SINS Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE STUDY OF SPORT IN CANADA OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

SOUS-COMITÉ SUR L'ÉTUDE DU SPORT AU CANADA DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Monday, December 1, 1997

• 1603

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Dennis J. Mills (Broadview—Greenwood, Lib.)): Colleagues, we have a vote at 5.30. We now have a quorum, so with your permission I'd like to ask if we can begin, if everybody feels comfortable. I'm not sure if Mr. Abbott is going to be here.

Welcome, Mr. Norman Moyer and Dan Smith, from the Department of Heritage, the people responsible for sport. What would the format be today, Mr. Moyer? You're going to address this document for a few minutes and then you'll leave lots of time for members to ask questions?

Mr. Norman Moyer (Assistant Deputy Minister, Citizenship and Canadian Culture, Department of Canadian Heritage): We can run through this document in about 20 or 25 minutes. We're quite happy to stop running through it, Mr. Chair, if people want clarification of any item as we go through.

The Chairman: Just notify the chair if you want to ask any questions as Mr. Moyer is going through it.

I'd like to acknowledge, too, that the special adviser to the Minister of Canadian Heritage on matters of sport, John Cannis, is here with us today. He will be participating with us in this committee to make sure that all the things we do here are brought to the minister's attention on a regular basis to make sure that we stay within the policy framework of the minister.

Nice to see you here, Elsie; welcome.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): Thank you very much, Chairman.

The Chairman: We'll have fun.

Okay, carry on.

[Translation]

Mr. Norman Moyer: Our objective today is to tell you about the structure of and the role played by our section within the Department of Canadian Heritage.

[English]

To do that we're going to take you into this deck, which gives you an outline of the major areas we work in. But before that the deck deals a little bit with the portrait of amateur sport in Canada and the role amateur sport plays in Canada.

• 1605

I'm the assistant deputy minister of Sport Canada, among other things. My title is “citizenship and Canadian identity”. Dan Smith is the director general of Sport Canada.

Once you've seen this general view, we'd be glad to deal with questions about the sport structure. I'm sure you will hit on questions today that we aren't fully prepared for or fully able to answer. We'll be glad to get back to you when we don't have specific answers to your questions.

The first slide of this deck paints some of the sense of how Canadians view sport. It's seen as a very significant element in the Canadian cultural scene: 90% of Canadians think it is. Almost 10 million Canadians participate regularly in organized sports, either in team or individual sports.

Some 87% of Canadians continue to support the idea that government should be involved in helping to fund amateur sport. Canadians want to see Canada performing well. They believe that our presence in high performance, competitive, international sport is an important way to project the country abroad.

You can see on the next slide something about how we have been helping to meet those expectations that Canadians have. Our performance at both winter and summer Olympic games has been improving considerably in terms of the number of medals that Canada has achieved.

We've seen that in the reaction of Canadians. We know as we enter into another pre-Olympic period that Canadians will be counting medals and comparing it to past years.

You can see it from the way other countries have reacted. The moment they come back with a year worse than the previous cycle, citizens pay a lot of attention. Canadians will be watching to see if we do as well, or less well, or better than we did before.

I'd like to ask Dan Smith to take you through how the sport system in Canada works a little bit, and then we'll come back to other slides.

Mr. Dan Smith (Director General, Sport Canada, Department of Canadian Heritage): I'll just explain a little bit about the amateur sport system in Canada, starting at the grassroots sport level. At the community or local level, it's organized by a number of local sports organizations, as well as the municipalities and local sports clubs. We also have sport existing in the school system, in elementary schools, high schools, and in post-secondary institutions as well. At this level, it's largely the municipal governments that are supporting sport and recreation programming.

Moving up to the provincial level of competition, we have at the provincial and territorial level a number of sport organizations that are affiliated with their national counterparts. In some provinces, there are provincial sports federations that regroup all of the individual sports. Also, the provincial and territorial governments are quite involved in providing financial support for sport programming at this level.

Moving up to the national level, we have the national sport organizations like the Canadian Hockey Association, Ringette Canada, Biathlon Canada, and others that are responsible for the organization of their sports across the country. We also have a number of multi-sport and service organizations, such as the Coaching Association of Canada, Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union and others.

We now have a new program of national sports centres. A network is being created, and we'll speak a little bit more about that a little bit later. It's at this level that the Government of Canada is largely involved in providing support for our national team programs and our competition internationally.

At the international level, there are international federations, such as the Fédération internationale de hockey sur glace and others who are responsible for overseeing sport at the international level. A number of governmental and non-governmental bodies are also involved.

Mr. Norman Moyer: There are two principal legal bases for our activity in the area of sport. There was the Fitness and Amateur Sport Act of 1961. The Government of Canada has been involved formally in sport since that time in a structured way. In 1996 the organization of sport was changed within the Government of Canada when the two functions of fitness and amateur sport were split. The Department of Health took over the fitness element of that mandate and the Department of Canadian Heritage was given the mandate for sport, particularly amateur sport.

• 1610

The mission of Sport Canada focuses on high-performance excellence. Our job is to support that part of the sport system that produces the most effective athletes to go abroad or compete at home internationally for Canada in the areas in which we have the highest probability of being successful. On top of that, we work broadly with the sport system in Canada to ensure that the sport system itself is healthy and can contribute to Canadian society on the many levels that sport does contribute.

Sport Canada's primary areas of focus are the ones outlined on the page entitled “Sport Canada Strategic Directions”.

First of all, we are trying to support the development and sustained performance of Canada's athletes themselves. We want to help athletes get the time they need to train, get the kind of coaching they need to succeed, and then actually go to competitions so they can get the experience they need to perform well in those situations. In doing that, we also provide support directly to coaches and the coaching system. For athletes to perform, we want to make sure they have the kind of coaching, training, facilities, and medical and other backup they need.

We also focus on the development of the sport system. We work with partners, such as the national sports organizations and multi-sports organizations. We work with the provincial level of government very intensively; there are important federal-provincial sport structures in the country that we work with consistently. And we work with people outside the specific system. We work with the media, with people who are just generally interested in sport, and with individuals.

