Canadian Heritage committee  I think we have the foundation of the system in place. What is missing at the higher level is the incentive of the career. It's very difficult to undertake the amount and the complexity of the training to become a professional coach when the career options are limited. It's reall

Canadian Heritage committee  I would only add that I think the foundation exists. There is a very strong foundation, with 67 different sports that have put a considerable effort into training and developing coaches. It really is a case of exploiting that foundation and ensuring that the resources are in plac

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

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. But what I'm referring to here are the programs that are being offered through the Canadian sport centres and Canadian sport institutes that are really trying to coordinate the input of both levels of government. Marc, I don't know if you would like to comment on that.

Canadian Heritage committee  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 eli

Canadian Heritage committee  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

Canadian Heritage committee  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

Canadian Heritage committee  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.

Canadian Heritage committee  It was pretty quick, right?

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate this opportunity to address you today. I'll go through these PowerPoint slides, the first ones, fairly quickly to get to some of the recommendations towards the end. What I've tried to address here are the main areas that you had referr