OPEN LETTER TO ROWING CANADA AVIRON (RCA)

February 14, 2026

To: Tracey Black (President) and Jeff Powell (CEO)Subject: Rowing Eligibility and Maltreatment of Female Rowers

Dear Tracey Black, Jeff Powell and RCA Leadership:

The International Consortium on Female Sport (ICFS; https://www.icfsport.org) strenuously objects to the RCA “inclusive” eligibility policy, which works to discourage and exclude female rowers from the sport they love.

Your current policy states: “At both recreational and competitive levels, an individual shall participate in the gender category in which they identify.”

This stance is horribly outdated and antithetical to the interests of female rowers in Canada. According to this policy, any man can claim to be a woman – without question or scrutiny - and compete against female rowers, thereby ensuring that men are free to snatch prizes and podium positions from the women in your sport. This makes no sense.

Men have a vast physical advantage over women in any sport requiring strength and endurance. Rowing is, with out a doubt, a sex-affected sport, which is why there are men’s and women’s categories. If the goal is to mix men with women in rowing, why have a women’s category at all?

We know (private correspondence) that there are female rowers in Canada who suffer mental distress under the current RCA policy, as they must endure the unfairness and psychological humiliation of having to compete against men who identify as women; to the point of exasperation.

For RCA to claim that your organization fosters “fairness, respect, equity and inclusion” for all rowers is false. Allowing men to dominate women in the women’s category is neither fair nor respectful. It creates unnecessary impediments to success and results in the opposite of “inclusion” by literally excluding female rowers from their rightful podium positions and placings.

Ironically, RCA’s special brand of “inclusiveness” results in a violation of the most recently adopted RCA “Safe Sport Policy” in the most obvious of ways. In section seventeen, athlete “maltreatment” is described as: Any volitional act by an individual [e.g. a man deciding to compete against a woman] that results in harm or the potential for physical or psychological harm to another Individual [e.g. the resulting psychological angst of any female competitor due to obvious unfairness].

The RCA leadership seems blind to the fact that your “inclusion-of-men-in-women’s-rowing policy” is “Psychological Maltreatment” of female rowers at the organizational level. Here is how your RCA “Safe Sport” document defines “Psychological Maltreatment:” Any pattern or single serious incident of deliberate conduct that has the potential to be harmful to the psychological well-being of an Individual.

As leaders of RCA, you might object by saying: “No! By adopting our “inclusion” policy in no way did we intend to cause Psychological Maltreatment amongst female rowers across Canada!

But your “Safe Sport” position has an answer for that objection: Psychological Maltreatment is determined by the objective behaviour, and not whether harm is intended or results from the behaviour. In other words, irrespective of intent, the fact that the RCA “Trans Inclusion Policy” is causing mental anxiety and depression in your female rowers makes your organization guilty of psychological maltreatment of the entire female class.

When we pointed out these obvious contradictions one of your female rowers lately, she expressed her feelings of defeat and helplessness as follows:

I've read through the Safe Sport policy many times, and fear that it'd be weaponized against me if I complained about men in my sport/change room. A man's gender identity always trumps a woman's in this topsy turvy world. I can argue [many personal things], but that will be dismissed because a man with a gender identity would be upset.

The diminishment of a female rower’s sense of personal empowerment described above demonstrates that the true outcome of RCA policies is to create a situation that is in no way “equitable” between male and female rowers.

As a collective of women’s groups from 10 countries whose specific mandate is to advocate for the preservation of the female-only sports category it behooves us to object to the RCA policy contradictions and blatant disregard for the physical and psychological well-being of the women in your organization.

We recommend that female rowers in the RCA would be far better served by the adoption of the British Rowing eligibility policy; whereby only those born female are eligible for women’s rowing and all other competitors can be fully included in the “open” category. In this way, nobody with male competitive advantage is permitted to undermine the fairness and safety of female rowers in Canada.

Given that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is now poised to undertake a comprehensive revamping of its own eligibility stances across all sports in time for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, we believe it is in the best interest of RCA and its membership to get out ahead of these developments for the betterment of all rowers across Canada.

Please consider.

Yours in the service of safety and fairness for female athletes,

The Founding Members of ICFS

Email: hello@ICFSport.org

https://www.icfsport.org/

OPEN LETTER TO ROWING CANADA AVIRON (RCA)