Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 28th, 2013

[Doug MacQuarrie]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

We're going to move now to Mr. Fulton for up to eight minutes.

[Duncan Fulton, Senior Vice-President, Communications and Corporate Affairs, Canadian Tire Corporation]

Thanks very much.

I thought I'd use my time this morning to give you a few views on why the private sector, Canadian Tire in particular, has an interest in Sochi and Canada's performance on the world stage.

Private sector companies align themselves with sports, in this case the Olympics, generally for two reasons. One is brand for commercial reasons, to elevate your brand, because you're tying yourself to a great symbol like the Olympics and some of our greatest athletes. The other reason is out of a sense of greater social responsibility, to give back to communities and invest in sports, because it's core to your DNA.

Certainly in our case, for 90 years we've been investing in communities in sport. We today spend more than $40 million a year in communities in sport. For us, associating ourselves with the Olympics and the Paralympics and the Special Olympics, which is a relationship we're forming now, is just a natural thing for us to do.

Our view on the ability for Canada to succeed in Sochi or at any world venue is not necessarily the year or the months before the competition; it's the journey from the playground to the podium. It's about getting kids involved at a very early age in sport, getting them excited and inspired about the power of sport, and helping them understand the importance of living healthy and active lives.

At a playground level, we are big supporters of Hockey Canada, Soccer Canada, Skate Canada, Alpine Canada, and thousands of community sport programs. We just announced last week, with 60 partners, a national movement to compel our provinces to inject an hour a day of activity into schools, recognizing that 88% of Canadian parents are extremely concerned that their kids are not active today or nowhere near as active as any of us were as kids. In fact, we have a fairly exciting announcement next week in one of the provinces that will be among the first in the country to commit to getting kids in their province active for an hour a day at school.

We obviously use athletes to help inspire kids to live healthy and active lives. We have relationships with Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Charles Hamelin, Christine Sinclair, Mark McMorris in snowboard, and Rosie MacLennan. She actually works for us at Canadian Tire two days a week, and is gaining some real-life job experience.

Mark's Work Wearhouse, which is one of our business divisions, is getting heavily involved in community coaching. Sport Chek, another one of our divisions, is increasingly getting involved at the high school and university levels.

At an elite level, we support major organizations that are critical to things like Sochi for their success: the Canada Games, B2ten. We fund the Olympic committee, the Paralympic committee. We direct money to Own the Podium.

I will say, just as an editorial comment, that we need to do a better job as a country of celebrating our athletes and celebrating the success of the investments that the government makes. The government's putting hundreds of millions of dollars against athletes and their performance—in the journey to Sochi, in this case.

Canadian athletes have won more than 50 medals on the world stage this year, but we don't hear about it at all, right?

These are world events where, because of the funding of the Government of Canada, through Own the Podium and others, our athletes are succeeding. But we don't put a big enough spotlight on their success, so Canadians only care, once every two or four years, how many medals we get.

I recognize that it's tough for the government to spend money marketing the success of those sport figures. It's tough for Own the Podium to take money away from athletes to market that success, which is why I think the private sector has a role in doing that for others. Certainly our objective for the next eight years as a partner of the Canadian Olympic Committee is to elevate and make heroes out of the athletes that you and many others are funding.

In Sochi in particular, we've invested against approximately 10 athletes. They're going to be featured in all of our advertising. In fact for Sport Chek, every single ad we do for Sport Chek for the next eight years will feature amateur athletes just to elevate them and make heroes out of them to help inspire other people.

For the friends and families of athletes in Sochi, we helped fund Canada Olympic House in Sochi to make sure they have a place to come to celebrate the athletes and their lives.

In terms of promoting patriotism in stores, we have a number of merchandise lines that are out there right now. We have a new Adidas line of high-performance gear at Sport Chek and a number of Olympic-branded things at Canadian Tire. Certainly the royalties all go to the Canadian Olympic Committee.

I would suggest that, as we look to the contributing factors to success on the podium, we bear in mind that it is not so much what happened last year or this year. As a country, if we want to be successful on the world stage, we need to start investing in kids and start inspiring them to live healthy and active lives. This is a major issue compared with where we were 10 or 20 years ago. We view our role as contributing everything from the playground to the podium.

