Canadian Heritage Committee on Feb. 25th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you.

We will continue our study on the status of amateur coaching in Canada. We have two witnesses. Mr. deVos, welcome. Shane Esau, welcome to you, sir.

Today is the first day for our study on coaching, so we're very pleased to have both of you here. We will start with your opening comments, and then we'll move into a period of questions and answers.

Mr. Esau, you can take the lead.

[Shane Esau, Exercise Physiologist, Canadian Sport Centre - Calgary, As an Individual]

First, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to be here.

I've been a coach of many sports in Canada over the last 30 years. I started out coaching 30 years ago in competitive swimming, and then as my life evolved, I went into triathlon, running, some cycling, and as my kids have grown older, some lacrosse and some hockey. Coaching had been my life until about 10 years ago when I graduated with a master's in the art and science of coaching from the University of Calgary. Now I'm an exercise physiologist with Paralympic teams.

My first recommendation—and I know it won't sit well with a lot of coaches in Canada—is to have a certification system that's university based where our coaches would actually get a degree in coaching. There have been some universities in Canada that have offered the program, but very few, and a lot of the coaching programs are starting to fall away. The University of Calgary had a master's degree in it but it has now disappeared. The University of Alberta has picked it up.

My main reason is that I don't think our coaches in Canada know enough about how to coach and how to teach. They don't know enough about sport in general. Many of them are parents and many of them are former athletes who have no basis of education in biomechanics, exercise physiology, strength and conditioning. A lot of their knowledge is based on what they did, so we're making the same mistakes that we made 20 years ago, now when a lot of other countries are moving forward with professionals.

A lot of the European countries have degree programs, and I think they do better with fewer athletes because they are developing the athletes properly. I don't want to take anything away from the volunteers or the parents, but parents who have kids in programs get a great coach some years and other years they don't. We don't have enough athletes moving through to the international level to really get what we need. I think our athletes are quitting because they aren't having proper coaching.

The downfall of it is that people who go through and get a degree will want to be paid well. The big downfall is the cost of it. I think that if we can have much better coaching, then athletes will stay in it, and parents will be more willing to fund it if their athletes are moving forward.

As the coaches who were here previously said, those are the coaches who should be working with children who are 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years old, the coaches who know what the children need to have when they are 19, 20, or 21 years old, and move them through. A lot of the European countries will give a group of athletes to a coach, and that coach will work with them and develop them from the ages of 6, 7, and 8 all the way through to the age of 21. If they don't do well, the coach will be fired. Then, when those athletes have graduated from that program, they will go back down to the ones who are 6, 7, and 8 years old.

We tend to put a lot of our less experienced coaches with our less experienced athletes who need to learn the skills, but the coaches don't know how to coach them or how to teach them.

Regarding participation rates, I think it just comes down to cost, and one of the biggest costs is facilities. They tend not to pay as much for soccer as a sport like skating where in Airdrie an hour of ice time costs $160. You have to have a whole lot of athletes paying a whole lot of money to cover that cost. In competitive swimming a 25-metre lane, not the whole pool, costs $12 an hour.

When I was coaching in Nanaimo, my budget for lane space was almost $100,000. My coaching budget was $70,000. I had five professional coaches on staff. If we can reduce the costs for facilities, I think participation rates would go up, which then means more kids would be able to participate, which would lower our obesity rates.

Other than that, that's all I have to say right now, until you guys ask me questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Esau.

Mr. deVos.

[Jason deVos, As an Individual]

Thank you. I'll start by extending a thank you to everyone for inviting me to speak here today.

I'm a former professional soccer player. I turned pro at 16, moved overseas at 22, and spent 12 years there. I was 18 years in total as a professional soccer player. I was fortunate enough to captain my country for five years and hoist the only international trophy that Canada has ever won, the 2000 gold cup on the men's side. I've seen every level of the game.

I retired as a player in May 2008 to move into broadcasting, which is what I currently do. My current employer is TSN, but I've also spent a period of time working as a technical director at the Oakville Soccer Club. I spent time from November 2010 until June 2012 in that position, and I stepped down to focus all of my time on broadcasting. I also knew that I could hand off the reins to the very able-bodied Dino Lopez, who preceded me in this chair. I know that the club is in very good hands.

It was a real eye-opener for me. In part, I took that job because I wanted to experience the grassroots game and to understand exactly what the challenges were at that level. I'm very fortunate in the sense that, because I work in the media, I have a voice, and I feel that I have a responsibility to use that voice in a proactive way. It's very easy to criticize things but it's very difficult to be part of a solution. I'd like to be a part of the solution moving forward for soccer and for sport in our country.

Soccer is the largest participant-based sport in Canada. There are nearly 850,000 registered soccer players in our country. You have asked what the government can do to help improve coaching and improve sport, by extension, in Canada. I'll give you some numbers.

