Evidence of meeting #3 for Canadian Heritage in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was games.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gord Brown
Thank you very much. We're going to have to end on that note. I would like to thank our witnesses for coming. We are going to briefly suspend for our next round of witnesses.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gord Brown
We're calling the meeting back to order. Perhaps our next round of witnesses could come to the table and our past witnesses could have a seat. We'd love it if they stay.
We have two organizations. First of all, from the Canadian Paralympic Committee, we have Karen O'Neill, chief executive officer, along with Martin Richard, executive director of communications and marketing. And from Own the Podium, we have Anne Merklinger, chief executive officer, and Joanne Mortimore, director of planning and operations.
Is there any preference at the table?
9:50 a.m.
Karen O'Neill Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Paralympic Committee
We already did rock, paper, scissors, so I'm going first.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
9:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Paralympic Committee
Thank you very much, committee members. On behalf of Martin Richard and myself, from the Canadian Paralympic Committee, we're absolutely thrilled to be here on what appears to be the eve of a terrific experience in Sochi.
I'd like to make a few opening comments in terms of the Canadian Paralympic Committee as different from the Canadian Olympic Committee. Clearly our view is that we ought to be the world-leading Paralympic nation, and we view that through a focus on both high performance—that would be the support of our high-performance athletes, games teams—and also a development stream, because you cannot acquire the heights of greatness in Paralympic domination and results without a strong system and an aligned system leading up to that.
Our Paralympic athletes train hard. They compete with intensity and push the boundaries of human achievement. They are athletes first and they do it for athletic achievement, competition, and they are driven by their passion. Every Paralympic athlete has an inspirational story.
The Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Games were Canada's best ever winter games in history, as Canada placed third in the gold medal count, with 10 gold medals, and 19 medals overall. As a result, Vancouver was a catalyst in Canada for Paralympic sport and a time when we saw increased funding and resources for Paralympic athletes, and that continues to this day.
So our Sochi team is better prepared, with an increased number of training camps, augmented support for our coaches, increased competitive opportunities, augmentation to equipment, and technical expertise for sport medicine and science.
For Canada to be world leaders in Paralympic sport we must continue to invest in the critical areas of athlete recruitment, athlete development, and athlete retention, as well as supporting the fundamental leadership of our coaches through all of that. Clear momentum and energy has been established to support the Paralympic movement moving into Sochi.
If you'll move to slide 3, it's again a bit of an overview of what we do. With the tremendous support of the federal government and many of our corporate sponsors, this is probably the easiest way to describe what our business is and the scope of what we provide. In the far left cluster entitled “Grassroots”, that really details the type of programming that encompasses things like awareness, first exposure to sport, almost a “see it, try it” for basic skills, and particularly the focus will be on building and exposing participants to fundamental movement skills.
The next block in the middle we term “Next Generation”. Once fundamental movement skills and exposure to some of the basic sports have been provided, that's when we really increase the level of expertise, sport, and technical leadership to support the athlete to further hone their interest and capability within each sport. Again, you can see a number of the programs we provide support for, such as the equipment, the coaching program, funding directly for our athletes, and also sport science.
On the far lefthand side is our Paralympian program, our national team program, and this is what we'll be focusing on today for Sochi. Clearly this is where our national teams come in, where we provide support and partnership with our national sport federations for coaching, competition opportunities, IST, sport medicine and science, and also research and development. We don't do this alone. Throughout the presentation we'll be speaking about our partners, two of which are beside us right now. We call them our performance partners. They are Own The Podium, the Coaching Association of Canada, and Sport Canada.
In listening to some of the questions before in terms of what are some of the barriers or challenges, it is clear that one of the largest challenges is system alignment and coordination. There's a tremendous amount of talent here in Canada, and the real key, especially for the leadership and at the national levels, is to be able to coordinate and align our efforts to optimize what we can do.
Turning to slide 4, we'll get into Sochi, which is what we're here to talk about today. From March 7 to March 16, our Canadian Paralympic team will be over in Sochi, Russia, to compete in six sports. There will be alpine, biathlon, Nordic, sledge hockey, paracurling, and snowboard, for the very first time in Paralympic history.
At the bottom of the slide you'll see a phrase encased in the quotes. It's “Perform in the Moment, Take Pride in the Journey”. This has been a guiding principle throughout the games.
In fact, it was developed by Canada’s chef de mission, Ozzie Sawicki, who is both a previous coach and a technical director in the area of sports. It's really to give the intention that everything counts, all athletes are there to do their best, and the journey is as important as the result.