Those are my comments, Mr. Chair. I'd be happy to take questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fulton.

Mr. Hillyer.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, everyone, for coming today.

I'd like to start talking with Mr. Fulton. We've already met with a lot of organizations for this study. Many of the organizations are government funded, but most of them can't survive on government funding alone. So I'm happy that you've come. One of the questions I've been asking is, besides government funding, what can government do to promote sport in general? What can government do to help the elite athletes in the country? How can we help to get people ready for the Olympics and to have more success once they get there?

[Duncan Fulton]

At a provincial level, the role of government is to inject more activity through the entire school system—to encourage kids all the way from K to 12 to be active. The average right now is about 20 minutes three times a week, which means we're not teaching kids good habits for healthy and lifelong living.

At a federal level, from a private-sector point of view, it seems that the way the sport community treats elite athletes doesn't make sense. There are so many tiny little organizations that are self-run, self-organized. I understand how it got there. There's not a lot of overarching coordination inside the sport community.

From a government perspective, you start with a huge amount of money, hundreds of millions of dollars. Then it gets dispersed—a million here, and a million there. By the time it's dispersed in 120 places, it would be surprising if the sum of the parts was as powerful as the total amount of money put against it.

As a relative newcomer to the elite part of sport, it's hard to get your head around all the different organizations. You can sponsor the Olympic committee, but you have no right to deal with any of the sports. You can sponsor the sports associations, but you're not allowed to feature any athletes. You can sponsor the athletes, but you're restricted by deals they have with various brands like Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and others. In order to do anything meaningful, you end up having to go all the way up and down and side to side.

There's no doubt there's need for investment. I have no doubt that more investment will make us more successful on the world stage. But I don't know how you get around what I politely say is the disorganization of the sports community in Canada.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

What can we do, and what can Canadian Tire do? There are some private corporations that invest in sports for the two reasons you mentioned, but probably not as many as should or could. What can we do to encourage other private corporations to get involved? Do you think that Canadian Tire can inspire and lead other corporations to get involved as well?

[Duncan Fulton]

In the private sector, there has to be a ROI for your investment. Again, you're either spending the money because you think it's the right thing to do, it's what your customers expect you to do, and it's what you have a moral authority to do, or you're investing the money to get an economic payback, that by tying yourself closer to a sport, it's going to elevate your brand and give you more resonance with your customers. Each organization has to identify the cause it aligns with. There are lots of organizations that align with causes other than sport, and I think that's fine, because they make their business decision to do so.

There's no doubt; I know organizations that would love to get more involved in sport. It does get complex. If you have a million dollars to invest, you're going to be extremely limited in what you can do with that, given all the different structures and layers inside the organization and the rights you have to buy in order to activate anything. So unless you have a lot of money, or unless you're extremely focused on a single sport and a single individual, then it's hard to invest in sports, which I think more people should be doing.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. MacQuarrie, I'm not sure if you're aware that the New York Times a couple of days ago had an article that the Sochi games doping lab was being threatened with suspension. Are you aware of that?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

I'm aware of the issue but not the article, yes.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Can you talk about that issue, how big a deal it is, and how worried we should be about it?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

I'd actually ask my colleague, Jeremy Luke, with the chair's permission, to respond. He has more intimate and direct knowledge about that relationship.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

[Jeremy Luke, Director, Canadian Anti-Doping Program & Business Operations, Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport]

Thank you very much, and good morning everyone.

The issue is of concern. To provide some context for the members here, the World Anti-Doping Agency has the responsibility of certifying laboratories that analyze samples for anti-doping purposes. There are roughly 35 laboratories around the world that the World Anti-Doping Agency certifies.

So the issue in Sochi is certainly a concern from the perspective of the laboratory perhaps not operating at the level that it should, but I think we should be comforted by the World Anti-Doping Agency doing the work it ought to be doing in regulation, certification, and monitoring of those laboratories, and take comfort that if the issue is serious, the World Anti-Doping Agency will revoke the certification of the laboratory and it will move to a different laboratory in a different country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you.