The Union of European Football Associations, UEFA, is the governing body of sport in Europe. Their coach certification program is regarded by most people as the best in the world. The UEFA has a National B licence, a National A licence, and what's called a Pro licence. To be a manager at the highest level of the game, you must have a UEFA Pro licence. I'm currently taking the National A licence and will complete that in June. So I have experience with the course. It is fantastic.

With respect to nationally certified coaches in Europe, France has 17,500 nationally certified coaches. Spain has 24,000 nationally certified coaches. Italy has 29,000. Germany has 35,000. In Canada we have a National B and a National A licence. The CSA, the Canadian Soccer Association, is in the process of developing a Pro licence. It hasn't been launched yet. We have 553 nationally certified coaches in our country for 850,000 players. That's one nationally certified coach for every 1,500 players.

Imagine what our education system would be like if we had one teacher for every 1,500 students. I equate coaches to teachers because I genuinely believe that teaching children sport is no different from teaching them math, science or French. It's about having the skills to impart knowledge and putting children in situations where they can apply those skills and learn and go on to succeed later on in life. Poor coaching at key development stages in our country is a detriment to the game of soccer in our country. I believe it's a detriment to sport as well. We have the largest participant base, but we do a terrible job of developing that participant base because we rely primarily on unqualified, untrained volunteer parents to teach children soccer at the key development stages. I'm a big supporter of the Sport Canada long-term athlete development plan. Those of you who have read what I've written on TSN and CBC prior to that will know that I believe it's a very good plan, a good program. It has its flaws, and we're going through that.

Many of you may have seen in the media criticism of the removal of scores and standings for young soccer players under the age of 12. That was brought about because adults who should be trained in how to coach kids are not trained in coaching kids. They are parent volunteers. They are well meaning and well intentioned, but they don't understand what is required to teach children skills.

The argument against a lot of the changes that are being implemented through the CSA's LTPD, long-term player development plan, is that soccer is really not that important. In the grand scheme of our society, how important is sport? I believe it's very important. I think there are a lot of lessons that can be learned through sport that can be applied to life. I learned those lessons myself as a young soccer player and I've applied them to everything that I've done.

In terms of the government's contribution to the development of coaching and the impact that can have, there are two aspects. One is very much a financial one. I don't believe that our country as a nation funds our athletes especially well, certainly not in comparison with some other countries around the world. We lament the fact every four years that on the men's side we fail to qualify for the World Cup and we wring our hands in collective dismay as to why that is. We do not fund our program sufficiently.

In qualifying for the 2003 North American championships, the gold cup, I, as captain of the Canadian national team, and my teammates were forced to train in a public park in Burnaby, because we did not have sufficient funds to train in a proper facility. People were walking their dogs across the training field of the national team that was trying to compete with the best in the nation, trying to compete against the likes of the United States and Mexico, which have full-fledged professional leagues. It's a constant struggle. The players on both the male and female sides will tell you that it's a constant struggle.

Coach education falls into the area of lack of financial support. I've been lobbying for the Canadian Soccer Association to start finding ways to offset the cost of coach education.

There are two barriers to coach education for a lot of people who want to become involved. One is cost and the other is availability. Many parent volunteers believe they're giving up their time as it is. They can't afford to give up any more time to train to become qualified. I think that's a big mistake, and it's something for which we need to try to find a solution.

The coaches of players at the young ages can have a profound effect on a young mind, and not just in a sporting context.

I wrote a story for CBC in 2009, I believe it was. I've been very fortunate in my career to work with some fantastic coaches at the professional level. The best coach I ever had, aside from my father, who has been coaching me my whole life, was my hockey coach from when I was 10 years old, a man by the name by Jack Mackinnon. He taught me more about what it took to be a professional athlete than anyone I've ever come across in 18 years as a professional soccer player. He got me to understand that the goal of the team is not about being an individual and that sometimes you have to give up a little of your own success as an individual for the benefit of the team.

I distinctly remember that in one practice he was teaching us how to skate and to cut on the outside of our blade. He demonstrated a number of times how to do the correct technique. When I got it, he grabbed me and literally picked me up off the ice and said to me, “Boy, I'm gonna make you a player.” Hearing that as a 10-year-old kid has stuck with me my whole life. He taught me more at the age of 10 about being a professional athlete than any professional coach I ever had.

How can we support coaches like Jack Mackinnon? How can we get them the training and education they need if they are to have that impact on kids? I think it's a huge initiative which the government could undertake to find a way to offset those costs so that it becomes more accessible to more people. There are lots of people out there who want to do it, but cost and time are two big considerations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. deVos.

Thank you both. This has been a very informative presentation so far. We're going to move to our questions and answers.

We'll start with Mr. Richards, for seven minutes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for being here.