It's also our responsibility to make sure that sport continues to fit into the broad mandate of the department and the government. So we are there, in my overview of sport, making sure that part of the work we do on Canadian identity reflects sport and that part of the work we do in sport reflects the issues of Canadian heritage and Canadian identity.

Finally, we want to make sure the sport system furthers the objectives of access and equity, which are so important in society as a whole. We have a special focus on women in sport. We have—and many of you would be familiar with it through the sports related to people with disabilities—an active para-Olympic program, and Canadians compete very well at para-Olympics. We also work with aboriginal peoples and focus on the opportunity that sports provide to the aboriginal communities to help those people participate more fully in society. And we're working on issues of visible minorities and other activities in sport.

The federal focus on sport is primarily, almost exclusively, on amateur sport. What we're trying to do is develop a policy framework in which sport can flourish. Obviously we provide financial assistance to sport—we are still a very important funder of sport—but more and more we are working with sporting organizations to find sources of financing elsewhere.

We do not have a direct responsibility for professional sport. Because the sport system has strong relationships, we will have relationships with the National Hockey League and the Canadian Football League, but they are not areas in which we have traditionally had a funding relationship or in which we work closely on a day-to-day basis.

The first level of partnership we have is with the national sporting organizations themselves. These are the groups that actually set out the way each of those sporting disciplines will be managed and developed in Canada. We relate to them intensely operationally, but the first challenge we had in that area was deciding how many of them we could afford to work with.

• 1615

One of the things we've done in the last few years is put in place the sport funding and accountability framework. This was a system to allow us to decide on which sports we would focus, and essentially we chose to focus based on the achievements of those sports in the international arena. So if they have been able to produce champions, if they are producing strong teams, if they are producing success, we're working with them. That has allowed us to go to the 38 national organizations we are supporting now, as opposed to 58 before we developed this strategy and focus.

We're also working with nine separate organizations that are servicing athletes with disabilities, and we have launched a domestic sport pilot that allows us to work with four other areas of sport that are not of themselves highly successful competitively internationally, either because they are in sports that don't have international competition in them or because they just haven't developed to that level.

In addition to those national sports organizations and our single focus, we work with multi-sport organizations that help the sporting system in several ways, such as coaching associations, to develop coaches and to help them in their training approaches. The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport has worked a lot on issues like harassment in sport and has been helping sport respond to those sorts of issues. The Sport Information Resource Centre is one of the best in the world in collecting information on the sport system and being able to document it. The Canadian Olympic Association is very visible in their role and are an important partner for us, as is the Canadian Paralympic Committee.

The program where we relate directly to athletes and support them directly is called the athlete assistance program. It's a program that provides a direct stipend to athletes, which is a non-taxable support for them to pay expenses they incur as part of their sporting activity. At the moment, about 900 athletes are supported in that way in about 45 sports. Those athletes, if they are at the very junior-card level, will get about $185 a month, and if they are athletes in the top rung of their sport in the world—we call them A-level carded athletes—they'll get about $810 a month.

We are also in the process of putting in place across the country a series of national sport centres. These are centres in which you can concentrate the kind of support that athletes need, whether it's in coaching, in training, in medical advice, or general personal advice on their careers as athletes. We work together now in a series of centres across the country, which is an expanding circle of centres. We have centres in Calgary, Victoria, Montreal and Winnipeg. We're getting close in the planning stages to having centres in Toronto, Vancouver, and one in the Atlantic region.

The ones that are in place are already providing services. If any of you saw the current issue of itMaclean's and the article in there on the Calgary sports centre, a national sports centre is a big part of that complex. Centres are being financially supported by this government, but also by other levels of government and local organizations.

A very key part of the sport network in Canada and the sport activities is the Canada Games. The Canada Games are the opportunity for Canadian athletes to get together in the summer and the winter every four years. There are actually Canada Games every two years, but they alternate winter and summer games, so for athletes the games come along in their discipline every four years.

We began having those games in 1967. They have been a very popular part of the Canadian sport system. For many athletes, they represent the apex of their career. For all athletes, they're an exciting opportunity to get involved in sport.

More than 40,000 young Canadians have participated in the Canada Games since 1967, and if you multiply that by the number of members of their families that get involved—and I was in Brandon, Manitoba, this summer, so I saw how many families turned out for this event—it's a remarkable gathering of people. It's also typical of the Canada Games that they occur in small centres. They're going to be in London, Ontario, in 2001, and that will be the biggest community the Canada Games have been held in for a long time. They work very well in that non-big-city environment. It is exciting to see the way they work.

• 1620

Anecdotally, in 1999 they are going to be in the smallest community they have ever been in when they go to Corner Brook. So we'll see both sides of the equation.

Sport Canada is also responsible for the support we give for the hosting of major international games. At the moment we are intensely involved in the organization of the Pan-American Games in Winnipeg in 1999. It's typical of international multi-sport games we get involved in supporting. We also get involved in world championship-level activities in single-sport events.

We are involved in international events with what we call a “strategic focus”. The North American Indigenous Games, which were held this past summer, are emerging as a very important way to help aboriginals get access to the sport system. We work with the Special Olympics. We are working with Les Jeux de la Francophonie.

Sport, like every other sector in the federal government support system, was heavily impacted on by program review. The federal government maintained its commitment to the sport system, but the amount of funding available for sport was reduced by about 30% to 35% over the four years of program spending cuts. For people in the sport system that has been a very noticeable and serious reduction in funding available to them.

As we were going through those reductions, the only area where we made an increase was in the stipend to athletes, which was increased. That increase was taken by actually reducing other areas' support even more.

Not all the results of that cutting within the sport system were bad, not by any means. There was at times within the sport system, as there was in several areas, a heavy layer of bureaucracy. That layer has been cut back in national sports organizations and indeed in governments across the country. Now that we are looking at perhaps reinvesting in the sport system, we are starting with a much leaner base.

