Canadian Heritage Committee on March 4th, 2013

[Matt Showers]

It is always a question of money. There is not enough money to retain women. If a woman leaves coaching primarily because she wants to start a family, we will need more money to retain her. Actually, it is likely that, under those circumstances, men are earning much higher wages than women.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

In your example, you seem to be saying that the woman works as a coach during the day. But it is not during the day, because kids are in school then. Are we talking about the summer or what? Why should women call babysitters during the day? Don't they teach in the evenings or on weekends?

[Matt Showers]

I am not sure if this is true, but I would say that the schedule is also a factor. Head coaches have a really difficult schedule, especially for older kids. Usually, they have training every morning from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. or from 5:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. and every evening from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. It is very difficult to be a coach for a woman who gets her kids ready for school and looks after them after school, because that is when the training sessions take place.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

So there should be a change in attitude on a number of levels. First, the wages of coaches should be the same as the wages of professionals. Second, the wages of women should be the same as those of men. That's pay equity. Finally, men should perhaps look after their kids a bit more. I am not asking you to answer this question. These are just some comments.

I will share the rest of my time with Mr. Nantel.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you very much.

My thanks to both of you for being here.

Mr. Comerford, could you first tell me if the fact that you are currently in British Columbia has anything to do with the club's activities?

So the fact that you're there in B.C. is for personal reasons, is it? You're not there for some elite program or something?

[Tim Comerford]

I'm sorry, I think I'm getting a translated feed patched in. It's really distracting. Could you guys just cancel it?

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Sure. I will speak in English to you and I will speak in French to Matt, who is here.

I wanted to ask you—

[Tim Comerford]

You can speak in French.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Great.

What is your connection with elite sport? Based on what you are saying, you are the coaches for a club that is rooted in a very specific community. We are all familiar with Lakeshore and Lachine. People there are heavily involved in the lives of their communities. They are extremely active.

Are you trying to form an elite team or is your team trying to make swimming a leisure activity and something for children to accomplish?

[Tim Comerford]

In my view, the goal is always to train elite athletes, but our pool is very small. It has eight 25-metre lanes. Other clubs in nearby cities such as Pointe-Claire and Dollard-des-Ormeaux, have pools that are better for training.

I train kids who are 10 or younger. We follow the lifelong athlete development plan. We want kids to like swimming and to continue to swim when they are 20 or 25 years old, even if they do not participate in the Olympic Games, but rather in university competitions. That is our philosophy.

However, we still have an elite program, of course. One or two swimmers have reached national standards. That is always the goal, but it is very difficult for us to retain elite athletes.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Some people talked about the importance of making sport more general, to increase the number of physical education hours in schools, to ensure that more people participate and enjoy it.

In an ideal world, do you think more people would take up sports and more people would take courses, the way parents who volunteer do? Ultimately, a group of recruiters will look for people who have a specific talent and will bring them to elite sport directly. I think you are the perfect example of someone who is focused on the community and who, first and foremost, teaches people to enjoy something all their lives.

[Tim Comerford]

I think it is worth increasing physical activities in schools, particularly swimming. It is very important for water safety. It is a good skill to have.

The only problem with recruiting very talented athletes at a very young age is that half our elite group started at level B. There are two levels in swimming: A and B. Our swimmers in the B category are not very strong when they start, but we train them. Now, our elite group is made up of 50% level A swimmers and 50% level B swimmers. The kids started at level B.

There is great merit in having a club with a culture and with coaches who have been there for a long time. It is never a problem to get more swimmers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Nantel.

Now we will move to Mr. Simms for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair. I want to thank both guests for coming out.

I went to university in Atlantic Canada, and I remember the swim teams. There were quite a few from the West Island of Montreal, I'm assuming mostly from your organization. So you certainly have a great deal of success, in addition to Olympians who have been up there.

I have a couple of questions.

I'm interested, Mr. Showers, in what you're pursuing—career coaching, which you are doing. The previous guest talked about a couple of initiatives, and they go back to...the NCCP, I think, is the designation. He talked about e-learning; however, you also talked about the importance of job shadowing as a coach.

Let's face it; you find that the vast majority of successful hockey coaches are, if not former professional hockey players, certainly close to having been professional. That in and of itself is an element of job shadowing, as in the case of someone like Alex Baumann, who made a great career as a coach. Unfortunately, it was in Australia, but it just so happens that he's a good coach.

How would people in smaller communities—someone in Rimouski who is potentially a good coach—find a way to job shadow at a club like yours? You could probably learn more from that.

[Matt Showers]

Eventually when they get to a certain level with the NCCP, only certain coaches are actually qualified. You always have to be graded, sort of, by another coach; you're always evaluated. To obtain a level 3 or level 4, you're going to be evaluated by a level 4 coach, let's say. Unfortunately, in Canada there aren't that many level 4 coaches, maybe five or ten. There's quite a good number of level 3 coaches, but the level 4s are few and far between. We have one close by at the Dollard pool. He's been there for maybe 30 years or so now.