On the next slide, which speaks to current standings—and I know Anne and her colleague Joanne will be reviewing the results and standings in more detail—we would like to make one particular point, which I think is different for the Paralympics going into Sochi.
As you can see, Canada is listed five rows down. After the 2012–13 season, Canada currently sits fifth overall in the gold medal standings. If you pay particular attention to the countries above, you will see that the difference of just one additional gold medal would push Canada into third standing. If you ask what would make the difference, it’s performance, the environment over in Sochi, and again, as our Olympic colleague spoke about, there has been rehearsal after rehearsal for this moment. You can see the difference that preparation and support will make, because one gold medal is the difference between fifth and third position.
On the next slide is our performance objective. Our performance objective for Sochi is as it was for Vancouver: to place in the top three nations in gold medals. Anne will speak about the details later.
This goal was established in collaboration with our performance partners Own the Podium, Sport Canada, and our national sport organizations. It's an aggressive and ambitious goal, but we feel it is attainable.
On the next slide is a thumbnail of the Team Canada summary. We have approximately 110 accredited team members and a total of about 20 additional team members off-site, just outside of the village. You have heard lots about accreditation, but you only get so many tickets, so you use those tickets very carefully.
The question to our sports, our athletes, and our coaches is, what will make the difference in optimizing your performance? It's those answers that help us decide who gets the accreditation to be right in the village and on the sites. There are going to be approximately 46 athletes overall, and in five of the sports, six guides accompany those athletes.
In terms of qualification, two team sports, curling and sledge hockey, have already qualified. As with our Olympic colleagues, the remaining four sports do not qualify until about mid-February, so you can see how problematic that is as the qualification occurs. It's as if you planned a trip to Florida; you would much prefer to plan three or four months in advance, because there certainly is a cost when you know you only have four or five days for what ticket, what plane, and when you are going to leave.
For the four remaining sports, that's in essence what we have to be prepared for—part of the cycle, part of the qualification—and that's part of our planning to be ready for this.
We have medal potential for athletes in every single sport. In fact, many of the athletes who have been previous gold medallists in some of our prior games are returning.
On page 8 is a listing of the full set of enhanced team services. I know you have heard a lot about this from our Olympic colleagues. We work hard. We don't do this alone. We do this in collaboration with our performance partners every step of the way, so the preparation of not only what we do but also how we work together is well rehearsed.
Listed are games operations, medical support, security—of which there were a number of questions this morning—IST, which is our sports science and technology. We take people over to videotape performance. We have a particular software called Dartfish. By the time the coaches and athletes get off the hills or off the side of the rink, they have a full-scale analysis broken down with our sport medicine people and our coaches, to be able to review the performance so they can review, revise, and plan for the next day.
Communications is a very large part of this. The question asked earlier was, “What would make the biggest difference?” The answer is communications and promotions.
My colleague Martin will address that. We're in a bit of a different situation. In fact, we took the bold move of acquiring the rights, and Martin will provide some additional details.
Friends and family are absolutely critical. At Sochi there will probably be a much smaller group than at Vancouver. But again, it's no less important. We will establish a Canadian Paralympic house in two sites, so that friends and family can join the athletes, the coaches, and the team members while over there to support them throughout their journey.
On VIP and partner hospitality, again, our partners support us 365 days of the year, and this is the set of 10 days for the games that all of our partners will be joining us in Sochi. We will probably look at two waves. At the front end, with the opening ceremonies, there will be a program for our partners so that they'll be able to meet our athletes, be exposed to many of the sports and certainly some of the preliminaries, and then we'll have a second wave on the back end, where the second group of corporate sponsors and supporters will join us for the closing ceremonies, and again will be meeting many of the athletes, who by that time will have medalled.
10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gord Brown
Ms. O'Neill, we'll have to let you expand in the questioning.
We'll move on to Ms. Merklinger from Own the Podium for 10 minutes. Thank you very much.
10 a.m.
Anne Merklinger Chief Executive Officer, Own the Podium
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear with you again. It is of enormous importance to Canada's athletes to know that the Government of Canada and you, the elected politicians, continue to care about how they perform. Allow me to acknowledge the critical role the Government of Canada plays in high-performance sport in Canada. As we heard earlier from Marcel Aubut, the Government of Canada is the single largest contributor to excellence in sport in Canada, and it is the primary reason why Canada's athletes and coaches have enjoyed the successes they have to this point on the world stage.
