Federal, provincial sports ministers to discuss safe sport solutions at meetings in P.E.I.

Canada's sport minister is set to meet with provincial and territorial counterparts this weekend at the Canada Games in Charlottetown, P.E.I., to address what she has called a "crisis" in safe sport.

Pascal St-Onge has said that protecting athletes participating at all levels of Canadian sport can only be achieved if the provinces are fully on board.

"I'm using all my leadership to make sure that provinces and territories equip themselves with proper prevention tools and also with proper independent mechanisms (to investigate abuse)," St-Onge said recently. "Sport is under the provinces and territories responsibilities, what the federal government does is actually fund the national teams that represent us on the international stage."

The meetings come just days after another sports coach was charged with a sexual offence against a child. Ottawa police announced Wednesday that Benjamin Cooper, a 27-year-old gymnastics coach, faces dozens of sexual offences against seven different girls dating back to 2014.

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The week before, police in Alberta announced child pornography charges against a 58-year-old volunteer basketball coach.

An ongoing CBC News and Sports investigation has revealed close to 300 coaches — mostly at the local level — have been convicted of a sexual offences against a minor under their care since 1998, across multiple sports, provinces and jurisdictions.

"The world of sport in general is still in crisis because we are still hearing about the stories of abuse and maltreatment and I don't think it's the end of it," St-Onge told CBC.

Last year, Ottawa committed $16 million over the next three years for the creation and operation of the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner (OSIC), an independent office to investigate athlete complaints. All federally funded sport organizations are required to sign on to by this April or risk losing federal funding.

The office currently serves about 4,000 federally funded elite athletes who represent Canada internationally.

St-Onge has pushed the provinces to either join OSIC or create their own complaint mechanism. The goal is to have something that is accessible to all athletes — from potential Olympians down to the hundreds of thousands of children competing at the local level.

"I'm going to ask my counterparts where they're at in doing this because it should be a priority all across the country. As we've witnessed, there's a huge gap in the system. It needs to be closed as soon as possible," St-Onge said.

Nova Scotia is the lone province to sign on to OSIC. Quebec and New Brunswick have created their own complaint mechanisms. Manitoba and Saskatchewan have taken some steps, including creating their own safe sport helplines.