Eventually they have no choice but to mentor with a well-recognized and well-experienced coach. To do it earlier, I don't know.... What I've always found pretty interesting is a sort of coach swap, interclub. You swap coaches for a week or two weeks. You go to see what another club is doing and what works really well, or what is different and what you've never seen or tried before. I think it helps a lot.

Whether it's right or wrong, at least it sort of raises an eyebrow to it and opens up the idea that maybe this could work. It's something that we look at, especially in regard to the Ontario clubs, because we're always in a constant battle: Okay, we went down to Ontario and we got our butts kicked pretty well, so what happened? Are they really developing swimmers that are so much better than we are, or do they just have a bigger pool of kids to pick from that—

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

Yes, and before I get to Mr. Comerford—sorry—I'll let you weigh in on this. To me, that's a point. You mentioned earlier that when you went to Toronto your coaches were visibly younger than the other coaches. I don't know if there's any correlation with that, but should we not build capacity to allow coaches to...? It's not just that, because when you go to a swim meet, you're obviously there to compete. You're not there to ask other coaches how they're doing things. I'm sure that's extremely awkward.

What you need to do is go there on a more informal basis, just yourselves, to find out how other.... As a result of that, we get better coaches across the country and programs like Own the Podium. Essentially, we get better star athletes out of this.

Mr. Comerford, would you like to comment on that?

[Tim Comerford]

Yes. I think what we notice, especially when we go to the Ontario swim meets, is that the culture of coaching seems to be that.... I don't know if it's a good thing that a coach is around for 30 years. I work in the education field. Sometimes we'll have a teacher who has been teaching for 30 years, and it doesn't mean that they're a great teacher; it means that they've been doing the same thing for 30 years.

It's a tricky question. I do think there's huge merit in going to other clubs, as Matt was saying, for a coach swap or just on a coaching tour, just to see what other clubs are doing. To be honest, without any knowledge of the Ontario system, I do believe that those coaches are there because there's a salary that you can raise a family on, whereas for us, we're all part-time. The ten-and-under coaches are part-time. For the most part, we're students who do coaching because we love it.

In Ontario, I do believe that for the older coaches, their clubs, as Matt said, may be bigger clubs, especially the Toronto Swim Club and the Etobicoke Swim Club. Those are huge, so they're able to keep their coaches around for a longer time, maybe because of that as well. Having a bigger pool of athletes and being able to have the top ten-and-under swimmers in the country also makes you want to keep coaching.

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

Mr. Showers.

[Matt Showers]

This might a be a touchy subject for some in the room, but if we talk about developing elite athletes, parents also, especially where we are, are a big problem.

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

Yes, and we've already been down this road.

[Matt Showers]

They want results right away, so they're going to go to whatever club is producing the fastest kids at 12 years old. Meanwhile, who cares how fast your kid is at 12 years old?

If we look at the top ten swimmers at 25 years old versus those who were the top ten swimmers 15 years ago, they're never the same people. Because you are a star athlete at 10, 11, or 12 years old, it's not to say that you will continue. More than likely, you're going to plateau within a couple of years, and nobody is going to know who you are by the time you're 20 or 25, if you're even still swimming. Most kids are burnt out and they just stop swimming.

That's where a lot of our talent goes. It's a shame to see, but a lot of our talent, by the age of 13, 14, or 15, is no longer producing results. It weighs on you. It's a really hard sport mentally. If you can't go to a competition and perform better than you have in the past couple of years, it's really hard mentally on a kid of that age, and they just call it quits. We have had so many talented kids come through the system who just don't make it. They don't make it past 16 years old.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Simms.

Mr. Boughen.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thanks, Chair.

Let me welcome our guests and add my voice to my colleagues' in thanking you for sharing part of your day with us.

We've heard from a number of witnesses about career coaching and the fact that there are not very many career coaches in Canada.

If we lived in a perfect world, how would you set up the variables to make sure that you could develop career coaches who would stay in Canada to produce professional-type athletes?

[Matt Showers]

I think it's going to take a big financial backing from the cities, or even the boroughs that the clubs are in. Something's got to give.

I know for us, not only are we fighting for full time, we're paying a ridiculous amount of money just to rent that pool space that we're lucky enough to get. After the pool time is paid...and we can't charge a ridiculous amount for the kids to swim, either, or else they just won't bother. They'll go do another sport. If that's the case, no revenues will be coming in, and we won't be able to pay any coaches.

I think at some point there will have to be a huge financial backing from either the city or the government. If they are going to retain coaches, I think it's the only way.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Okay.

Tim, what do you say?