Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve Indig at Sport Law. Leave me a message. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Hey, Steve, it's Dina. You aren't going to believe what just came across my desk. We need to chat. Give me a call.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Welcome to the latest episode of Sportopia. We're so excited to share our knowledge and have conversations about healthy human sport today.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: We're so pleased to have Oliver Schofield join us. Oliver is an Olympian who competed during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 in the sport of field hockey. Oliver is currently the Executive director of Racing to Zero, whose mission is to equip sports board organizations of all sizes with the tools and knowledge necessary to proactively tackle climate change. Before we get to that, Oliver, Steve, what's coming across your desk this week?
[00:01:14] Speaker C: I don't want to talk about bylaws anymore.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: So don't talk about bylaws.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: I'm not going to talk about bylaws right now. I will talk about, you know, the work that I do. It seems like it comes in waves. And I really established my career back in 2003 on privacy legislation. And there have been several other trends in the last 20 something years. And of course, we're very heavily in the safe sport trend right now and area of work where we're spending a lot of time. And this morning I spent my morning acting as a screening review officer on behalf of a national sport organization, so trying to decide what criminal convictions, if any, allow people to continue to coach. So it's a very challenging area. It's a one which I think requires experience and skill sets to look at the charges, try and comprehend what the charge was in the sanction, and then try and translate that into whether or not an individual is eligible to be a coach or other role within sport. So it's something that I've been working on over 20 years and continually try to learn about what's appropriate, what's not appropriate, and, you know, in shorter form, what's okay, what's not okay.
Dina, what's happening with you?
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Well, I don't want to talk about grief because my grief calendar is filling up. It turns out there is quite a bit of grief in the world of elite sport. And so my grief cup runneth over these days. But I want to actually talk about something proactive that is equally near and dear to my heart. And for our listeners, I'm just showing one of our favorite tools at Sport law is this psychometric tool called the Nova profile. And I was Just called by a member of the board who wants to invest in the leadership capacity of their leader. And so being able to acknowledge that leadership is a learned skill, you're not just born being a leader or not.
And today, in light of the complexity of what it means to be a really good leader, how mature am I in my leadership skills? So, for instance, you know, Steve and Oliver, if you, if you can. If we can start to see leadership as a skill like communication, like presence, I think, and maybe as an athlete, you know, Oliver, you learn and grow right, as an athlete to be able to enhance our skills. So then we can afford a lot more humility and a lot more grace when people aren't lead, you know, leading in a sense that they're, you know, they're knocking it out of the park all the time. So my favorite question to ask people is, well, what does an effective leader look like to you? And out of that, we tease competencies around communication, around presence, around listening, around confidence, around collaboration, around being able to take charge and be decisive, around details and paying attention to the I's and the t's. So as we round out our competencies, we can start to notice where is this leader knocking it out of the park and where do they need more attention? And that's our role as leadership coaches. So I'm really excited that more and more clients are coming to us and asking for support mechanisms to a support the leader, but then also to support the culture, because it's so easy to point fingers and tell people, you're not meeting my needs. Much harder for people to first aid, know what their needs are, and then being able to be part of the solution. Right. And that's what we're stepping into. I think, as really smart and compassionate and skillful leaders, we need to do two things. We need to know ourselves and then we need to be vulnerable to let people know that we're not perfect, but we care and we want to do the work. So that's a little bit about what's coming across my desk. So, Oliver, welcome. We're going to learn all about you, but before we do, what's coming across your desk?
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Firstly, thank you so much for having me and for sharing some very interesting stuff coming across both of your desks.
This comes at a really nice time. So next week as we're recording this, I guess maybe not once this comes out, next week is Green Sports Day. And so racing to zero and myself, we've been a part of the organizing coalition for it for the last couple of years. And so we're in full swing, dotting the I's, crossing the T's for all of the last minute stuff for next week. And it's really exciting this year because Green sports day is October 6th. For those who might not know, it's a day focused on mobilizing and engaging the wider community in driving climate action in sports.
