Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 27th, 2012

[Henry Storgaard]

I can't really answer that; I have to be honest—

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Was there a breakdown in communication from the Olympic—

[Henry Storgaard]

In the context that the parade was called the Olympic Heroes Parade, it was organized by the Canadian Olympic Committee. We officially had five athletes who were invited to attend, so I respectfully refused that invitation. How do you pick five athletes out of 145? We gradually got to about 30 athletes who were able to attend. This was while I was at the games. Honestly, we really had to scramble. Most of my staff at the games were scrambling to try to make accommodations and make things work and coordinate after the fact.

To answer the second part of your question about how we can work better with the COC, we addressed this last week with the president of the COC. He was very gracious in indicating that there were mistakes made and oversights, that we definitely want to work collaboratively in the future, and that all athletes who wear the Canadian maple leaf should be feted and recognized and celebrated.

[Anne Merklinger]

May I address the question around the level of support that's provided to athletes with a disability? The approach is identical for athletes, be they in the Olympic or the Paralympic environment. We identify those sports that have athletes who have podium potential, and we provide them with the necessary technical and financial support to reach their performance objectives.

Our shortcoming in London was not having enough athletes in total. Our pool of podium potential athletes was insufficient. The support that was provided to them was exactly the same approach as it was in the Olympic or the Paralympic environment. From a technical agency perspective, it's important to understand that.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

With the exception of course of the performance for gold, silver....

[Anne Merklinger]

That's right; that, too.

Our performance metric going into the Paralympic Games traditionally has been a gold medal approach and that's due to a difference in depth of field between the Olympics compared to the Paralympics. Certainly in our discussions with our various funding partners post-London, going forward we're looking very closely at investment that is broader than a gold medal focus, certainly in the big sports like swimming and athletics.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Ms. Sitsabaiesan.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I want to echo once again what everyone here has been saying about how proud we are of our athletes and the coaches and families who are there supporting our athletes every day of the week, and of course you guys too, and all the work you do. Thank you for that.

Even though this is a post-mortem of the 2012 Paralympic Games, I want to look forward. Ms. Merklinger, you spoke about your priorities for 2016 and beyond, but I want to look a little more closely than that at the Parapan Am Games that will be happening in Toronto in 2015. Obviously we want to put on a good show, have a great display on home soil, and get Torontonians and Canadians as a whole—I'm from Toronto, so I have a little bias—engaged in the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games.

Mr. Storgaard, I know you're an expert in strategic marketing and branding. In that vein, I'm curious to know what plans you have to get more people engaged with the Parapan Am Games and what you are doing to do to get people excited to take advantage of this opportunity, both from an economic standpoint for the city of Toronto and surrounding area, but also from a social standpoint in getting our local youth engaged with the games. I guess with that it would also mean expanding the talent pool, as Ms. Merklinger has been speaking about.

[Henry Storgaard]

With respect to the Toronto games in 2015, we work very closely with the Toronto Pan Am and Parapan Am Games organizing committee with Ian Troop and his full team. We're in conversations every week and are working on a number of fronts to achieve what you've just talked about. It involves everything from collaborating on school visits and educational programs and pulling together our curriculum programs for schools. A significant number of our athletes are going into the Golden Horseshoe area and other parts of Ontario, in particular, as well as across the country to speak at a variety of events and talk about Toronto 2015.

A summit is being organized next week in Toronto and the Whitby region at the Abilities Centre for Paralympic adaptive clubs and different organizations that will speak to those very issues. What do we need to do to be fully prepared, to have thousands of volunteers, to have the stadium filled?

London was transformative, and we want to try to bring that to Toronto as well. In that regard I think we're tackling something like 15 different fronts right now, together with the games organizing committee. We want to have the biggest and the best Canadian Paralympic team at these games.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

That's fabulous.

It might be useful that there are 308 MPs who have access to schools and young people in their communities. If there's something we can do, maybe you can let us know. I know for sure that I'd be happy to engage with my community in getting the word out and increasing the awareness. I'm going to speak on behalf of all my colleagues and say I'm pretty sure that they'll all be on board.

[Henry Storgaard]

Thank you very much.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

As you both mentioned, our medal haul at the recent games was below what many had expected. Mr. Storgaard, you also mentioned that many other countries are taking the Paralympics more seriously and investing more in them. With that in mind, would you be changing how you prepare or how we as Canada prepare for the Parapan Am Games, based on our results in 2012?

[Henry Storgaard]

Absolutely, and I think Anne can answer part of that. If there's any time left, I'll answer as well.

[Anne Merklinger]

Thanks, Henry.

Certainly, we know that in order for the Parapan Am Games to be successful, just like Vancouver, our Canadian athletes need to perform well. We're in the midst of working with every targeted sport right now.

We're having the discussion with them in terms of making sure they send their best athletes with a disability to the Parapan Am Games. That hasn't necessarily been the case, so that's first and foremost. We need to make sure that our best athletes with a disability are actually going to be competing in Toronto, in the GTA, in the Golden Horseshoe, the best athletes and as full a team as possible, so that the impact on all Canadian communities is as broad as it can possibly be.

