Canadian Heritage Committee on March 4th, 2013

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do you have more girls in the programs or more boys?

[Wayne Hussey]

We have more girls now. It was pretty much all girls. It used to be called the Antoinettes Gymnastics Club. Because boys started coming around and it became more of a manly activity, we had to change it to the Oakville Gymnastics Club so that they wouldn't feel we were ignoring them.

I would say it's about 30% boys and 70% girls.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

How has the federal government done in supporting gymnastics and coaching with Own the Podium and the Olympic and Paralympic committees? How have they contributed to the overall development or improvement of amateur coaches and high-performance coaches?

[Wayne Hussey]

John could probably speak more on that one.

We've taken advantage of some grants for some of our higher-level coaches within the Olympic program. At the amateur level, we once also had a coach who was supported by some government funding about seven years ago. But I think you told me that program is no longer around.

Maybe I'll let John answer.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

That would be helpful. Thank you.

John?

[John Bales]

The program Wayne is referring to was a Services Canada internship, and for a number of years we received funding to offer to different clubs, including Wayne's, to hire a young person. There was an age limit; you had to be below 30 years of age. It was very much a cost-sharing. There was a grant that stimulated the clubs to put in place a position for a young coach.

We received that funding for three or four years, but that program has been discontinued, which I think is quite unfortunate. It really was a stepping stone for coaches to move into careers as coaches.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do you have any bursaries for promising gymnastics students, or for any students at all whose parents might be temporarily out of work or something? Can you help them along financially for a short term? Is there anything like that at the club?

[Wayne Hussey]

Yes. Again, because we're fairly successful we donate about $12,000 back to athletes in the club to help offset some transportation costs. It's done on a need basis. Also, I'm even more proud of our recreational program: if people do not have money to take a recreational course, we always find a way to get them in.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

That's fantastic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Young.

Next, for seven minutes, is Mr. Dubé.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gélinas, I would like to ask you a question that deals with your situation in Quebec, but also with that of Ontario and the eastern provinces, I believe.

We often hear about young elite athletes who have to move to the other end of the country, depending on where they come from. Other witnesses told us about this situation. Athletes, who shall remain nameless out of respect, also talk about experiencing this.

Do you think this is the current situation? Do you feel that the federal government could do something about it? For instance, I am thinking of Mathieu Giroux's situation before the holidays.

[Marc Gélinas]

I think the situation in Quebec has drastically changed over the past few years. A number of programs and incentives have been set up in Quebec. As a result, instead of seeing Quebec athletes leave their province to go live somewhere else in Canada, we are seeing that Quebec appeals to athletes from other provinces who want to come to work and train in Quebec.

However, it would be wrong to say that Quebec athletes do not leave their province sometimes to participate in the national programs offered elsewhere. Mathieu Giroux's case is one example like that. I am not fully familiar with the details of the case to be able to really get into it. But I know that it was difficult for him to train in Montreal as a speed skating long track athlete and to reconcile his studies and his sport.

For now, the initiatives implemented by the Government of Quebec, specifically the refundable tax credits and the grants for athletes who train and stay in Quebec, are incentives for Quebec athletes to stay in Quebec and for athletes from other areas to come to Quebec. There are also—

coaching bursaries in Quebec, as part of the Équipe Québec program, that go to coaches of carded athletes. This is a strong program that helps the coaching situation.

Those measures are more effective in retaining athletes and coaches in Quebec than they used to be.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Young talked about coaches who came from elsewhere.

In Canada, do coaches from British Columbia, for instance, sometimes come to Quebec, and vice versa?

[Marc Gélinas]

Yes, I think that is possible, depending on the positions available. I think coaches from Quebec have moved to other parts of Canada to fill openings in those places. On occasion, we also lose Quebec coaches who go to train athletes abroad. That is actually a concern that affects the Canadian sports system in general.

Some of our best coaches are being attracted elsewhere in the world.

That happens both in Quebec and in other parts of the country.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

My next question is for all of you.

Mr. Hussey, you talked about programs that make it possible to retain athletes. I think Mr. Bales also brought it up. Other witnesses talked about it as well.

For instance, we heard that Olympic success can encourage young people to play a sport, but it may well be that the recreation program in their community does not have sufficient resources to retain those young people in the program.

Do you think that is a problem? If so, how can we solve it? We are hearing more and more about this situation.