We'll move to M. Dubé pour sept minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for joining us today.

My questions mostly go to the witness from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport. He brought up some quite interesting points.

If steroids are among the drugs most commonly seized on the Quebec border, I cannot believe that $800,000 is enough to solve the problem. Is that enough? It is really the number one problem on the Quebec border. That is what you told us. It seems to me that the amount is not enough, given the scope of the problem.

[Doug MacQuarrie]

Clearly, additional resources or additional incentives for others to invest would be beneficial.

The data are Canada Border Services Agency data, not ours, and the reports are monitored fairly closely. Additional resources of $800,000 present a good start. We believe that if this funding were sustainable, as opposed to one-time incremental, we would be able to enhance our activities on intelligence, on investigation, and on the strategies to stem the tide.

Those are the types of approaches that other leading nations in anti-doping are taking, through collaboration with law enforcement, through collaboration with their border services agencies, and through the sharing of information that allows for a much more effective use of the scarce resources in an agency such as ours. So without access to any of the information that exists, we're left to use these resources as best we can.

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

It is interesting that you used the word “collaboration” more than once. Would it not be desirable for the Minister of State for Sport to have better collaboration with his colleagues in other departments, such as the Department of Public Safety or the Department of Health? The idea would be to find solutions and use the resources at their disposal to bring about improvements that are necessary, in your opinion.

[Doug MacQuarrie]

The minister and his colleagues I believe do collaborate to the extent possible. I think resources are only one part of the issue.

Another limitation in this area of work is the regulatory and legislative environment that prevents the sharing of information even between law enforcement organizations within the country. So CBSA is not able to share information as freely as it might with the RCMP, and the RCMP with Justice, and others. It's not only a resource issue. We believe that we need to look at the legislation and the regulations that would enable the amalgamation of the available data and for the agencies that are involved in the battle to benefit from all of that information, as opposed to only the information within their own agency.

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

It is mostly a matter of information.

Earlier, you ran out of time when you were discussing solutions that would improve the situation. Apart from information and resources, are there other solutions that we as lawmakers could look at to improve the situation?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

We believe there are these opportunities to better coordinate and collaborate between the criminal and civil systems. We believe that enhanced regulations and quality assurance in problematic sectors would be beneficial. So in the area of supplements, for example, they operate within the natural health products area of Canadian regulation, and it's very permissive. So supplements present a huge issue for our elite athletes.

Workplace health and safety regulations in pro leagues would be very beneficial. That would ensure compliance with health and safety issues, of which we believe anti-doping is a very clear health issue.

Obviously we've mentioned enhanced and sustained financial support.

Then finally, with reference to our friend from Canadian Tire, we've issued a challenge on the world stage to the corporate sector at the recent international conference on anti-doping to get involved in supporting anti-doping efforts. We believe the corporate sector throughout the world has benefited from elite and high-performance athletes, but they have, to date, not invested in keeping those athletes clean. So the resulting UCI scandal and Lance Armstrong scenario are apparent and corporations have actually left a lot of the funding.

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

Mr. MacQuarrie, I'm going to have to interrupt you because my time is winding down.

There's just one other topic I wanted to mention. I know you're here to talk in particular about doping, but I know your organization does work to put forward the values of sports as being open and such. You talked about briefings with athletes and everything. I was just wondering if your organization had any thoughts on some of the concerns about athlete safety in Russia, given the anti-gay laws that have obviously been a great cause for concern for a lot of folks here in Canada. Do you have any quick thoughts on that before we wrap up?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

Well, we are an agency that is committed to these upstream values and principles in sport. The issue you raised we have discussed with the Canadian Olympic Committee, and they are actively involved with respect to the experience that Canadian athletes will have at the Sochi games. They've assured us, and they're assuring their athletes, that their safety, their involvement in the games, and so on will be unaffected and that they will be well served by the preparatory work that COC has done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Dion, you have seven minutes.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being with us today.

My first question is just about the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, which will take place in a few weeks.

Would you like our report to contain any particular recommendation to the government on something that you see as vital for final preparation? Or would you say that you are ready and that there is nothing specific to ask the government for?

Perhaps we could start with Mr. Fraser.