Bev Priestman, head coach of Canada Soccer's women's team, looks on during an international friendly match against Mexico at BMO Field on June 4, in Toronto.Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
In August, 2023, roughly a year before Canada’s women’s soccer team was enveloped in scandal after a staffer was caught using a drone at the Paris Olympics to watch an opponent’s practice, the top executive of the country’s national soccer organization received a complaint from a staff member about colleagues allegedly being directed to spy on competitors.
Jason deVos, who at the time was the interim general secretary of Canada Soccer, was told directly by a staff member that junior analysts with the national program were being instructed – sometimes against the analysts’ objections – to clandestinely observe opposing teams, materials reviewed by The Globe and Mail show.
In one instance, the materials show, Mr. deVos was told by the staffer that this instruction came from Jasmine Mander, who at the time was a coach and analyst with the women’s program.
The materials reviewed by The Globe show that the staffer told Mr. deVos that the analysts felt like they couldn’t say no. “They are given no choice,” the staffer told Mr. deVos, according to the materials.
The Globe is not identifying the source of the materials, who feared professional repercussions for speaking out about the alleged practice. In the materials reviewed by The Globe, there is no mention of the use of drones for such intelligence gathering.
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Documents released by FIFA after the drone spying allegations were made public in Paris showed that head coach Bev Priestman had discussed the issue of spying in an e-mail this past spring and that Canada Soccer believed that drone spying dated back to when John Herdman was head coach of the women’s team, a position he held until 2018.
Mr. deVos, who left Canada Soccer in January to become an assistant coach of Toronto FC, a professional soccer club, did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment. The Globe also sought comment from eight current board members of Canada Soccer who were also on the board at the time of the 2023 complaint. None responded.
In response to questions from The Globe about the 2023 complaint to Mr. deVos, a lawyer for Ms. Mander said: “The allegations made by others to you about Ms. Mander’s involvement in various attempts to obtain surveillance of opponents are not accurate.” The lawyer, Dean Crawford, said Ms. Mander is still employed by Canada Soccer and has been told by the organization not to discuss anything related to the scandal, which is the subject of an internal investigation.
Four other current and former staffers with Canada Soccer detailed in interviews with The Globe what they allege had become an accepted practice at the taxpayer-funded organization: The program dispatched staff to gather surveillance on competitors at closed-door practices and scrimmages for the purposes of gathering intelligence on their game plans. The Globe is not identifying the sources because they, too, feared professional repercussions for speaking out about the alleged practice.
Two of the sources showed The Globe text messages from colleagues asking them to locate the practice sites of Canada’s competitors while teams were staying in foreign locales; another source alleged they were asked by Ms. Mander but they refused; three sources said the need to gather such intelligence was aired in a meeting they attended.
A number of these instances took place in 2021 and 2022, which predated Mr. deVos’s time as the organization’s chief executive.
A spokesperson for Canada Soccer declined to comment on these allegations, citing a continuing investigation launched by the organization. “Canada Soccer will provide updates on this work, as they are available,” said the spokesperson, Paulo Senra.
Ms. Mander was one of three Canada Soccer officials sent home from the Paris Olympics in July, after French police tracked a drone hovering over the practice of the New Zealand women’s team. Operating the machine was a Canada Soccer analyst named Joey Lombardi, who was arrested, and later sent back to Canada with Ms. Mander, and later, Ms. Priestman.
FIFA, the sport’s governing body, docked six points from Canada, part of a punishment that included a $315,000 fine and one-year suspensions from the game for Ms. Priestman, Ms. Mander and Mr. Lombardi. (Ms. Priestman and Ms. Mander are still employed by Canada Soccer; Mr. Lombardi resigned from the organization this fall.)
In the aftermath of the incident, FIFA publicly released documentation it received from Canada Soccer about what the national organization knew about this tactic. E-mails released by FIFA showed that in March, Ms. Priestman wrote to a Canada Soccer human resources consultant, Mark Thompson, looking for advice on how to deal with a video specialist named Morgan Drew who refused to participate in what Mr. Drew characterized as “spying.”
“It’s something the analyst has always done and I know there is a whole operation on the men’s side with regards to it,” Ms. Priestman wrote in an e-mail dated March 20.
Ms. Priestman asked Mr. Thompson what she could do “from an HR stand point,” according to a copy of the e-mails the soccer federation provided to FIFA. That e-mail was forwarded to Canada Soccer’s chief operating officer, Mathieu Chamberland, the FIFA documents show. Mr. Chamberland declined to respond to a request for comment.
In July, Canada Soccer announced that it was launching an internal review into the matter headed by Toronto employment lawyer Sonia Regenbogen. The investigation is examining the program’s “historical culture of competitive ethics.”
Four former Canada Soccer staffers who spoke to The Globe said they were not contacted by the investigator.
The organization’s Code of Conduct requires employees to demonstrate “fair play, sport leadership and ethical conduct.” In 2023, the organization received $3.8-million in taxpayer funds.
The sport’s popularity in Canada has risen in step with the success of the country’s national teams. The women won gold at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. The men, who qualified for the World Cup in 2022, climbed to No. 38 in the latest FIFA world rankings – up from 122 a decade ago.