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Thomas Cromwell

Thomas Cromwell

Statesman and former Lord Privy Seal of the United Kingdom

Jul 1, 2026

18:29
Separately from the specifics of this review and hockey in particular, have you developed, in the course of this process, concerns about sports governance more generally?
18:41
At the risk of sounding like the lawyer that I am, everything from sort of the constitutional framework for sports governance right through to funding Governance of sports organizations, all of those things raise a host of very challenging jurisdictional and other legal questions.
19:00
So for example, without getting too far into the weeds on this, to take the example of Hockey Canada, the federal government was certainly being looked to for leadership on the issue.
19:12
But there are two, well, perhaps three problems with that.
19:15
One is it's far from clear really what the legislative authority of Parliament is over sport, which is largely a provincial activity.
19:25
Second of all, usually the most important regulatory device that a government has is money.
19:31
And in the case of Hockey Canada, the federal financial contribution to the organization was a very small part of its budget.
21:50
What advice do you have for other sports governance bodies? That is, organizations are, that are not in crisis, don't expect to be in crisis, but want to ensure that they are squarely within best practices, and at the same time might get some resistance from their members because the board or others are trying to solve a problem that hasn't occurred.

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