hockey Canada" and "Scott Smith’s severance agreement." The committee is requesting that all the documents be sent to its clerk by 10 a.m. ET / 7 a.m. PT on Monday.
Smith, 55, had been with Hockey Canada since 1995, serving as vice president and chief operating officer. He took over on July 1 as president and CEO from Tom Renney, who left the organization in a previously decided retirement. He was ousted by Hockey Canada on Oct. 11, the same day the entire board of directors, including chair Skinner, stepped down.
Housefather told Sportsnet that the committee wants to make sure Smith's severance agreement was "consistent with market standards and that the terms were not changed in recent months, but rather that it was consistent with an employment agreement negotiated before the recent crisis."
Hockey Canada also announced on Thursday that it is now a full signatory with Abuse-Free Sport, the new independent program to prevent and address maltreatment in sport in Canada. This move means that, effective immediately, all complaints of abuse, discrimination and harassment at the national level will go directly to the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner. This was one of the three conditions the Minister of Sport laid out for Hockey Canada in order to get its government funding back.