I've circulated a detailed performance update for you on the Sochi Olympic and Paralympic Games for your review. I'll focus my remarks on three primary components: first, how Canada stands heading into Sochi; second, Canada's performance objectives for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi; and third, the level of financial investment and investment strategy that we've adopted throughout the last four years.
Let's look at how Canada stands heading into Sochi. As we just heard Karen say in terms of the Paralympic team's preparation, and as we heard as well from the Canadian Olympic Committee's statement, we are in an excellent position heading into the games.
Our performances at the 2013 world championships are the best indicator we have as a nation in terms of how we will perform in Sochi. In 2013 Canada's athletes and coaches won 29 medals in Olympic events. This placed Canada in a tie for second place on the overall nation ranking list. There's a tight race amongst the top five nations, as we heard earlier. Finishing second, third, and fourth on the overall medal ranking can be decided by a single medal.
On the Paralympic front, as Karen just mentioned, Canada finished fourth overall based on gold medal ranking in the 2013 world championships. We were only one medal away from second place. We know it's an extremely tight race in terms of the gold medal race.
Importantly, when you look at the detailed material I've circulated, you can see that we showed significant depth in our silver and bronze medal finishes in the 2013 Paralympic world championships. We're now very focused on working with those national sport organizations to convert those silver and bronze medal performances to gold.
The margin between second, third, and fourth is so tight. As Karen mentioned, the goal of finishing top three in gold medal count is still well within our reach.
Moving on to Canada's performance objectives for 2014, we've been talking about that all morning. In the Olympic Games, our goal is to improve on our medal count from Vancouver. We won 26 medals in Vancouver and finished third overall in total medal count—the third-ranked nation based on the number of medals won in the Olympic Games. Our goal is to contend for number one in Olympic medal count, so to do better than we did in Vancouver. In the Paralympic Games, we want to finish top three based on our gold medal count. Again, both of those objectives are very obtainable.
We want to be the first host nation to have won more medals in the next set of games—ever. No other nation has won more medals in the subsequent set of games of their hosting experience.
The final area I would like to address is the level of financial support that has been provided for Canada's Winter Olympic and Paralympic sports heading into Sochi.
An additional $10 million has been provided for the four years heading into Sochi compared with the level of investment heading into Vancouver. That's remarkable when you think that we were the host nation in Vancouver: $10 million over the last four years into Sochi.
The lion's share of that investment comes from the Government of Canada. This is testament to the tremendous commitment that you, our elected politicians, and our government have made in high-performance sport. Of course that includes our private sector partners. We are always out there, together with our partners, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and the Canadian Olympic Committee, trying to leverage additional resource investment from the private sector.
Own the Podium's investment strategy is very deliberate and focused. Our goal is to ensure that every podium-potential athlete and team has access to three key ingredients.
The first is access to the world's best coaches and technical leaders. We know that without the best coaches, our athletes have a slim possibility of reaching the podium.
Secondly, we want to make sure they have access to a great daily training and competition environment. Those are the basics.
Finally, quality sport science and sport medicine support is the last critical ingredient. Research and innovation is a key element in sport science support. Research and innovation can be the 1% factor that brings an athlete from being fourth to being on the podium.
In the final year of preparation for Sochi we have focused on ensuring that all athletes are fully prepared and have had the opportunity to fully familiarize themselves with Sochi. We know Sochi will be a very challenging environment, and it's those athletes who are the most resilient and adaptable who will find their way onto the podium.
Last but not least, keeping athletes healthy and injury free is a key area of focus with 80 days to go before the Olympic Games and 108 days to go before the Paralympic Games.
Winning medals in sport continues to be important to Canada. We continue to develop a culture of winning and focus on excellence in Canadian sport, maintaining the momentum we generated in Vancouver and maintained in London. A whole new generation of heroes will emerge from Sochi. With each medallist crowned, we need to ensure that these heroes go back to their communities, your communities, and reinforce the importance of sport and physical activity, healthy living, and being active for life.
Canada's children need Olympic heroes. They need positive role models whom they can aspire to emulate. Success in high performance sport, we know, strengthens and builds Canadian communities. We have seen our athletes and coaches and we know they are our future leaders. We know they will play a critical role in developing civic pride and instilling a belief that we can win and that it is okay to win.