Mr. Esau, obviously I know you, as you are from Airdrie as well. I'm glad you're here to share your expertise with us. I know you've had a lot of experience coaching at a variety of levels and in a variety of sports, so I think your testimony and your answers today will be very helpful for us.

Mr. deVos, the experience you just shared when talking about the coach you had at age 10, Mr. Mackinnon, ties back to what Mr. Esau had to say with regard to ensuring that we have coaches for the young age groups who have that expertise.

I can only speak to my own experience with hockey. I've seen it with my son as he has gone up through hockey, and I saw it as a kid when playing and later when coaching. As you said earlier, Shane, some years you get a great coach and some years you get a not-so-great one. I have seen it in my son's experience. He had one year with someone who was a terrible coach. It was at the wrong point in his development as a hockey player and it discouraged him from the game. The coach can make all the difference in the world. It is important to ensure that our coaches be trained and understand the game.

I also get the reality of the fact that in minor sports there are thousands and thousands of coaches out there. In an earlier panel, for which you were here for at least a part, we heard from representatives of the more technical, specialized sports, such as gymnastics and figure skating. Those are both very difficult sports for parents to coach. Those sports need professional coaches to provide training.

During that earlier panel, I mentioned my experience with coaching hockey. I was just out of junior hockey myself. I was about 20 years old and was coaching kids who were three or four years younger than I was. A number of the players I coached went on to quite successful junior hockey careers, or even further.

Did I know what I was doing as far as coaching was concerned? No, I was just sharing with them the stuff that I knew from having played. Could I have been more effective? Yes. Could some of the coaches I had or whom I have seen through my personal experiences and with my son have been more effective, with better training? Yes, absolutely.

How do we put pursuing that goal into practice? I'll throw the question out to both of you. We talked earlier about figure skating and gymnastics, those kinds of sports, being different from soccer and hockey, which have thousands of teams across the country for which we have to rely on volunteer coaches. I have heard of models in which minor hockey associations will hire one paid coach to run the whole thing and have the help of some parents. Maybe we need a model like that.

Could you elaborate on how you think we could see this done?

[Shane Esau]

I like the mentor approach, the one coach who basically runs it and has assistant coaches. Even at the Airdrie Minor Hockey Association level I've tried to push for the coaches to get together with a group of atom players and sit down and talk about the skills they've taught and which skill development workouts or drills they've used have worked and which haven't. But it's always competitive; it's this team versus that team, and it's always about winning.

The other thing that you look at is, yes, gymnastics tends to be a very young, maturing sport. It's the younger athletes who tend to be at the international level. But a lot of sports that we have in Canada tend to be older, maturing sports. If you look at the long-term athlete development model, these athletes shouldn't be doing one sport at a young age anyway. Why don't we have a recreational program where on Mondays they play soccer, on Tuesdays they play hockey, on Wednesdays they swim, on Thursdays they play basketball, on Fridays they do something else, and every day they go? If we have a coach who's not a specialist in that sport, they can develop those skills. They're just general kinesiology-type skills, physical literacy. People learn to run. People learn to throw a ball. People learn to kick a ball. That's physical literacy, and a lot of our kids don't have it at all. Probably 50% of the kids in elementary school don't know how to kick a ball, and that's wrong. It's wrong. You go out and look at an elementary school field and a lot of kids don't know how to run, because they don't run. They don't run anymore. It's scary to watch. It's because physical education has fallen off, right? Physical education is not a huge part of our development like it was when we were younger. You had to learn how to throw a ball, otherwise you just didn't survive through murder ball, or whatever it was.

I think that's one thing we need to do. The other thing is just having those general physical skills. If we develop those through to the age of 12 or 14, the cream will rise to the top. If they're really skilled at controlling a ball with their feet, they'll go to soccer. If they're really skilled in the water, they'll go to water polo or swimming or diving. They won't specialize at 8, 9, and 10 years old and be finished the sport at 14, like they are now.

[Jason deVos]

I think one of the challenges we have as a society is that our kids are overscheduled. All of their activities are on the family planner. They do soccer twice a week for an hour and they do hockey twice a week for an hour, and parents are unpaid chauffeurs shuffling them from one activity to another. Kids don't go outside and play anymore. I have that with my own children. I have a daughter who's 10 years old and a son who's 7. I asked my wife the other day why our kids never go outside and just play, just pick up a stick or a ball or something and play. I think it's because we also become very protective of our children as society changes. Technology has also played a big role in that.

I've been asked many times about the 10,000-hour rule. If you do any research into the development of elite athletes or elite specialists in anything, whether it's music or piano or whatnot, they talk about the 10,000-hour rule: you need 10,000 hours of concentrated training in order to become an elite anything. Someone asked me once if I had 10,000 hours of soccer practice as a kid growing up, and I did the math in my head and said, no, of course not. I didn't. But then I thought more about it and I thought about my childhood. I would get up in the morning, go to school, come home, stuff my face, do my homework, and then I was told, “Go outside and play with your brother”. That's what we did until it was dark. It was hockey, basketball, throwing a football, throwing a baseball, kicking a soccer ball. I look back on it and I tracked it back and I probably did have 10,000 hours because I was always refining my athletic abilities.

