Skate Canada's Disgraceful Boycott: Punishing Alberta for Protecting Women and Children

Skate Canada's Disgraceful Boycott: Punishing Alberta for Protecting Women and Children

December 17th, 2025

by: Jason LaFace

In a move that can only be described as petty and ideologically driven, Skate Canada has announced it will no longer host national or international events in Alberta. Why? Because our province dares to stand up for fairness and safety in women's sports through the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act. This legislation ensures that female divisions in amateur sports are reserved for biological females, protecting girls and women from unfair competition. Premier Danielle Smith rightly called this decision "disgraceful," and she's spot on.

Skate Canada claims this is about maintaining "national standards for safe and inclusive sport." Inclusive? Safe? Let's talk about real safety in figure skating. Over the years, the sport has been plagued by serious sexual abuse scandals involving coaches preying on young skaters—many of them teenagers.

Take Richard Gauthier, a high-profile pairs coach inducted into Skate Canada's Hall of Fame, who was convicted of sexual assault and gross indecency against a teenage male skater he coached in the 1980s. Or Matthew Power, a former Skate Canada coach found guilty on eight counts, including sexual assault, child luring, and sexual interference against two teenage skaters under his guidance. These are not isolated incidents; figure skating, like many sports, has seen coaches convicted of horrific crimes against minors.

Matthew Power

List of charges against both coaches

Where was Skate Canada's outrage then? Did they boycott provinces or overhaul their systems with the same fervor? No. Instead, they've prioritized an ideology that pushes gender self-identification over biological reality, even as their own history is marred by failures to protect vulnerable young athletes from actual predators—adult men abusing positions of power.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Skate Canada lectures Alberta about "safety" while ignoring the real threats that have occurred within their sport. Alberta's law isn't about exclusion; it's about common sense. Biological males have inherent physical advantages in many sports, and allowing them into female categories undermines fairness for women and girls who've worked tirelessly to compete.

It's heartbreaking that Alberta has had to pass legislation like this to safeguard children. In an ideal world, adults wouldn't push the sexualization of kids or blur lines that confuse and endanger them. Gender ideology, with its insistence on treating puberty as optional and biology as fluid, introduces complexities that belong in adult discussions—not youth sports. Protecting children's spaces from premature adult themes shouldn't be controversial.

If transgender individuals want to compete—and they absolutely should have opportunities—they can lobby for open categories or their own divisions. That's true inclusion: everyone gets to play, but fairly, without erasing women's hard-won rights.

Skate Canada's boycott hurts Alberta skaters and families who love the sport, all to virtue-signal against a province prioritizing biology and child protection. This isn't progressive; it's punitive. Alberta stands firm for women, girls, and common decency. Skate Canada should apologize and reverse this nonsense. Our rinks are world-class—it's their loss.