This gives you a sense of where the money Sport Canada has goes. Our budget in the current year is about $47 million. This shows how it breaks down, with most of it going to national sports organizations and the rest of it across the functions I just outlined to you.

On the last two pages of this presentation we have just listed some of the other major studies of sport which have been done in the last few years. They are here to show a good base of work has been done in this area. Your researchers have probably already found all of them, but if you are interested in exploring any of those and what they might mean to you, rather than my taking you through them, I think I'll just let you look at them and if you have questions you would like to ask about them we would be glad to deal with them.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Moyer.

Madam Tremblay, we have had an informal question-and-answer period in the last three meetings, but out of respect to you for moving this motion, I wonder if today you would like to begin with the first question.

Would you like me to come back? Then I'll go right away to Mr. Denis Coderre.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Coderre (Bourassa, Lib.): I would like to start by saying, somewhat jokingly, that if you have any influence with the Olympic Games, I would like you to call up the hockey team and see that Mark Messier, Claude Lemieux and Mark Recchi get on Canada's team, and fill the remaining three spots. That might not be a bad idea.

Thank you very much for appearing before us today. A number of questions come to mind, and we would like to ask you to shed some light on certain matters.

First, athletes and coaches seem to be left to their own devices. With amounts ranging from $185 to $810, it seems we're almost talking about starvation wages. If we add social assistance benefits to this meagre wage, we could perhaps do something to help our athletes, but that is definitely not what we would like to do.

• 1625

Do you think the government should invest more in our athletes? Could you explain the criteria used in determining these amounts? Unfortunately, it too often seems that although the government—and since this is just a perception, it may be false— is very proud of its athletes that bring home medals, these athletes are given very little assistance during the long years they work to achieve that level of excellence. What criteria are used? Is the government doing enough or should it be doing more to avoid having its athletes go to other countries, to compete under a different flag, to take part in tennis or figure skating competitions, and then maintain that they were Canadian, but that they are competing on behalf of Great Britain, and so on?

Mr. Norman Moyer: I would like to ask Dan Smith to talk about the criteria, and then we will explore the second question a little, as far as we can.

[English]

Mr. Dan Smith: For the criteria for the athlete assistance program for the A-card and B-card athletes, those are based on international performances. If you're an athlete who ranks in the top four in the world, you qualify for an A card. If you rank in the top eight in the world, you qualify for a B card. Those top two levels are set based on international performance levels. For all of the remaining cards—that's C and development cards—there are a series of criteria that are established between the national sport organizations and Sport Canada. We're essentially trying to identify athletes with the potential to make the national teams and to excel at international levels, in order to eventually get them up to a B-card level. So those are the criteria that are established. And in team sports, there are certain cards that are put in place in order to support athletes at the junior team level or reserve team level.

As for the levels of funding that athletes receive, I think one thing that's important to note is that in addition to the direct carding support that athletes receive, there is a considerable amount of funding also provided to the national sport organizations to support the national team programming: to pay some of the expenses related to training camps; to offset tuition costs—athletes do get a supplement to offset their tuition expenses; and in many cases, national coaches' salaries that are paid through contributions from the federal government. So there are other means of providing support for athletes.

One of the things we've done recently was to carry out a survey on the status of the athletes. It was essentially an attempt to look at the socio-economic status of athletes, and to get some sense of their needs and the resources they had available to them. Essentially, one of the outcomes was that athletes have identified a need for approximately $24,000 a year in order to support their full living, training and general costs—and that's a sort of base level. On average right now, athletes are reporting that from all sources, they're generating about $20 million...sorry, $20,000—it'd be nice if it was $20 million—meaning there's a shortcoming of about $4,000, for which they rely on their parents or other sources.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Coderre: Yes, but that is quite close to the poverty line. I knew an athlete by the name of Philippe Chartrand, who was an incredible gymnast. He's now working for the Cirque du Soleil. There were definite problems, and after speaking to a number of athletes, the impression was that by using the lowest common denominator, it might be possible to provide an acceptable amount. However, when excellence is the objective, acceptable is not good enough. We must go much further in this regard. Should the government invest more by broadening the criteria and by being much more generous to both athletes and coaches? As I was saying before, we are losing our athletes and coaches to other countries.

Mr. Norman Moyer: The question is not so much whether the government should invest more; there's no doubt that with more money, we could do more. The athletes that may reach a certain level of performance in some sports have access to other private sector funding. And, increasingly, these athletes have sponsorships.

What we have to decide is whether we will help more athletes get into the system at the entry level and work their way through the system, or whether we will invest more in athletes who have already achieved a very high level of performance.

• 1630

We have discussed with athletes a possibility of giving all athletes the same amount, what we call a "flat count", but there was not much support for this idea from athletes. Athletes are very competitive, and believe in rewards for those who perform well. In their view, the best athletes should get more money.

Mr. Denis Coderre: Is Sport Canada not a source of funding for these 38 bodies and federations? When athletes are chosen for the Canadian Olympic Games, some provinces feel, sometimes rightly, that the selection is rather arbitrary. In some sports, people feel that Quebec or the Maritimes are at a disadvantage compared to the western provinces, or particularly Ontario. If your role is not merely to provide funding, should you not be ensuring that all provinces are fairly represented, provided, of course, the athletes are equally skilled? Should we not ensure that there are more athletes from parts of the country outside Ontario and the western provinces?

Mr. Norman Moyer: I will begin the answer and add a few missing pieces.

Our philosophy is to create equal opportunity and to help all regions acquire the equipment, the infrastructures and the coaches they need to train athletes properly. However, the selection of athletes for the Olympics must be based on performance; it cannot be an arbitrary choice or one determined by other factors. This is where we are trying to play a role at the moment. I know that people may tell us that the facilities available in Corner Brook, Deer Lake or other remote regions are not the same. That is a real problem.

Mr. Dan Smith: Our objective is to provide equal opportunity to all Canadian athletes through national centres, as we explained. If we could establish these centres in all parts of Canada, I think we would be offering equal opportunity to all athletes. However, as Mr. Moyer was saying, the most important thing is that the athletes on the Canadian team be our best.

