March 23, 2023

To our fencing community.

We were made aware yesterday of a letter sent to the Honourable Pascale St-Onge, Minister of Sport, calling for an independent review of the Canadian Fencing Federation (CFF). The letter was signed by Fencing for Change Canada, a group that “exists to represent and support Canadian fencers, including former and current members of the Canadian Olympic Team, the Canadian National Team, the High-Performance Program and other competitive programs.” You can read a copy of the letter here.

To date, the CFF has not received the letter but is aware of it being circulated. It is impossible for us to address the concerns raised without details and specifics and for this reason, encourage any of the aforementioned signatories to the letter to make their concerns known. A subsequent news report, appearing on CTV, gave some details about one former athlete’s experience.  We strongly invite this former athlete to reach out anonymously to our independent third-party W&W Dispute Resolution to have the situation addressed, whether or not the events took place recently.

The CFF is committed to addressing any concerns of maltreatment being raised as promptly as we can, in accordance with our values and policies, which are centered around the well-being of our athletes. As fencers ourselves, we are deeply troubled to hear that other fencers have concerns they feel have not yet been addressed properly and invite them to share any and all issues through our independent third-party W&W Dispute Resolution until we officially join the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner (OSIC) on March 31, 2023.

The federation’s athlete representative, Kelleigh Ryan, will also be convening a town hall to invite concerned fencers to share their stories and together determine the best path forward. Please email athleterep@fencing.ca.

We remain supportive of an independent mechanism to both coordinate and manage maltreatment complaints so that we can collectively address issues proactively and continue to advocate for system-wide reformation to ensure a safe and welcoming environment. We are committed to being part of the solution to ensure a healthy and welcoming fencing culture.

Ultimately, we believe that the entire sport system requires a coordinated effort to address systemic issues. We are committed to working alongside Sport Canada and other sport leaders to address these gaps and to restore trust where it has been broken.

For more information, please contact David Howes, at ed@fencing.ca.