Then it's about making sure that we work with the host organizing committee so that the physical legacies, the new venues being constructed, meet the needs of athletes with a disability in a high-performance world in the longer term. The legacy out of the games is another very, very important factor around the impact on Paralympic sport.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

It's going to take a lot of effort, obviously, to achieve our goal and more effort to keep up with other countries, because they're already leading now. Do we need to increase our funding as a country? Do we need to increase our funding into the Paralympics to be able to compete at the same high level and then to exceed the other countries' performances? Is there something else that we can do or that you can do with your current resources to make that happen? I'm sure that if there is, you're probably already thinking of it.

[Anne Merklinger]

Well, we certainly need to protect the investment that is being made by the Government of Canada into the Canadian Paralympic Committee, which actually impacts the base of athletes with a disability. The number of athletes being attracted to sport programs is not sufficient for us to develop future podium potential athletes.

We still are not able to allocate.... We take a top-down, targeted approach in Own the Podium in terms of investing in the sports that have the highest potential to win gold medals; we need to expand this so that it's all medals. We also need to make sure that we're going as deep as we can possibly go in terms of both 2016 and 2020. Building in the next generation of podium potential athletes is another key priority.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Storgaard, I loved it when you said that your business is sport, but your investment is in people. Truly, I think you're building dreams.

In Scarborough, once again where I come from, there's Variety Village, which is a fantastic place that is doing exactly what you're asking for. It's providing a space in our community for our youth who have a physical disability to actually integrate with youth who may or may not have a physical disability, and who are being enabled to play.

You spoke of that connection to go from playground to podium. Without investment in places like Variety Village, which is creating those places, creating those safe, accessible playgrounds, how are we going to be able to get more to the podium?

[Henry Storgaard]

Well, that's a big part of what we're working on very closely with Variety Village, the Abilities Centre, and other facilities like those across the country. We're helping to finance specialized equipment or recreational wheelchairs so the kids can play wheelchair basketball. These are very expensive pieces of sports equipment, as you can well imagine. We talk about how it's costly to play hockey, but imagine having to buy a wheelchair for your son or daughter to go out and play wheelchair basketball. It's very costly, so we need all the assistance we can get. We're partnering with all kinds of companies, service clubs, and organizations to do that.

We have a very aggressive community-oriented program to break down barriers and make facilities more accessible, such as playgrounds, play yards, parks, and recreation, anywhere where people with a disability can participate and have a more active lifestyle. Imagine the health benefits that emanate from this, and the employability factor. I think all of us around this table know about the figure of 50% unemployment among people with physical disabilities.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

It's a shame.

[Henry Storgaard]

It's a shame. Some people even say it's 25%.

There are a lot of great outcomes and benefits from investing in some of these facilities and activities. We're trying to do it as cost-effectively as we can and as much as we can on the backs of corporate Canada as well.

But thank you very much for your support and your funding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Ms. Sitsabaiesan.

Mr. Simms.

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

Thank you again for coming, Ms. Merklinger, and Mr. Storgaard.

You put out an alarming statistic earlier about the participation rate in physical activity regarding those with physical disabilities.

I brought up a question some time ago. I don't know if you were in the audience or not, but I talked about engaging the school system to identify certain athletes to get them into the system. In your case I think it would be more of gradually elevating their abilities to the point where they become a potential Paralympic athlete.

Obviously with the resources you have, it must be a very difficult task to get all eyes and ears across this country.

[Henry Storgaard]

It's not easy, as you know, to develop curriculum and to get it into every school across the country, but we have an incredible curriculum piece right now that is highly regarded by teachers. We're working very hard on that.

We are collaborating with Toronto 2015 in the, let me call it, Toronto, Ontario area. We hope one of the outcomes of our partnership with the Canadian Olympic Committee would be to partner with their educational programs so we can go out collectively, save money, share resources, and reach a greater audience.

I agree with you. The school system for us has been so open and willing to work with us. It's such a great system to be able to help educate and inform, and to allow youngsters who have a disability to participate not just in the classroom but also in the gymnasium as opposed to being the scorekeeper.

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

Yes. I've always thought that maybe a way to do this would be by attending first ministers' conferences on education where the ministers of education of each province are in one room. Have you ever thought about that? They have their own forum. Maybe you could make a presentation to them indicating how to identify athletes because we need them. You look at the stats. Every country is now on board. We're in tight, and this is serious competition.

That's a segue into my next comment. I watched great stories of individual efforts and how they overcome from the sense of growing up with an affliction to now they are an Olympic athlete. What I didn't see was that athlete getting in the pool or out on the track kicking some serious butt, as it were. They can do that, but I didn't see it. You're right.

I guess what I'm asking is when it comes to negotiating broadcast rights, does coverage of the Paralympics become a standard to which they have to measure up to as well, or is that just not there?

[Henry Storgaard]

At the closing press conference we had in London, we had an athlete, a coach, myself, and our chef de mission all on the panel in front of the media. The question the media asked was, what is the most transformative thing that would allow you to succeed at future games? Every one of the people on the panel indicated it would be extensive broadcast coverage. With respect to the questions some of you are asking, that would get the message out to families and people with disabilities, 4.4 million people, and encourage them to participate, to get active and do things. It would broaden the pool and allow the upgraded participation and ultimately people who want to perform as elite athletes.

That's the key for us. Unfortunately, we just went through a situation with the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, which was CTV, and Rogers to a lesser extent, and honestly it did not go well for us. They basically said to take what they gave us and that's it or they'd do nothing. We didn't have a choice.

The IOC, the International Olympic Committee, negotiates Canadian TV rights for the Olympics, but we have to try to find our own broadcast deal.