The Chairman: Thank you. Ms. Tremblay.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski—Mitis, BQ): Thank you for the documents and for your presentation.

I would like to pursue this matter of criteria. I'm not very satisfied with the answer, because "once bitten, twice shy". As we know, it was decided that Mario Lemieux was not good enough to be on a junior hockey team. Pierre Harvey was turned down because, even though he was among the best Europeans, he did not come here to compete in one or two races that would have earned him the title of Canadian champion. Canada did not want to transfer his European performances, in which he was in the top ten.

We've seen figure skaters and ice dancers, including the Duchesnays, become French citizens, because they were not chosen to be on the team. We saw what happened to Sylvie Fréchette; even though she won a gold medal, if she did not go out West to train, she would have no chance of going to the Olympics.

I find this all quite astonishing. In looking at the athletes who went to the Francophonie games, I noticed that there were very few francophones. The artistic component was extremely important and there were no artists from Quebec at the time of the Francophonie games.

There are so many examples. Whether you like it or not, people have the impression that there is some type of systematic persecution going on here. People really feel that athletes from some provinces are at a disadvantage. I do not think the criteria are transparent enough, and I really wonder how you could assure us that they are generally followed. Should we not be asking completely neutral people in the general public, people of good faith, to look at the situation? Could you devise another system, or could this one be managed with greater transparency?

• 1635

What a great show we saw Saturday night. It was magnificent! What a good idea to take children from elsewhere and ask them to parade for all the young athletes selected for the hockey team. But there were some surprises about those chosen and those not chosen for the team. I am not in full agreement with the choices that were made. I think something could be done. Do you think you could improve the system?

Mr. Norman Moyer: We will not discuss in detail the techniques used to choose the members of our national hockey team, however, for the other sports, I think that Dan could give you a better description of the procedure used at the moment. The system is extremely transparent; however, if there are some ways of improving it, we are open to new ideas.

[English]

Mr. Dan Smith: It's quite a bit different between team sports and individual sports, so perhaps what I'll do is start with the individual sports.

For the selection of the Canadian Olympic team, at the beginning of the four-year cycle for the Olympic Games, the Canadian Olympic Association meets with each of the national sport organizations to establish a set of standards. Together, they come up with what the requirements will be. In general, what they're looking at is athletes who are capable of finishing in the top sixteen and top half when they go to the Olympic Games. That's a general guideline that is used, but each of the sports work with the Canadian Olympic Association to establish a set of qualification criteria.

In the case of World Cup events in free-style skiing, the selection of the team will culminate with the World Cup that will take place at Mont Tremblant during the first week of January. Based on the points that have been accumulated over the initial World Cup events in free-style skiing, they will name their team in the moguls event, in the aerials, and in each of the other events.

In some other disciplines, where there are relays involved, there's some ability for the coaches to also get involved in establishing standards. But again, at the outset of the cycle, they need to develop those standards and communicate them to the athletes. That's one of the requirements that we make now for the athlete assistance program. The athletes must be given that information in advance so that they know the standards that they have to meet.

The most difficult choices are in team sports, because here it's not necessarily a set of objective criteria, such as the best time in a race or best finish in a particular competition. You're trying to put together the best team possible, with all of the necessary ingredients—and we saw a little bit of that with the selection of the hockey team. Whether people agree or disagree, essentially what the general managers and the coaches were trying to do is put together a mix of athletes who they felt would bring the required skills, competencies and abilities needed when they come to face their international competition. That's the one that perhaps has the most degree of subjectivity involved in the team sports.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Since you raise the issue of the team that was chosen, I must say that I find it quite scandalous that the Olympic Games, which originally were for amateur athletes, are becoming corrupted, in a certain way, by people who earn millions of dollars a year. They stop playing for a few weeks to go and play hockey in the Olympics.

We have seen basketball, and soon there will be football and baseball. What are the Olympic Games all about? What kind of an idea is it to send these very highly paid professionals to the Olympics? I simply can't understand it. How did we get to this point? I tell you, in my view, this is about corruption. People want money, they want this and they want that, but money is always the underlying factor.

We know very well that one of these major Olympic events will overshadow many sports. The hockey competition will be seen as very important. We will have the ridiculous situation in which Jagr will be playing for his country, while someone else will be playing for Russia, even though they are both in the NHL. I find this a most unpleasant joke, something which, in my view, discredits the Olympic Games in a way.

• 1640

Mr. Norman Moyer: This trend towards professional sports being represented at the Olympic Games has happened mainly as a result of decisions made by the International Olympic Committee. There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding this trend.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: It is controversial, is it not?

Mr. Norman Moyer: In some cases. Sometimes, it's very popular. I think many Canadians were in favour of sending our best players. But Sport Canada cannot have any influence on this decision.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Could your representative on the Olympic committee not do something? Could there not be a referendum or a poll to determine what people want? Could we not ask them two questions at the same time? I made a slip. I meant to say a poll, not a referendum. I don't think this situation makes any sense. I think this is just being done in the name of money.

I come to my final question. In your presentation, I noticed that everything started at the community level, and I was wondering whether somewhere in your department there is an inventory that shows whether communities, generally speaking, have the necessary sport facilities in Canada. In this way, you can ensure that the centres you're establishing throughout the country could be supplied—if I may use that term—by people from the region. It is all very well to build a fine regional centre, but if young people do not have a rink, they will never make it to the centre.

Mr. Norman Moyer: Sport Canada has no such inventory. It is up to the local and provincial authorities to coordinate resources at the municipal level. Our contribution is the national centres.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: But there is some coordination with the provinces, since you are entering into the domain of sport, which is a provincial responsibility. So you set up your centres without ever speaking to the provinces?

Mr. Norman Moyer: We do speak to them, but they have their own data bases.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Fine, thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): I would like to explain a little something to Madame Tremblay about what sport really means to Canada. May I do that?

The Chairman: Absolutely.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I hope you'll explain that for everyone, not just me.

