Mystery surrounds the legal business status of the independent third party that manages and investigates sexual abuse claims on behalf of Hockey Canada exposing an industry with no regulation or accountability.

Concerns have also been raised about how the unregulated independent third parties handle sensitive data and confidential information after allegations of abuse and alleged criminal acts have been exchanged via commercial email accounts and stored in online commercial file hosting service.

“The independent third parties are private enterprises and there are no set standards,” said one senior sports executive in an interview with the Guardian.

Ice hockey participants in Canada who want to report sexual and other abuse within the sport are directed by Hockey Canada, the sport’s national governing body, to file a complaint through the website of a for-profit independent third party called “Sport Complaints”.

Sport Complaints does not appear on Canada’s national registry of businesses and details of its legal status or principals cannot be found through any conventional search. Its website does not list an office address or staff, nor does it provide any contact details or method to contact the organization beyond a webpage for filing allegations of abuse.

Hockey Canada did not respond to multiple requests from the Guardian for business and contact details for Sport Complaints nor offer clarification on its business relationship with Sport Complaints. Hockey Canada did not respond to questions about oversight of Sport Complaints or how Hockey Canada compensates entities providing management and investigation services for allegations of abuse.

The Guardian subsequently identified Ottawa-based lawyer Jahmiah Ferdinand-Hodkin as a Sport Complaints principal and submitted questions via her Sport Complaints email address to clarify the business and legal status of Sport Complaints and the relationship between Sport Complaints and Hockey Canada. After asking how the Guardian located her Sport Complaints contact information, Ferdinand-Hodkin did not respond to requests for comment.

Ferdinand-Hodkin is the founder of Sport Dispute Management, an Ontario corporation created in April 2023 that pitches “boutique sports dispute solutions”. The Sports Dispute Management website offers administration, investigation and adjudication of safe sport complaints as well as risk management and training services.

The relationship between Sport Dispute Management, Sport Complaints and Hockey Canada remains unclear.

“There is currently no federal legislation regulating Independent Third Parties,” confirmed a spokesperson for Carla Qualtrough, Canada’s Minister for Sport and Physical Activity. Qualtrough announced a “Future of Sport in Canada” commission late last year that she said intends to address the ocean of abuse allegations flooding multiple sports across Canada.

According to the minister’s spokesperson, the commission’s official launch will be announced in the next few weeks and ultimately make recommendations on improving safe sport in Canada, “including trauma-informed approaches to support sport participants in the disclosure of and healing from maltreatment” and also look to improve “policy, funding structures, governance, reporting, accountability, conflicts of interest, systems alignment, culture and legal considerations. This could include ITPs, at the discretion of the Commission.”

A senior sports executive with an understanding of the relationship between sports organizations and ITPs and speaking on condition of anonymity to speak freely about how abuse complaints are handled in Canada told the Guardian: “Regulation would unify and standardize how things are handled.”

The executive said it has been known for ITPs to be hired by sports organizations based on “a good price and a good pitch” and that the lack of a national standard was a roadblock in establishing a national registry of coaches and officials who were found guilty of abuse.

“How are we going to accept the findings of an ITP when there is no control over the process that is followed?” the executive said. “We don’t know if due process was afforded or the quality of the investigators or the quality of their adjudicators. There are no set standards nationally. The costs will depend on the quality of the professionals you hire. If someone is supposed to be making a profit at the end they have to be making cuts somewhere.”

In addition to the lack of ITP regulation, concerns have been raised about how confidential data and information is handled during the process of managing abuse complaints. Reports of abuse that potentially fall under Hockey Canada’s jurisdiction are initially made through the Sport Complaints website and an online form owned and managed by project management software provider Monday.com, headquartered in Israel.

Offshore storage raises red flags about the security of personal data and confidential information about allegations of serious crimes. Sport Complaints does not have any privacy policy accessible on its website except for a statement on its online complaint form that says “information is sent securely to the ITP and is kept strictly confidential in accordance with the Policy [sic]”. No information is provided as to what the stated policy is.

“This is incredibly problematic,” said Amelia Cline, a lawyer and advocate for victims of abuse in sport through the organization Gymnasts for Change.

“We don’t know what the relationship is between Sport Complaints, the individual receiving the complaint, and the person making the complaint so it becomes a huge question over what kind of privacy legislation might apply. Is it federal privacy legislation? Is it provincial privacy legislation? Is there any policy in place that talks about the storage of that data and when that data is going to be deleted? Are there data retention policies? This is such a huge can of worms.”

“There is no reassurance these entities are holding their information confidentially,” Cline added. “They have really murky privacy and data storage policies - if they have them at all. Some of the ITP platforms don’t even exist legally. It is a major concern with this system.”

Cline said the unregulated environment that ITPs currently operate within as well as confusion over privacy laws and data retention had created issues for victims of abuse who had attempted to obtain information about the reports they had made to ITPs about alleged abuse.

“If [a victim] wants a copy of the report they made to an ITP or they want access to documents related to their discipline process they have received the runaround from these companies saying ‘I was just the investigator, I can’t disclose that, you have to go to the case manager,” Cline explains. “The case manager says they can’t give their information to them, only the adjudicator can. The adjudicator says they have no authority to disclose anything, it is the national sports organization. People aren’t even able to access their own information after they have provided it.”