(OTTAWA) In 2021, the year of their Olympic triumph, the Canadian soccer team players learn that male players are paid five times more than they are. And when captain Christine Sinclair spoke to the former president of Canada Soccer, she came out upset as never before.
The future must be brighter than ever. However, as the popularity, interest and growth of women’s football sweeps across the world, our toughest battle is with our federation, to try to achieve fair and equitable treatment in the way we support. on Canadian Heritage on Thursday.
The struggle has been going on for more than a decade, as players have tried to gain financial transparency from the organization, but instead had to deal with “secret and obstruction,” as Christine Sinclair puts it.
Because of persistence, they end up getting answers.
And what they learned in 2021, the year the women’s team won gold at the Tokyo Games, they beat them.
“Imagine our shock when we found out that players on the men’s team get paid more than five times more than a player on the women’s team,” she added, before recounting, “on a personal note,” a time she “never felt offended.”
That was last year, during a meeting with Nick Pontes, the former president of Canada Soccer.
He listened to me, and a little later in the meeting, he referenced my remarks by saying, and I quote, “What was Christine crying about?” [bitching about] ? “To me, that said a lot about Canada’s disrespect for soccer to the women’s team,” the woman, who wears the number 12 on her jersey, told the elected officials.
She then passed the floor to her three team mates Janine Becky, Quinn and Sophie Schmidt. She said the women’s team seemed like an “afterthought” for the federation, wondering what message it was sending to the young girls.
Photo by Justin Tang, The Canadian Press
Sophie Schmidt, Janine Becky, Christine Sinclair, and Quinn
Receptive elected officials
The athletes had MPs around them who won their case.
They all expressed their indignation and sadness, but above all, their admiration for the success of the women’s team.
Because he shines more than the men’s team, and we mentioned it several times during the session.
“We, I think, are fifth or sixth [au classement de la FIFA]. They are in their forties ? Capt. Sinclair fired in response to an elected official who asked for clarification in this regard.
In the committee room, where there were a few more girls, we laughed.
Later, the liberal Father Anthony made this clarification: women rank sixth in the world, and men rank 53rdH rank.
Funding: Towards a Standards Review
In the conservative camp, Marlene Gladou asked them if the Minister of Sports, Pascal St-Onge, had done anything to ensure that equal pay was a condition of granting federal funding.
He was told “Nothing, as we speak”.
The concerned minister is working on it.
We will review the requirements that we have in place in the shareholding agreements, particularly in terms of governance […] and financial transparency,” she said in an interview Journalism before the meeting.
A funding freeze like the one imposed on Hockey Canada does not appear to be the solution Mr.I St-Onge in the case of Canada Soccer.
“Right now, we’re not planning on that, because basically, every time we put funding on hold, we could end up penalizing the athletes,” she said.
New collective agreement draft
Barely hours before the four women were due to appear, Soccer Canada revealed their draft collective agreement.
The employment contract stipulates that the two teams will receive the same match compensation and that they will share equally in the prize money for the competitions, according to the federation.
The Olympic champion women’s team will become the second highest paid women’s team among FIFA’s 211 member associations, presumably behind Team USA.
Canadian soccer officials are scheduled to appear before the parliamentary committee on March 20.
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