This year it falls on a Sunday. So instead of creating all this stuff on a Sunday, we've decided to do a week long event. So all of next week, October 2nd through the 6th, we have, or, sorry, 1st through the 6th, we have some incredible webinars with speakers across the sporting community across the country.
Yeah, really diving deep into some of these core issues that we're experiencing as well as just raising awareness and, and hopefully creating some more change. So that's, that's what's, what's keeping me busy nowadays.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: I love that. Steve, did you know about Green Sport Day?
[00:06:46] Speaker C: I did not. And that's why I'm excited to hear from Oliver today is of course Dina knows this Oliver. We always kind of joke with each other that she's at 30,000ft and I'm at 3ft and we meet in the middle. So when we talk about climate change and sport, what.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe elaborate a little bit more. Tell us a little bit more about this mission and some of the background of racing to zero. I know our listeners would love to learn more about this athlete led organization whose mission is really about galvanizing people's relationship with the planet and being proactive, not just being a bystander, but an active participant in this mission.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we so racing to zero. We're a team of Canadian Olympians and Paralympians who have, you know, spent our lives competing at the high, well, working up to the highest level and specifically through the Canadian sports system. So we have all experienced the challenges that come along with that and specifically the challenges that are more recently coming along with the changing climate.
So we kind of all came to the same realization separately and then, and then joined forces for this mission. But you know, really noticing the effect that a change in climate was having on our competitions on the, you know, from really high temperatures while we're competing through to poor air quality. You know, lots of things that you may be hearing in the news nowadays, but then also realizing the impact that us competing was having on that climate.
It really is a two way relationship.
You know, the waste produced, the travel to get to these large international events. So the group of us, we kind of came to this realization and then luckily found each other. And racing to zero was born through exactly that. Just trying to, trying to see what we could do to improve sustainability initiatives. And it started at my co founder Shay's local track and field club. And then as we worked with them and we grew, we realized there was this even greater need for this, especially at the kind of that grassroots provincial, national level as opposed to kind of the professional sporting landscape. So, yeah, over the past few years we've, we've managed to grow. We've expanded our services to include education, carbon, greenhouse gas measuring, strategic planning, and not only for track and field, but across any sport and not only in that one place in Calgary, but now anywhere across the country and even internationally too. So just seeing the growth that we've had over the past couple of years has been really inspiring to, you know, be able to work with so many incredible organizations and other athletes who are, who are engaging in this and interested in it.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: You mentioned you've been in operations for a couple of years now. So Oliver, what are some of the wins? What are some of the things that are happening within the sport sports sector that you can hopefully share with us?
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Yeah, we've seen a growth. So every year we see more and more organizations approaching us or engaging on this topic.
There are challenges that come with sports in Canada specifically. Funding seems to be the biggest issue. Funding or resourcing just there's so many competing priorities. And so a big win for us is just seeing the number of different organizations who are starting to care about this, prioritize this and engage us on it. So we've had the pleasure of working with several NSOs and PSOs, as I've mentioned, as well as our work with Green Sports Day, just really driving the conversation forward on a much bigger scale.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: I was going to, I'm going to ask you another question, but it got me thinking about, I don't know if you saw Netflix.
So Netflix has come out and saying that they're making a commitment to sustainability and wanting to pay attention to the amount of emissions that is created as a result of their productions. So, and it got me thinking about, you know, hosting events just like the Paralympics and Olympics or World Championships and when you have a giant in the streaming industry that's is wanting to be a steward for sport and making a very public commitment to reducing emissions. I'm wondering, do you think it's transactional? Like, what do you think their motivation is, Oliver, in them declaring their commitment to becoming environmental stewards?
