Interestingly enough, Steve Nash went to the same high school I went to in Victoria, which is Mount Douglas High School, and then went on to another local school, St. Michaels University School.
We've heard Wayne Gretzky say this as well in the past. He believed that you should play multiple sports while you're young and develop a lot of different skill sets. Now there is a whole philosophy around long-term athlete development, which says there are optimum stages and periods when you want to begin to specialize that athlete if they have potential. So I think there is some science now that would suggest there are early specialization sports and later specialization sports.
I guess what you're referring to is the professionalization of children's amateur sport, and there are some regrettable sides to that. We see that in sport. We see that maybe in some hockey arenas at times, where overly enthusiastic parents are getting on the backs of the referees or the players, and that can turn some kids off. So I think there are some issues, and I think the sport policy process has been about educating parents and coaches and volunteers to say that it's about skill acquisition; it's about fun; it's about esprit de corps; it's about a lot of things.
Our general view is that when sport is done properly, it builds social capital, and it enhances the local community. After all, as Peter would know, in an era when so many of us are sitting in front of computer screens on a summer's evening, when parents meet on the sidelines and they sit and they talk, that builds social capital. They meet at pools; they meet at a lot of places. So I think that overall it's a healthy development, but there are those extremes where I think maybe we do specialize a bit too early.