[Wayne Hussey]

There are a couple of things with that. Not every club can offer programs to those types of athletes. The ones that have set out to do that, to see them potentially through to the Olympics, are set up that way from their budget process. As I said to my board about seven years ago, when they decided to go that route.... We were just a strong provincial club. When we got into the new building I said, “I can get you to that level, but you might not like it.” What happens is a lot of things come with that. You have coaches and athletes come and go, and you have additional costs that you might not have.... But at the same time, clubs will commit to that or not.

Right now, we've taken a bit of a step back. We've had a run and now we have to rebuild. We know we can lose some athletes and some coaches while that's happening, but our board wants to get back up there.

It can be regional. You were saying that some of your coaches might want to leave because the sport in your province might not be as strong as in other provinces. We face that as well. But you have a lot of great programs in your province, so there's no need to leave.

I'm from Quebec. I left to coach the national team. That's the only place you could go to coach a national team; you had to leave.

[John Bales]

It is expensive to participate at the Olympics and the high-performance level. There is a lot more specialization now, identifying through the sport institutes or in some cases through elite clubs that really focus on high performance and providing the kinds of services that are needed.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Does that mean a loss for local communities? If we focus too much on the elite or on specialization, are we not actually unintentionally penalizing those who are sort of at the base of the pyramid?

[John Bales]

There's always the trade-off between the participation level and the elite level, with a lot of the resources being absorbed at the elite level.

I guess, Wayne, you would experience that. It is the big majority of your young athletes who are helping to pay the bills for the elite.

[Wayne Hussey]

When I coached a national team, we were in Ottawa at the time. I moved the team to Toronto. I went out to the corporate world. Before you knew it, we had Imperial Life Assurance Company giving us $50,000 cash a year, plus office space, secretarial help, computers—everything. We ended up getting a group of business people. We had a gentleman who was selling condos, and our athletes would stay in condos for free. There are ways to get it done, but you have to think outside the box a little bit. All of a sudden, we were generating close to $400,000 to $500,000 more a year for those elite athletes, so we didn't have to take from the grassroots at a lower level.

There are ways to do it. I think the reason we always struggle is that we just get into a rut of what we have always done. But what can we do just a little differently?

Often things don't get done, and then people come to you, the government, and say they need more money. That's the thing I hate the most. I hate coming with my hand out for more money; I really do. I want people to be partners and to participate, but I want to come up with the ideas to make it work.

When I went to all these businesses in the Toronto area for money, I never asked for a cent. I just told them what I wanted to do, why I wanted to do it, and how I wanted to build it, and they wanted to become involved.

So there are ways.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Mr. Simms, you have seven minutes.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you for coming in, gentlemen.

I want to focus on what I see ahead of me, which is your submission. I found it very interesting and quite constructive.

I like what the incentives bring to the table and how integral the coaching is to many of our sports. We talk about programs such as Own the Podium and about programs that inspire success in Canadians, which have all sorts of spinoffs when somebody wins a gold medal. There's a disconnect with Canadians: to make that success happen, coaching matters. I know I'm preaching to the converted, but it needs to be put out amongst the general population that you lack support and that there are incentives, such as the tax credit for athletes to stay in. When parents have to volunteer to coach, that's all wonderful and grand, but the thing about it is that these parents are also volunteering to raise money—they have bake-offs and that sort of thing—so the expertise in coaching heads down the list.

The first part is very interesting. I'm from a totally rural riding. There's a to-do list—deduct taxes and all that sort of thing. It seems to me that you're saying this should be well up the list, and we have never really considered tax deductability, especially for that particular course.

But the last part is what interests me: federal-provincial cost-sharing programs. Can you give me an example? Federal-provincial cost-sharing programs to us.... It's a lot more problematic when you deal with a place like Australia, I'm assuming. In the United Kingdom, they just doesn't exist; theirs is a federal program and so on. You mentioned something in Service Canada that is a federal cost-sharing program.

I'd like you to comment first on the federal-provincial cost-sharing and raising the capacity to provide coaching education.

[John Bales]

What we're projecting there is the need to establish more paid coaching positions at the intermediate level, below the national team. In order to have Olympic success, athletes need 10 to 12 to 15 years of preparation to get to that level, and who is coaching them 10 to 15 years before they get to that Olympic level is extremely important. That's where there's a big gap, wherein we need to have better trained and paid coaches to be able to really prepare those athletes.

In order to do so, a number of provinces are starting to pay coaches at the provincial level, and through the Canadian Sport Institutes Network, there's a real opportunity to have cost-sharing programs in which the provinces are contributing to some of those needs and the federal government is contributing to those needs.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

But that's not under Sport Canada. That's under some regular programs that you can access, and someone in music could access that same program. Is that correct?

[John Bales]

No, it's the Service Canada program. That was open to all different fields.