[00:11:30] Speaker A: That's A really good question. I actually hadn't read that one. But that's not uncommon nowadays. We're seeing more and more large, large scale companies, you know, start to claim carbon neutrality or start to set, you know, some serious targets towards net zero, which is, you know, maybe not even necessarily the right term nowadays. But motivations aside, it is still a really nice thing to see that we're moving towards this, where this is becoming commonplace across multiple, many, many industries and you know, other industries are maybe leading the way. Sport typically is what we found slightly slower on a lot of this, these issues. And so we're seeing other, other industries get there. Sports not too far behind them nowadays.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really interesting, Steve and Oliver. It seems to me that when I look at social change, it often comes from the people who are like sweating, who are on the ground. So actors and athletes are activists. Right. Look at that, Triple A now. Right. It does come from the people who are the boots on the ground, who are really motivated, galvanized to do what's right. So I join you there. I'm wondering what are some of the easy steps that people can take, either the club, the provincial, national, territorial level to help reduce their impact. So you could spend a little bit of time there because I know so for so many people it's, it's overwhelming. Where do we start? We want to make a difference, but amongst all the other things that we have to attend to, it, it can feel overwhelming. So maybe walk us through. What are, what are the ways in which you really support people who want to do right by. By the planet?
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I'll start by prefacing with this, this with the fact that, you know, every organization is going to be slightly different, every sport is going to be slightly different. And so there's not really one solution that fits all. But as a general theme, you know, the way that we've set up the services that we provide to help organizations is like a step by step way to get you through. From I know nothing to now, I'm actively taking and executing sustainability initiatives. So we can start with kind of an education side of things. Very beginning. You can educate your internal team members and then you're also your athletes, the people signed onto your club to play. And so this is education both in terms of why is this important, you know, learning how climate change is affecting sports, how we're not going to have Winter Olympics in the next 10, 20 years, whatever that timeline may be if we don't make change, but then also educating on what are the easy ways that we can affect change now on the ground? You know, without going to that higher systems change level.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Before you go on, can you give us a for instance, what would be an example of maybe the simple yet important things that people can do? Right, boots on the ground.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think it varies across level as well. If we're thinking of grassroots sports, we're thinking of clubs. Often we don't, those clubs don't own facilities. So then really you're renting from a municipality, from whoever. So your bulk of your emissions come from your transportation of your athletes getting to your practices, to your games. So carpooling is a prime example of somehow of a way in which you can take half the amount of cars off the road that are directly attributable to your practices. So carpooling is one. If we can encourage public transit, if you can get even getting into the depths of planning your calendar, your schedule to reduce back and forth trips, that's a way that you're really starting to think differently as opposed to just saying oh yeah, please, if you can carpool, but then not following up on, on any of those actions as you get higher up, then you get more into the provincial, national level. How can you affect all those clubs beneath you as well, all those members beneath you? So you know, that's one example of on the ground. This kind of leads into our next service which is measuring greenhouse gas emissions. And I think a really nice first step, especially for that kind of PSO NSO level is understanding where you're at, understanding actually how many, how many carbon emissions you are producing each year, each season, each event depends on again, if you're hosting, if you put on events, or if you just have a high performance team. But measuring those greenhouse gas emissions gives you a baseline to improve upon b your major impact areas. So seeing exactly where those emissions are coming from, which is going to give you an idea of where to improve. And then step three is this kind of strategic planning, really thinking about how to, how to fix that. So taking those high impact areas and thinking how can we strategically reduce, reduce those emissions Both from a more holistic corporate strategy level to if you're hosting an event, you know, what's your waste management, what's your waste diversion? So not only are you reducing waste, but are you maximizing the amount of waste produced, maximizing the amount that gets into proper recycling facilities, for example, that's kind of the way that we have it set up. Any of those services can be done on their own. But when you can put them all together, you're creating a, you know, a better pathway for success.
[00:17:20] Speaker C: It reminds me, Dina, of values in some way or mission and vision. Oliver. So I really appreciate everything you just said and I understand that. I wonder if you can share some examples of where clubs or PSOs or NSOs have made that a reality. I mean, I draft policy after policy and implementing the policy to have people comply with the policy is the hard part. So I wonder if you could share some bumps in the road or some true stories as to where you've been successful or maybe also had bumps in the road.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah, we, so we helped, we worked with Curling Canada a few years ago and we did that kind of whole holistic pathway and it was, it was incredible because there was so much buy into it. And we established a baseline for their event hosting that they host every year. Coming out of that, we developed a sustainability strategy. You know, there was then subsequent leadership change and the bumps in the road come from the momentum that we had to, you know, create this to then operationalizing it and executing it. And it's still, it's still in there.
