Tricia Smith, left, attends a press conference at the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 29, 2007. A Vancouver-based lawyer and former Olympic rower, Smith formally took over as president of the Canadian Olympic Committee in late November.Mike Ridewood
When the person everyone wanted to hear arrived at the lectern in a Toronto ballroom last month, the introduction was perfunctory.
"Hi, I'm Tricia Smith, president of the Canadian Olympic Committee," she said, before quickly getting down to business.
It was an unremarkable opening, devoid of fanfare, which was precisely the point.
A Vancouver-based lawyer and former Olympic rower, Smith formally took over from the more bombastic Marcel Aubut in late November and, to some present at the December session for "mission staff" – several hundred coaches, sports administrators and COC types – the contrast in style and tone was striking.
"Marcel would have at least had a warm-up speaker to introduce him," one participant said wryly.
In the weeks since a September sexual-harassment complaint that prompted the 68-year-old Aubut to resign and shook the COC to its core, Smith has taken up the task of reforming the organization, a dominant player in the Canadian amateur-sport landscape.
She has promised to modernize governance, harassment policy and the administrative structure based on the recommendations of a third-party investigation that revealed "a majority" of the more than 100 people interviewed witnessed or experienced sexual or personal harassment.
People inside and outside the organization note a perceptible shift in approach, but the COC's institutional culture may prove harder to change.
Despite Smith's apologies and assurances of greater transparency during last fall's probe, interviews with current and former employees and officials from other amateur sports bodies paint a portrait of a resolutely clubby organization with a high self-regard and a penchant for opacity.
"That's pretty typical of the Olympic culture internationally," former Olympic champion swimmer Mark Tewksbury said. "What's interesting is there are signs that's changing [at the IOC level], so maybe Canada has a chance to be a bit of a leader."
The question on many lips is just how far Smith will go.
But as Swimming Canada CEO Ahmed El-Awadi pointed out, while the COC is "bringing in experts, doing the right things and working hard at it, it's not an easy process."
Throughout Aubut's tenure – he was elected president in 2009 – the organization has also become known for its fast-churning cast of employees. Everyone has heard the expression "work hard, play harder." More than one person describes the COC as "work hard, work harder."
"The irony here is that from an outward-facing standpoint, the COC has probably never been better. It's more open to athletes, it's more professional, it provides more services and support," said Tewksbury, the COC's chef de mission at the 2012 London Olympics. "But behind closed doors, the governance has clearly been problematic. … I would hope that the board would take a hard look at itself. This is not just staff responsibility."
Bruce Kidd, a former Olympic runner and principal of the University of Toronto Scarborough, wondered why "nobody has walked away from that executive and that board."
"I'm not sure they quite get the severity of this. They don't necessarily see it as a giant challenge of governance," said Kidd, who is an honorary member of the COC and has served on committees at the IOC level. He added that the COC has a systemic problem, and that incremental changes will not suffice. "There is going to have to be structural change," he said.
The COC is not known for introspection and critical self-examination.
Unless personnel moves are forthcoming, and there are no indications they are, the people Smith is counting on to help repair the organization will largely be those who were in place during the Aubut era, including CEO Chris Overholt.
That rankles many in the sporting community.
A former Olympian and COC employee, who did not wish to be identified because her present employer has commercial ties to the organization, said it's unlikely the culture will change until it's led by people who are not currently part of the system.
It is an oft-repeated view.
This week did see three staff departures – including chief sport officer Caroline Assalian – but the board and remaining members of the senior executive team are otherwise unchanged.
The COC has yet to confirm Assalian's exit officially or provide the reasons for it.
Such circumspection extends to the organization's business dealings. It does not routinely publish detailed financial statements, and the Canadian Olympic Foundation, the COC's charitable arm, has a C- grade from Charity Intelligence Canada, which tracks financial reporting.
It's possible to find critical voices within the COC, which held a three-day staff retreat this week, but many employees are reluctant to discuss the situation with outsiders. When The Globe and Mail left a phone message for one staffer this week, it was returned by the public-relations department.