Thank you once again on behalf of all of Canada's athletes and coaches for the tremendous support you have provided in Own the Podium's quest to help more athletes win more medals in Sochi. Knowing that you care, believe in, and support the athletes in their pursuit means so much to them and to all the sport leaders who are trying so hard to help Canada's athletes. Knowing that they have an entire government and a country behind them will truly make a difference as they head into Sochi.
Thank you very much.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gord Brown
Thank you very much.
We'll now move to the questioning.
For seven minutes, Mr. Leung.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
Chungsen Leung Conservative Willowdale, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing.
If performance is measured by medals to be won, and, as you indicated to us, Canada invested more than $10 million into this, can you tell us what the additional marginal investment is that we need to make, if it's in terms of dollars, to win additional medals, or is money the only situation?
The second question is, how do we compare to other countries, like some of the Nordic countries, like Norway, which has a much smaller population? How much do they invest in their athletes to attain that position?
I also see that there are much bigger countries than us, like Germany and Russia. Is their investment per return on medals less or better than ours?
10:10 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Own the Podium
Great questions.
First of all, we will do a full analysis after Sochi to determine the merits of our investment strategy. Did the incremental $10 million from the private and public sectors result in an improved return on investment in terms of medals? It's premature at this point. Just as we did post-London, we need to really identify where we had the greatest impact in terms of delivering medals.
We have made some changes based on our analysis post-London in terms of our investment strategy. We know that those sports that have the potential to win multiple medals deliver the greatest return on investment. So we'll make the same kinds of strategic changes post-Sochi based on our analysis.
The additional $10 million is spread over four years, so even just in terms of the incremental costs to deliver a program in year four of the games as opposed to year one of the games will account for some of that. But a full analysis will unfold after both the Olympic and Paralympic Games to assess the return on investment.
As to what other nations are investing, first of all, we know that Canada is investing more than we ever have, and we need to acknowledge that and recognize that. Many sport organizations will always want additional resources. We want to make sure that we are investing the money wisely and that we are delivering on the objectives that have been established for Canada.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
Chungsen Leung Conservative Willowdale, ON
Okay, because an underlying thought is that investment in sports or athletes or athletic-related activities has far-reaching implications for society and will benefit society, in terms of long-term health, and so on.
Has any analysis been done as to what we invest in sports and what the other ancillary benefits are to society as a whole, in terms of better health, better nutrition, and, in terms of the Paralympics, better equipment and tools to aid mobility, and other ancillary factors? Have we done that type of analysis?
10:15 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Paralympic Committee
That's a great question, because there's been a tremendous amount of research done on the Paralympic side or on individuals with a disability. There's no question that degrees of independence, degrees of fewer requirements, degrees of ability to engage with society increase substantially, with great enormity, once an individual is able to get up and be active—and also from a health perspective.
I would also say that if our colleagues from PHE Canada were here.... Probably one of the most grounding principles is for our youth of today, with the tremendous challenges of obesity. One of the strongest indicators for health right now, especially with our young children, has to do with physical activity, and particularly the proponent of at least an hour of physical activity a day. This would be the whole foundation, I would say, our entire sports system right now is galvanizing around to be able to support across the country.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
Chungsen Leung Conservative Willowdale, ON
I certainly look forward to a post-game analysis of how we compare against other nations, and also how our funding for athletes and sports can benefit the health and welfare of the entire population.
Mr. Chair, is there additional time?
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
Chungsen Leung Conservative Willowdale, ON
Okay.
I'll come back to how we stack up against other nations. Nordic sports are only for northern climates, and perhaps for some of the few countries like Chile and Australia that may have athletes... Having the natural environment in Canada that we have, do we invest enough money in those venues so that they could be part of our tourism attraction for other countries? Can you give us a sense of whether that type of funding is going into developing venues for winter sports?
10:15 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Own the Podium
Certainly. Given that Canada hosted the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we are rich in facilities that are ideal for Canada's winter sport athletes to train and prepare for games.
Canada is particularly strong in the new Olympic sports, so the freestyle and snowboard sports. If you look at a nation like Norway, they are stronger in some of the more traditional sports. Those are also the sports where there's an extremely deep competitive field. Canada has really emerged as a dominant nation in new sports, like freestyle and snowboard. We have great facilities in pockets across Canada, both as a result of our hosting of the games in 2010 and the culture within the new sports.
I'll let Karen speak on the Paralympic front.