[English]

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: To everyone.

We hosted the 1985 Canada Summer Games in Saint John, New Brunswick. When we did that, we had 4,000 volunteers. But not everyone is into sport. So we decided to do a cultural side to it. We built a stage right down on the waterfront. We brought in a different cultural group from every province in Canada, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. While our games were taking place, every night was a different province's night. There was Quebec night, and everyone showed up. And it was Ontario night—

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Now you're talking about the Canada Games.

[English]

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: And it was absolutely magnificent.

That continued, and is still continuing, because we found out that Canada, from coast to coast.... A lot of our people didn't understand the other provinces. We all got to know one another.

So the sporting event does two things, for our heritage, for our country. It was absolutely magnificent.

And it is so important that our young people have the opportunity to compete. Yes, it starts at the municipal level, and then it goes into the national level, and then it goes into the international level.

Because of those Canada Summer Games, we have hosted international sports, track and field, international swimming competitions at the Olympic pool that we have now. It's absolutely wonderful. I have to say that it is something.

Now, I agree with Madame Tremblay on one thing. When I hear how much money some young men are making by playing hockey, it rather shocks me. But we're not paying that. The private sector is paying that, not us. So we have to make sure that is understood at this table. If that's what the private sector wants to do, well, that's too bad.

I've got the Calgary Flames AHL team, the best little AHL team there is in Canada, right in Saint John, and I brought them there.

• 1645

Sporting is so important for our young people. It keeps them really busy.

The Chairman: Has it been of benefit to your community?

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Oh, it's been wonderful, it's been absolutely wonderful. Do you know, we were the first city to host the Canada Games whereby in the end we had I think $2.5 million left over in the bank. With it we went out all across Canada and told people if they had a young person who needed to be sponsored, then they should write to the Saint John Canada Games committee. They still do this. We invested the money. We sponsor young people with coaches and so on to help them.

It's been absolutely wonderful. People have never forgotten it. It's been so great for our kids. They come from all across Canada. They come out of Quebec for our swimming competitions. They come out of Quebec for track and field. They come out of all the provinces.

The Chairman: So you would support the notion that we do more of these types of things.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I certainly would. It is wonderful for the young people. It is needed. They need all the support they can get from us.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mrs. Wayne. Mr. Cannis.

Mr. John Cannis (Scarborough Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm so happy to hear the news we just heard from Madam Wayne.

Gentlemen, thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions I would like to ask. I wonder if we have as a nation compared with other countries the way in which we support our athletes financially. If we have, I'd like to hear from you on it.

I also understand—and correct me if I'm wrong—that we most recently have started supporting our women's hockey team. If we haven't, I question why, when they've been world champions. You spoke about international competition at different levels. I'm aware of how they've struggled, paying out of their own pockets to go to training camps and team selection, and of the pride they've brought our nation, bringing home more than one world championship. I'd be disappointed to hear that we weren't supporting them. I understand they're going to be representing us at the winter Olympics.

You mentioned, on one of the pages here, national sports centres. I wonder what criteria were used in selecting initially the cities—which I'm not for or against—of Calgary, Victoria, Montreal and Winnipeg. With the greatest of respect, we look at generally the mass concentration of people in areas such as Vancouver and Toronto. We're at the early planning stages. What was the reasoning behind it if we had athletes, for example, in Vancouver or in Toronto or in the Atlantic region who were identified as high-calibre athletes? How do we support these people? Do they have to then move to Montreal or Calgary, for example, and stay for extended periods of time away from their schooling, or their families, to train?

As well, you spoke about a carding system. We're all quite aware, and we've all read articles in the last little while, about some of our athletes who represent us on the international stage. I'm one who fully agrees that we must support and nurture talents, develop them to world-class levels.

I myself find it ironic—and I've heard it in comments from constituents and other people—that we as a nation have done our utmost, as we heard a minute ago, to support up-and-coming athletes so that when they reach a certain level they're able then to compete in international events that have successfully brought, I'm very happy to note, tremendous amounts of money.

Has the institution or department thought of how we can reach out to these people and say, well, we helped you at your early stages; do you really need that $810 when there's some young person in Saskatoon who has the skills and the talents...and knowing that we're going through tremendous cuts throughout the various levels of government, provincial, municipal and the school systems? You pointed out in your presentation how it all starts, right from the backyard to the school yard to the high school to the post-secondary programs, etc. How do we balance this thing out?

Bluntly put, people are not very happy to hear how top-level athletes, such as a Donovan Bailey or an Elvis Stojko—and they might be just a few, but unfortunately they stand out—can take one afternoon, run one race, and make a million dollars, or do a commercial for McCain and make hundreds of thousands of dollars, etc. How do we balance that out?

• 1650

And have you thought of any venues where we could, as a sports body, look into either marketing some of our abilities or techniques or where we could generate revenue? One thing that stood out is that if we had more we would do more. I think, Mr. Moyer, you said that, and I agree with you. I think maybe we can think of venues where we can go into partnerships. I refer now to what Madam Tremblay said earlier—

The Chairman: Mr. Cannis, I think we're going to have to focus your questions a little bit more, because, as I said before you arrived, we have to leave here at 5.20 and I still have four other members who have questions.

Mr. John Cannis: I'm done, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Norman Moyer: I'll take a crack at a couple and I'll turn to Dan for some of the others.

We certainly do support women's hockey. We're delighted with the way it's developing. My bet is that we may see better hockey played by the women in Nagano than by the men's hockey team.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Here, here.

Mr. Norman Moyer: More exciting anyway.

As to why did we put the sports centres where they were, there have been a series of reasons that have led to the choice of sites. Calgary and Victoria were sites of major international games, and part of the legacy that came out of those games were the facilities and the energy needed to create sports centres, so we did them there. We would have been glad to have Toronto come through as quickly as those other cities. There are good facilities in Toronto. The Ontario government has not put a very high priority, until quite recently, on this. We're now in good discussions with them, but we couldn't move that ball as quickly as we'd like.