The same is broadly true of national sport organizations and other amateur sport bodies, which, despite the natural tension in the milieu – the COC and the federally funded Sport Canada are de facto competitors and have long had a fractious relationship – seem less than keen to take on the Olympic committee publicly.
El-Awadi, who strongly supports Smith's efforts, offered an explanation for the relative silence.
"I don't know that anyone is avoiding talking about it. It's more that a lot of what has happened is internal to the COC and people don't have the full picture, and nor should they," he said.
Still, it's clear most amateur sports organizations are not keen to bite the hand that feeds them. The federal government, via Sport Canada and Own the Podium, is the biggest funder of amateur sport in Canada, but the COC's contributions are far from negligible.
Like other funding bodies, the COC also attaches strings to most of its contributions, which can only be used for narrowly targeted purposes.
Under Aubut, the COC was a prodigious fundraising apparatus, and although it has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years and says 60 per cent of its expenditures are for sport, it is not always clear exactly where the money is going. (The COC's total spending in 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, was about $50.8-million; total receipts were $63.4-million.)
The COC's public disclosures do not provide a detailed breakdown of what each national association receives, but reports from some federations suggest the amounts can vary from almost nothing to millions in a given Olympic year.
According to financial reporting from Own the Podium, which is a partner with the COC in the Canadian Sports Institutes, the COC contributed about $3-million to OTP-supported programs and $4.7-million directly to national sports organizations and the institutes in 2014-15.
A COC spokesman said it can be misleading to consider funding on an annual basis, as both fundraising and expenditures are typically planned over a four-year Olympic interval. He also confirmed the COC, which is a private non-profit corporation, does not typically release sport-by-sport spending.
Sources said the COC also provides management expertise to federations through a sponsorship arrangement with a global consultancy.
The COC also controls much of the national corporate sponsorship money that flows to amateur sports in Canada – an Aubut innovation – and uses its funds to give promotional assistance, hold athlete events and finance things such as performance-related studies.
A board member at an amateur sports federation, who is not authorized to speak publicly on his organization's behalf, said the COC has considerable influence in raising or lowering a sport's profile, and that many sport associations are willing to bow to the national body's wishes because of the economic might created under Aubut.
The national organizations provide a steady supply of members for the COC board and help elect its leaders and, in turn, depend on the COC for support.
Smith, who ran against Aubut under a reform banner in 2009, first became involved with the COC in 1980, and has held roles in Rowing Canada and the international rowing federation.
Although she is universally respected, it's hard to argue that she comes to the job as an outsider.
Smith declined interview requests through a spokesman this week, but the platform document she circulated to voters before last November's election sketches out her ambitions.
"I will re-establish the ethics and values of the COC through inclusive and collaborative leadership built on a foundation of respect and integrity," the document said, promising that "the COC will be a world leader in good governance."
It also pledged to establish "a culture of inclusivity, collaboration and unified focus, a culture that will renew the COC's place of honour among its partners."
Few people doubt Smith's sincerity or integrity.
As Tewksbury, who supports the new president, indicated, she is taking the reins at a propitious time.
The current IOC president, Thomas Bach, has signalled a desire to make the international body – long synonymous with corruption and entitlement – more transparent and upright.
Perhaps that will even include tolerating overt dissent.
As an athlete representative to the IOC board, Tewksbury famously demanded the resignation of then-president Juan Antonio Samaranch in 1999. His reward for speaking up, he says, was to be frozen out of the Olympic family for a decade.
If the COC is ripe for change, there is also a hope that it will ripple beyond the organization's walls and through the main national sporting bodies.
"I'll bet there are 52 boards asking the same question: What are we doing, and how can we be better?" El-Awadi said. "I'm not sure the people who have come forward in the harassment investigation have fully understood the impact they've had. It's going to affect the landscape across the country. … We need to have uncomfortable discussions, including at the COC, but, the more we have them, the more comfortable they get."
With reports from Allan Maki in Calgary