Letter to City of Ottawa - Laila Gibbons

Laila Gibbons
Portfolio Manager
City of Ottawa
City Wide Allocations
101 Centrepointe Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K2G 5K7

Re: Ice Booking Policy

Dear Laila,

I’m writing to follow up on your interest in changing the City of Ottawa policy with regard to ice booking. I have discussed this issue with my team members and a group of early leaders have self-identified through the Prescott Hockey Group and expressed their interest in contributing some thoughts. Last week, we met by teleconference to discuss how we could make the most meaningful contribution and to respond to your interest in policy engagement.

The group has a number of important considerations that we wished to share with you:

We did read on the City of Ottawa web page that outlines Equity Diversity Policy. “It is City policy to foster an environment that respects people's dignity, ideas and beliefs, thereby ensuring equity and diversity in employment and ensuring customers and others have access to City facilities, products, services, and grants as defined by human rights legislation. This policy prohibits discrimination in the workplace, in the provision of goods, services, and facilities to the public and the administration of contracts as defined by human rights legislation.

The two pieces of legislation cited on your page both prohibit age based discrimination: Ontario Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination on the basis of age and the Canadian Human Rights Act states that it is against the law to discriminate on the basis of age. The new policy is designed to discriminate based on age. That is the new policy has been designed to distribute ice time from long term ice lease holders who are in our age group and ensure youth will get premium ice times.

I can appreciate that the city needs to ensure that youth in our community have a an opportunity to recreate at an opportune time, but I also believe that the City of Ottawa is well served by encouraging adults to exercise and that Canada as a nation has encouraged people of all ages to maintain their fitness for health reasons and to focus on the fitness of youth at the expense of adults is an unfair and counter productive policy.

The City Council probably looks at how sport can best contribute to a diverse City and this merits a sustained effort that will benefit from on-going engagement between the City and leaders in the sport sector. There are many ways that our league presently contributes to diversity which your new policy will undermine. Our league is multi-racial and multi-ethnic. We have a mix of age groups and career accomplishments. I am a Métis person and we have had numerous Aboriginal people play in our league as full time players and as spares and we have always felt welcomed. In fact, when I was managing an Aboriginal training program for urban Aboriginal youth, I was able to secure placements for these students through the “Prescott Network” But mine is not the only minority group that plays in this league, as we have number of visible minority players that enjoy the atmosphere and camaraderie that our league provides. Our league, like the community it serves, is a melting pot and that is one of its great attractions. In fact, two of the key annual events that are tied to our league, an Italian lunch at the end for all teams, and a Chinese food supper provided by one of our team captains are greatly appreciated by all the players for their cultural qualities.

While policy progress on the advancement of youth involvement in sport in Ottawa is important as many of us are also parents, the city needs to ensure that advance is not made at the cost of “Diversity in Sport,” From our perspective, and our league has fifty members in the Ottawa region who are voters, it is very important that the City treats our group’s valued recreational and social opportunity in a fair and non discriminatory fashion. We have written this letter to ensure that our City of Ottawa and City Council develops an awareness of how the diversity in our league continues contributing to a diverse Ottawa through sport.

Before you change your policies’ on ice booking, we strongly encourage you to reach out beyond only parents of children in the Ottawa region in order to involve a diversity of views. This is both doable and cost effective given that we now enjoy the benefits of online technologies of co-operation that support the engagement of people across Ottawa.

As a group, we look forward to taking the next steps in this process, to increasing our understanding about diversity and sport, and to initiating a productive dialogue on Prescott Hockey League’s contribution to a diverse city and citizenry. If you have any questions I can be reached at (613) xxx xxxx.

With best wishes,

Randy Way

On behalf of the Prescott Hockey League and Team Captains