Athletes do get support to move to those centres when they have to go there to train. We will never have a world-calibre centre in every community in Canada. They are just too expensive to do. So part of the job will be to move people to those centres.

I'll ask Dan to talk about international comparisons. We have done some of that. The carding system—why do we pay athletes who are getting so much money—is a perennial question. They have the right to it. The system is set up. It's objective and transparent, as Madam Tremblay would like it to be. They are in the top four in the world, so it's hard for us to cut them off. In many ways they do give back to the sport system. You have an Elvis Stojko or a Donovan Bailey, who are showing up at times for events they don't charge for, which are a great help to the sport system. They draw attention to Canadians.

There are very few Canadians who make enough money out of royalties that you would say in fairness they don't need their stipend. Maybe this is a problem for which we can't find a miracle solution. They do give back to the sport system in other ways. By and large we think we're getting a good deal when we have a champion in Canada.

Dan, why don't you talk a bit about international comparisons and I'll think about the last question.

The Chairman: Mr. Smith, perhaps international comparisons is something you may want to pull together and circulate to members of the committee. It's probably an interesting thing for some data we should have in our files.

Mr. Dan Smith: We do have some data there, and looking at some of our international competitors, the countries we would like to compare ourselves with and would like to perform better than, countries like Germany and Australia, are ones that would be providing financial support about double of what Canada provides for its high-performance athletes system. In other countries, the difference is even greater. In the United Kingdom right now because of their national lottery they are probably putting in about ten times as much money as we are in total.

However, I think one of the things that's important to note there is this includes sport throughout the full continuum, because they don't have the same federal system and therefore that's providing support for facilities at local level all the way up to high performance. It is a very significant support for high performance as well. France would be a similar country. Other countries like Finland, Sweden and Denmark would be closer to the amount of money we provide. We can provide more detailed information.

The United States is virtually an impossible one to compare because it isn't at all government funding that finances this particular system. It's essentially done through the educational system and the private sector.

• 1655

The Chairman: Do you want a final response on that last questionn?

Mr. Norman Moyer: The question of generating revenues by working with private sector partners is one we've also been trying to explore. Some time ago the minister appointed an advisory committee, chaired by Adam Zimmerman, which has looked extensively at this issue. Again, we haven't found a silver bullet, but we are finding much more willingness—and much more ability—on the part of the sports organizations to go and get good sponsorships and to keep them, to deliver value for them. I think there's hope in that direction.

The Chairman: Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have two quick observations and one question.

I wish the members were here, but I'll have a chance to say that another time. I really don't believe that provinces, provincial make-up or linguistic considerations are part of picking our Canadian hockey team. If you start getting into that, you can go so far with it; you could say that two of the three goalies were francophones. I don't care who they are. They happen to be two of the best goalies in the world and they're on the team for that reason. So I don't subscribe to the bit about any one province or linguistic.... Maybe you could say “Only one Irishman? What's wrong?” Brendan Shanahan is a darned good hockey player, but after all, 25% or 40% of the population is Celtic—

The Chairman: There should have been more Irishmen.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: There should have been more Irishmen! There you go. So I think that's overplayed—

A voice: More fighting.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: That's right, some more fighting.

A voice: Fighting words, eh?

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Yes.

On the professionalization of the Olympics, we all know that the communist countries, particularly the Russians, caused that. They were more professional in the sense of “full-time” than our NHL players were. We were sending over true amateurs.

My only question, then, after that editorial, is how many Olympic sports do Canadians participate in that are not funded by the federal government? Do you know that offhand?

Mr. Norman Moyer: We know the sports that we do not fund that are Olympic sports. I'm not sure we have competitors in all of them.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Thank you.

The Chairman: Could you gather that information and circulate it to us? Identify the ones that we—

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Yes, and with a bit of a rationale, unless you can quickly give the rationale now.

Mr. Norman Moyer: On what?

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Why would we send people to the Olympics in any sport and not offer them some funding?

Mr. Norman Moyer: The sports accountability framework sets out criteria by which we decide what sports we're going to work with. Basically it is based on the success those sports have had internationally. So while we may have some people competing internationally in those sports, if our overall success in those sports has not been high and is not building, those are the sports we've decided not to work with.

The Chairman: I think it would be useful for us as members of this committee to know what all the sports are that we don't help directly.

Mr. Norman Moyer: We'll give you the full list, the 38 we work with and the ones we don't.

The Chairman: Mr. Proud.

Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a comment and maybe a question on what we would call a “professional” sport.

Over the years I've witnessed sports and have been somewhat involved in them. Coming from a less populated area of the country, the thing I've noticed is—and it's improving but it takes a lot of work to improve it—the lack of coaching expertise we've had over the years. It improves from time to time. I come from Prince Edward Island, and we've had our share of professional players in various sports who go forward, but it seems to me that at the high school levels and the university levels once we hit that Quebec-Ontario border the lights go out for us. It's to be assumed that they're going to have more players and better players, but I think there has to be a continued effort to see that people in various sports who have that ability are given the chance to continue to compete.

That's an area that I would love to see continue. As I say, over the years we have had our hockey players and our boxers and all of that in the maritime provinces of Atlantic Canada, but we have suffered from that lack of quality coaching. Somewhere there should be money available to help this along, and it's not just the federal government, but the provinces and the municipalities.

There's another thing I was just wanting to ask about. Looking at the bottom of this page, we see the professional sports leagues such as hockey and football, etc. But there is an industry in Canada that is in serious trouble right now, and that's the horse-racing industry. It's an industry that creates jobs, but it's falling by the wayside because of other ways people can spend money, I suppose.

• 1700

I wonder, I guess out loud, if you people have had any overtures from the race industry, and especially the harness-racing industry, more so than the thoroughbred industry. It's an industry I would hate to see fall by the wayside, if there's some way, be it monetary or otherwise, that there can be assistance from governments, provincial and federal and municipal, that can see this industry.... It has to reinvent itself, there's no doubt, but there has to be some help somewhere that can keep this industry alive.