You know, I'm not throwing curling under the bus here. It's still in their priority or in their list of things to do. Just as other competing priorities come in, that's what happens. And so they are working on it internally.
But, you know, you can hit road bumps like that and it's still, it's trying to push through. You know, we're working with another NSO right now who is staying confidential for the time being. But they, you know, we're helping incorporate sustainability into event hosting policies and this really sets them up for success for the years to come. Because now it's every, it's like what you just said. You, when you can get into that policy level, you are then creating a system that's always going to follow these, you know, these recommendations or these initiatives.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: I really appreciate that. It, it's like expecting athletes to succeed when they don't have a coach. And I know when we were collaborating on your strategic plan for Racing to Zero, we. We came up with this language of climate coaches, you know, that we have your back as people who work and who toiled and had to be, you know, who were vulnerable to the shifting climate. This idea that Racing to Zero is here from beginning, middle and end and in an ongoing way to help support your commitments to the climate. So it's really helpful to know that there are people like you who take this very seriously. But Also you have legitimacy because you know of the nature of your relationship with land. Right. It's not like a nice thing to do. We can't compete and continue to compete unless we start to take this very seriously. So I really appreciate that. I know we're going to be winding down our time and I was just inspired by this idea of it's going to take a global connected system to be able to reduce this. We can't just keep doing it in isolation. And I wonder if you could get in front of the big blue chip companies and encourage them to become climate champions and join forces with Racing to zero.
What would be your elevator pitch, Oliver?
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I think as athletes we've lived through this world. I think we fully, well, we understand maybe more than others the power that sport has to create change in anything. Take any social issue, sport is an incredible driver of change. And so if you're looking at, if we're speaking with a big company in any industry, using sport to drive change in whatever issue you're working on can have that power. And so climate change is that next big issue that I think that we're seeing.
And so the elevator pitch really is, you know, let's engage on, on climate change through sports. We're all experiencing the same impact. Where it's on, it's being seen at a global level. You know, major events are getting moved around, canceled, rescheduled, whatever it may be. Athletes are now speaking out more about this or more than ever about this. You know, let's use this to create positive narrative and positive change as opposed to just letting it be and then working in silos in per industry.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Sign us up.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Hey Steve, I'm always laughing about silo. The silo comments. Oliver, if I'm a club or PSO or NSO and I wanted to reach out to you, how do I do that? What would that intake look like? How do, how do we get more, more sport organizations involved?
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Great question. So you can check us out on our website, racing2.0ca. There's a contact form on there, you can you know, fill that out with whatever you want or info at. Racing 2.0ca will come to our general email which, which I have access to the intake process really is. We work with you hand in hand to get exactly what you need. This, the Canadian sport industry is just too early on to have any form of set standardized process here. So we work with you. Whatever level you're at, wherever, wherever you are at, knowledge wise in terms of sustainability will help you to understand what you need and then we'll help you get there to really create that positive impact that we're talking about.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I love this. It's, it's like from laggards to leaders. I love that you're reframing that sport's been maybe a little bit, you know, behind really taking a leadership role in doing our part. And we're not surprised given the structure of a world sport. But I love the energy of we are going to turn, we're going to turn this around and move from laggards to leaders. So thank you for this inspiring call, Oliver, and to you and your colleagues at Racing to Zero, thank you for your leadership and your care and commitment. It's really inspiring. In the episode notes below, you'll find some sports sport law blogs where you can find more information related to our conversation today. Thank you so much to our listeners. We're so grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you as we all look to elevate sport.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: As always to have your say in Sportopia, email us @helloportlaw CA or on social media @sportlawca to let us know what you want to hear about next. Stay tuned for our next episode. Thanks, Oliver. Thanks, Dina.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Be well.
