The sporting life and the cost of bad decisions

OTTAWA—The positive cultural value available from Canadian sport appeared to be on the upswing in 2019 when the CBC belatedly relieved us from having to put up with the backward, bigoted nonsense spewed by Don Cherry every week. After 38 years, the former Coach's Corner co-host was fired for “offensive and discriminatory” comments on Hockey Night in Canada. The TV network noticed that Cherry insulted newcomers to Canada in a rant about people who don't wear Remembrance Day poppies. “You people, you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that,” Cherry said alongside his gormless co-host Ron MacLean. “These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada, these guys paid the biggest price.” Some might argue that you shouldn’t mix sports and politics. But with activities like hockey, football, and soccer being central to peoples’ identity, pride, and sense of community, it’s impossible to separate what happens with sport from the wider public context. Any doubts about that have been clearly wiped away by the ongoing Hockey Canada debacle. Besides alienating parents angered that kids’ hockey registration fees were being misused, Hockey Canada, as others have noted, pulled off the rare feat of uniting Canada’s politicians against the organization. After a months-long failure to respond in any meaningful way to the growing outcry over Hockey Canada’s payout of nearly $9-million in settlements since 1989 to 21 people alleging sexual abuse, the organization finally realized a shake-up at the top was inevitable. Helping with that realization, of course, was the mass exodus of big-time sponsors. Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Nike, and others ended their ties with Hockey Canada permanently or said they were withholding funding for the men's game this season. The uproar followed one of the most tone-deaf public performances seen in years. On Oct. 4, Andrea Skinner, Hockey Canada’s now-resigned interim board chair, told the Commons Heritage Committee that toxic behaviour is a society-wide issue and that it was “counterproductive” to use Hockey Canada as a “scapegoat.” Her resignation—and that of the rest of the board and organization president Scott Smith, which happened on Oct. 11—isn’t likely to put the issue to rest, as MPs are probably going to want to get to the bottom of it all, particularly the settlement of a $3.5-million lawsuit by a woman alleging that she was sexually assaulted by eight hockey players, including members of the 2018 world junior team. On the international front, it’s hard to top FIFA’s regrettable move to put the World Cup in Qatar. The location of the finals competition in the games starting Nov. 20 has proven to be a public relations disaster in almost every way. Qatar has been criticized for years for its human rights treatment of its two-million-strong migrant workers, many of whom were basically enslaved by rules requiring an employers’ permission to change jobs. While there have recently been some improvements, FIFA has been widely condemned for not doing more to force reforms in advance of the world’s most watched sporting event. “Hundreds of thousands of workers who toiled to make the World Cup possible have paid exorbitant and illegal recruitment fees, yet few have ever been reimbursed,” according to a recent Amnesty International report. “Thousands of others have been cheated of their wages by abusive employers, made to work excessive hours, or subjected to conditions amounting to forced labour. Workers have even paid the ultimate price, losing their lives after labouring without adequate protection in Qatar’s extreme heat. Yet their deaths were rarely investigated, and their families hardly ever compensated.” It’s not clear how many migrant labourers have perished getting Qatar ready for the World Cup. Based on reports from embassies, The Guardian reported last year that more than 6,500 workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar building the World Cup’s seven stadiums and other infrastructure. But the number was disputed by the Qatar government, which said only several dozen had died. In protest of this situation, the Danish team will wear “toned down,” dull-coloured shirts in the upcoming competition. The team will have a third, all-black kit to represent “the colour of mourning.” Same-sex relationships are illegal in Qatar, so British team captain Harry Kane plans to wear a OneLove armband during the games as part of an anti-discrimination campaign begun by the Netherlands. France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Wales, and Switzerland are also backing this initiative. Then there’s the environmental cost. Qatar is going to consume at least 10,000 litres of water a day for each of its stadium fields—another source of controversy for this most questionable of decisions about the venue for an international festival of sport. Neville Southall, a famous Wales goalkeeper, recently renewed questions about how Qatar was awarded the games in the first place. “I think one of the big questions for me that's come out of the World Cup is the transparency of how you get a World Cup,” he told the BBC. "Because surely you should have good human rights, you should have good LGBT stuff, and you should have a good record on racism.” Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times