Thank you.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: As an honorary colonel of the Kentucky Derby—that's what I am—I have to tell you I'm with you all the way, George. All the way.

You too? Good for you.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

An hon. member: We're in the presence of many colonels.

An hon. member: We're going to turn Sport Canada into a special agency before this is over.

Mr. Norman Moyer: The horse-racing industry is not an area of preoccupation or mandate of Sport Canada, and no, we really haven't been approached by that industry about it.

It's important to underline that our mandate is amateur sport, and we really do our best to stick to that mandate. There's a lot to do there, and there's a very logical role for government in that. We try not to get involved in the professional side of sport. We understand there's an important preoccupation there, but it's not particularly ours.

On the question of coaching support, we believe it's a very important area to be involved with, providing more support. It's an area we want to look at. Dan was mentioning to me that there is a component through the Coaching Association of Canada for Atlantic Canada that we do work on now. He might just outline a little bit of how we're working in Atlantic Canada on coaching.

Mr. Dan Smith: I think in recognition of the fact that there haven't been as many developed coaches in Canada and that some additional support could be beneficial, the Coaching Association of Canada entered into an agreement with the four Atlantic provinces to put in place what they're calling an Atlantic coaching field office.

The Coaching Association of Canada, through funds it receives from us, provides support for an individual who is the coordinator, and the four provinces provide operational support. That person works closely with each of the provincial ministries responsible for sport as well as with people who are course conductors in the national coaching certification program, trying to provide additional coordination and assistance. That's a beginning. Clearly there's more to be done there.

One thing that's important to note is that the national coaching certification program that Canada has in place is world-renowned and the envy of many other countries across the world. It's notable that countries like Australia and a number of Commonwealth countries have patterned their programs after the national coaching certification program, or in fact have reached agreements where they have essentially taken the program and made it their own. We're certainly world leaders in that area, but we need to continue improving.

The Chairman: Just on that point, do we have any centres of excellence in Atlantic Canada—full-blown centres of excellence, like Calgary?

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: We have one in Saint John. We just opened it in the train station. You closed out, Dennis. We've put it in the train station. It's right at Harbour Station, and it's a centre of excellence for hockey.

Mr. Dan Smith: Yes, there are a few single sport centres of excellence, and there is a plan within our national sport centres network to have some type of centre in Atlantic Canada as well.

Ms. Elsie Wayne: We'd love to have it.

The Chairman: We need more of it.

Albina—or Ms. Guarnieri, sorry.

Ms. Albina Guarnieri (Mississauga East, Lib.): This is a friendly committee.

I'll be very brief, because I know there are many other questions my colleagues want to ask. I think we're all in agreement with Elsie's eloquent discourse about how sports inspires us to lofty heights and is a unifying force and factor in this country. I can say with certainty that when I was privileged to sit on the heritage committee, Madame Tremblay championed athletes from coast to coast. That's something I felt was imperative to put on the record.

I'd like to take our discourse into a much more mundane discussion. That is, has the department ever done any impact studies on the economic benefits of sports at large—for instance, how they revitalize core cities? Do you have any such studies in your possession currently?

• 1705

Mr. Dan Smith: At this point we have very limited data on the economic impact of sport. We have some data we've gathered through Statistics Canada. They were 1992-93 figures. They estimated a $9.6 billion impact of sport and recreation participation in industry. We also know from that same Statistics Canada report about 214,000 jobs are directly related to sport, as coaches, administrators, and other positions.

Beyond that, though, one of the things we now require as a condition of providing support for hosting of the games is that the host society demonstrate economic impact. Therefore they need to have demonstrated in advance the economic impact they expect. Then there's a post-games analysis of what the impact was. That's just now coming into effect. We hope soon we'll have some of that data.

I do know that in the case of the North American Indigenous Games and in the recent Canada Games universities had offered to do impact studies. We hope to have data from those two games probably within the next six or seven months.

Ms. Albina Guarnieri: That would be helpful. So much of the information you get is gleaned from Statistics Canada and it's a sort of hodge-podge assortment.

I don't want to put you on the spot, but do you think there would be merit in trying to pull all this information together so we would get a more comprehensive view of the economic wealth sport generates in this country?

You don't have to agree. It's more of a rhetorical question. You can answer, if you will, but I don't want to commit you to anything. It's not a trick question.

The Chairman: There's nothing wrong with getting them to commit to that. That's what this committee is all about. I would wonder why Sport Canada wouldn't want to commit to understanding the economic impact.

What I don't understand around here is that every other agency of government, whether it's high information technology or the oil patch or tourism, has to justify its existence by linking whatever it does to jobs. I would like to know why sport in this country has never had a formal structure. That's part of the evolution of this committee. I think you would do a lot better in getting what you need if you justified your existence in linking it more to the economy.

Mr. Dan Smith: A case we've long made is that sport is a valuable entity in and of itself for the benefit that accrues to the individuals who participate, whether they are athletes, coaches, or volunteers. All the people who participate in sport have a tremendous experience as a result of it. Many around this table would certainly be products of that.

In addition, though, we have also made the claim that sport accrues a number of other benefits, related to health, to its contribution to Canadian identity, to the integration of youth, to economic development and economic impact, to defining us as Canadians and the values we share as Canadians. All those aspects I think are important benefits of sport. Certainly to have a better understanding of the economic impact would help us make our case that much better, in addition to its cultural, its social, and its individual impacts.

Ms. Albina Guarnieri: I have one last quick question which I gave my word to Madam Tremblay I would ask on her behalf. It's out of the purview of the mandate of this committee per se, but she asked me to ask you to give us insights on our other national sport, lacrosse, and any insights you can provide on funding for lacrosse. You may not have been prepared to answer a question on lacrosse.

• 1710

Mr. Norman Moyer: I'm not sure that I understand the question. Is it about financing from us of lacrosse?

Ms. Albina Guarnieri: You'll remember we need—

Mr. Norman Moyer: Lacrosse is one of the four domestic sport pilot fundings that we have just launched. We are working with lacrosse on how they're going to use those funds and are supporting them for two years as part of that pilot. Because it is a pilot, part of the effort is to evaluate the effect that can have on—

The Chairman: What's the dollar value of those pilots?