10:15 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Paralympic Committee
I would echo the same thing, particularly with the trend with some of the new sports, where we expect to do quite well, with the addition of para-snowboarding. I would say the trends are similar, if not the same.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
10:15 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Chambly—Borduas, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our witnesses for joining us.
My question is mainly for our friends from the Canadian Paralympic Committee.
During the post-mortem study on the London Olympic Games, this issue was raised by one of my Conservative colleagues who was then on the committee. I know that this is beyond your control and that the decision-making power belongs mostly to the international committee. However, is the fact that the Paralympic Games are not taking place at the same time as the Olympic Games an impediment to the growth of those athletes or to their public profile? The Paralympic Games will be held in March, and the Olympic Games, in February.
You do not have the power to change that, but what do you think about it?
10:15 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Paralympic Committee
That's a big question, but a very good one, because it touches on a couple of items.
The two international organizations that govern us, the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, and the IPC, the International Paralympic Committee, have had an open discussion about this, particularly under the banner of what I would call “inclusion”. For many, many years the model of “same as same as” would mean the games would be imbedded or integrated, so they would be at the same time, with the same framing all in. I would say we've had an avid discussion over the years, and we've probably evolved to a point now where—given the specificity of each of the sports in their own right, the number of events, and the fact that each event, including the number of athletes involved, is very large—even at an operational level it would be very difficult to do. You would have to cut down on sports, on athletes, on the games themselves, and on opportunities, so in fact the games would become much smaller with less opportunity to compete.
Particularly for the Paralympics in their own right, I'm going to say that the sport, the movement, and the very strong decision to promote Paralympic sport in its own right, with its own set of games, have many other benefits. Top of the list would be the number of athletes and countries that can participate in the games, and also present athletes in their own right. We like to say our games are no different from the Olympics, certainly in terms of the athletic prowess and the training and the degree of commitment our athletes have and certainly in terms of that platform of exposure to have that opportunity with the Paralympics.
The only other point I would make would be on the broadcasts, and I alluded to that a little bit earlier. There's a lot of activity around the Olympics, and then there's far less during the Paralympics, and that's what I referred to earlier. We decided that wasn't acceptable. You made a comment about the London debrief, and in fact Channel 4 in London was a groundbreaker in the amount of coverage it provided.
If there was one lesson we learned, aside from all the other lessons from London and Vancouver that we will take into Sochi, it was that we're not going to have what happened to us in the previous games ever happen again, where the exposure was maybe a highlights package at the end or maybe a half hour. We've bought the rights, we've created a media consortium, and we are going to have unprecedented coverage here in Canada, which I hope will be the banner and set the bar for what is to come, not only for Sochi, but for 2015 and for Rio thereafter.
10:20 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Chambly—Borduas, QC
That is very good news. However, what more can be done in terms of publicity? Broadcasting the games is one thing, but people have to be interested in watching the event. Nine out of ten channels could be broadcasting the games, but if everyone decides to watch the tenth channel, things will not be moving forward.
Shouldn't the government talk about it more? This may be a matter of perception, but we hear a lot about Olympic athletes and perhaps a bit less about Paralympic athletes.
What do you think about the publicity for the games, above and beyond their broadcasting?
10:20 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Paralympic Committee
Absolutely, and let me turn to my colleague.
November 19th, 2013 / 10:20 a.m.
Martin Richard Executive Director, Communications and Marketing, Canadian Paralympic Committee
Thank you, Mr. Dubé.
One of our strategies is to ensure that our athletes are known before they show up in Sochi. Of course, in order to ensure that Canadians are able to watch the Paralympic Games, we have to plan to have over 65 hours of content for Sochi for our Canadians and over 350 hours on digital platforms.
We feel it is crucial to provide all Canadians with an opportunity to get to know our heroes and create an emotional connection with them. That way, people feel proud and want to encourage our athletes.
On November 27, when we will have 100 days remaining before the Paralympic Games begin, the International Paralympic Committee will launch a promotional campaign that will reach all Canadians across the country. The goal is to ensure that Canadians know as much about our Paralympic athletes as they do about our Olympic athletes.
10:20 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Dubé NDP Chambly—Borduas, QC
Mr. Aubut has said so often, and even the minister said so. The private sector is an important asset for Canada's sports. Are issues in terms of broadcasting and the public interest posing challenges for you when it comes to private sponsorships? I am talking about the fact that Canadians and television stations may be less interested in the Paralympics, contrary to the rest of the Olympic Games.