Mr. Norman Moyer: It's $200,000. It varies depending on what they propose to us, but it's about that much money.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano (Sault Ste. Marie, Lib.): I have just a curiosity question.

I was looking through your charts and the way you cut up the pie. Just doing some mental arithmetic, there's about $55 million in your budget.

Mr. Norman Moyer: $48 million.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: Okay, and that's for 1997-98. That's your annual budget? That's all of it?

Mr. Norman Moyer: That's all of it.

Mr. Carmen Provenzano: I wonder how close you come to actual expenditures and your budgeting, if there's much of a differential.

I'm asking that question because I noticed, for example, that for the athlete assistance program you've budgeted about $7.3 million. Your athletes under the program receive anywhere from $185 to $900. If you look at that $7.3 million and divide by $900—that's assuming that every athlete is going to receive the maximum—it just leads me to wonder.... Obviously you're not going to give every athlete the maximum, so you're budgeting for the maximum. Do you have the flexibility in your budget to move that unspent money around, or are you on a “use it or lose it” kind of program?

Mr. Norman Moyer: For the most part, money within the budget can be moved around.

Certainly last year the money was spent completely. There may have been some earlier years when we underspent a small amount of that budget. We expect to spend it all this year. We can move money around.

There are some blocks of funding that are not as easy to move. The major games funding usually comes tied to those games, but even there, year to year, we can get a bit of flexibility in how we do it.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: On Germany, when I was the mayor I was meeting with some people there and they were telling me how they take their little children out of their homes when they're almost babies—this is figure skating—and take them away from their families and so on. We don't do that, do we?

Mr. Dan Smith: Yes.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Oh, we do. Do we do it in the same way?

Mr. Norman Moyer: Well, we don't take them away.

Mr. Dan Smith: No.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: They don't go back home every night in Germany. That's what I want to know: how do we do it in Canada?

Mr. Dan Smith: The kind of system that you're describing in Germany was essentially the East German system and they were putting athletes in what they called sport schools. They moved them to a place where there were top-level coaching and top-level facilities and put them in a school there and essentially they moved away from their families at a very young age.

That doesn't happen in Canada with any degree of regularity, but every now and then you will have parents who will choose, for their figure-skating child that might be 13 or 14 years old, to have that child work under a coach in a neighbouring community or perhaps in another province.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I can understand that, yes.

Mr. Dan Smith: That happens from time to time.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: These were children five and six years old that were going.

Mr. Dan Smith: No, we don't do that.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Coderre.

Mr. Denis Coderre: I'm going to look at all the budgets and may raise the issue of Sport Canada's role. In 1997-98, the votes for expenditures amounted to 52,196 million dollars; in 1998-99, they will be reduced to 47,065 million dollars; in 1999-2000, they will be around 48,825 million dollars.

Like the Chairman, I think we no longer have a choice; sport must not be seen as a luxury or a recreational activity, but as an industry. And when we talk about an industry, we should talk about job creation, and not just the cultural aspects. Regardless of the sport, we should be looking at its infrastructures and impacts.

• 1715

In my question, I will summarize today's meeting. From your description of Sport Canada at the moment, it looks like a big foundation that funds some sports or some athletes based on certain criteria, which, depending how they are interpreted and whether by the opposition or the government, are seen as being transparent or not. One thing is certain: we have to go beyond the cultural component of all this. The idea here is to go much further.

Do you think that by putting Sport Canada in the melting pot of Heritage Canada, Sport Canada's very essence has been lost? Should we go back to having a department of sport, which would take into account both sport as an industry and related economic considerations? Such a department might even consider funding an infrastructure, and would finally have a much stronger mandate, with more teeth, which would not limit it to merely funding certain athletes. It seems that many people on all sides of the issue are dissatisfied with the present situation.

[English]

The Chairman: Excuse me, Mr. Moyer. While you're reflecting on answering that question, I want to say something to members of the committee.

We have a questionnaire that was circulated by the researchers before. We need a consensus, if everyone feels comfortable with that questionnaire. If we do, we'll go from there.

Go ahead, Mr. Moyer.

[Translation]

Mr. Norman Moyer: I was going to say that I am most familiar with the Minister's answer to this question. She is convinced that Sport Canada is in the proper place in her department. There are considerable advantages to linking it to parts of Heritage Canada. I know it is important to look at the economic impact, but sport is much more than that. Sport is very linked to the values we want to instill in our society, and to our identity as Canadians. This can be very useful to a minister and a department such as ours.

As to giving Sport Canada more money and setting other objectives, all I can say is that during the election, the government made a commitment, and Ms. Copps has repeated it on many occasions, to invest more money in the sport system. I know that she hopes to make some statement soon and that this is clearly a priority for the government.

Mr. Denis Coderre: So you are satisfied with the way things are working at the moment, but you would like more money?

Mr. Norman Moyer: Who wouldn't?

[English]

The Chairman: I would like to make one last point on that, on behalf of the committee. Referring to the business plan for sport in Canada for January to December 1996, which was in your briefing notes, under the section “Financial Regulations/Legislation”, bullet two says:

to provide possible options for generating resources for sport at the national level through lotteries or other games of chance.

I realize you do not have enough time right now to discuss that exploration that the department is on, but I wondered if you could take some time to do that, maybe before you come to the committee next time. In fact it would be nice if we could have a short section for you next week, when we're going to have the head of the Olympic mission here. Maybe just before Christmas, in advance of the Olympic Games, we could have a preliminary discussion looking at what one would have to do in order to have some cooperation with the provinces on having a national lottery that could fund amateur sport in Canada. Okay, Mr. Moyer? Is that all right?

Mr. Norman Moyer: That would be fine. Next week may be difficult, but we'll talk to you about just when and how we can do it.

The Chairman: Okay, great.

Does everybody feel comfortable with the questionnaire?

Some hon. members: Yes.

The Chairman: Okay, thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.