To back up what Shane said, I am very, very supportive of kids playing multiple sports for as long as they possibly can. I turned pro at the age of 16. I still played high school basketball, volleyball, and badminton until I graduated from high school because it helped me in terms of my athleticism as an overall athlete. I don't think kids do that enough anymore. They're too overspecialized and overscheduled.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Richards.

Mr. Dubé, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I want to keep going on that point, because I find it to be interesting. You talked about your experience with a hockey coach. I look at a guy like Lars Eller who plays for the Montreal Canadiens who did the same thing but it was a soccer coach, and now he plays hockey.

I get that sense of overspecialization. Do you—

[Jason deVos]

I'm sorry to cut you off, but if you watch the behind the scenes stuff, a lot of the NHL guys will juggle a soccer ball as a warm-up before they go out on the ice. The Montreal Canadiens do it. They've had a lot of Swedish players. They're very big on that.

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

In that same vein, do you think that not just coaches and parents, but we as a society tend to focus too much on these sports? I'm guessing you adopt the same holistic attitude that Mr. Lopez was talking about, since you preceded him at the Oakville Soccer Club. When you talk about that, or even funding and time on the field, that sort of thing, do we need to build more of an approach where we're giving to most elite athletes, but we're looking at the bigger picture as well? Do we need to do more of that?

[Jason deVos]

Yes, I think the holistic approach is one I definitely believe in.

The CSA launched their LTPD, which is the soccer-specific adaptation of LTAD back in 2008, and I've spent the last five years researching the science behind it. Comparing it to my own upbringing as a child, I definitely had that rounded background in multiple sports which helped me. I believe that's definitely the way forward.

The challenge we've had in soccer is that people think soccer is easy. They think that you just put on a pair of shoes and go out and kick a ball, that it's not difficult to figure it out, and anybody can teach it. Have you ever seen a hockey coach who can't skate? Have you ever seen a swimming coach who can't swim? How can you teach a child to kick a ball if you can't kick one yourself?

What's happening with the participation rates is really interesting. When you dig down and do the research on it, soccer is the most played sport in our country, but the drop-off rate is crazy when kids get through that learning stage, the 8 to 12 age group. Why? They haven't acquired the skills they need to play the game at any level moving forward. You throw a group of kids who are 8, 9, or 10 years old on a field and they run around like a swarm of bees. They kind of chase the ball wherever it goes. You probably all have kids and they've all played the game, so you know what it's like. It's kind of funny for a while, but after a while you get a little frustrated. I'm at that stage right now with my own kids. I'm very frustrated watching them play, because I know they need to be taught. If they don't get taught, they're never going to have any level of success in the game moving forward in life.

Again, I only can talk about my own experience. I learned how to play hockey because I had a great coach when I was a kid, Jack Mackinnon. I stopped playing hockey at the age of 12 because I couldn't play both hockey and soccer. Soccer became a 12-month commitment for me at that point and I couldn't fit hockey in. I did not skate for 22 years, until the day I retired as a soccer player. As soon as I did, the first thing I did when I moved back to Canada was go out and buy equipment because I wanted to pick up and play with my buddies again. I was able to do that without a problem because I was taught those skills, how to do it properly, at the age of 10.

That is something we need to focus on in every sport. Train the coaches so they can teach kids the skills, and the kids will stay active for life. It won't be about developing national team players, because the reality is it's a very, very, very small percentage of athletes that reach that level. It isn't about them. As Dino said before me, every national team player, every single one of them starts out as a grassroots athlete.

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

It becomes de facto, right?

[Jason deVos]

Absolutely.

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

I guess that's what I was wondering. I look at the piece you wrote on the whole idea of where we had success internationally in soccer this year, in the Olympics, for example, but I guess it's all relative, most notably the fantastic performance by the women. Even I naively said to myself last summer that that's great, and maybe a lot of young women and girls will be inspired by that to get involved. If I'm following this line of thinking, there's probably a lack of support at the lower levels that prevents this success from being capitalized on, right?

[Jason deVos]

Absolutely.

We have a great opportunity as well. Canada will be hosting the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the 2014 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup. We have a great chance to expose the game to the nation, and not just on the female side. I believe the success or failure of either of our programs, male or female, can inspire both genders. Countless hockey buddies who never kicked a ball in their life came up to me after the bronze medal game and said , “That was unbelievable! What a game!” Everyone was talking about it. We have an opportunity to do that.

The success we've had on the women's side with winning a bronze medal at the Olympics is not because we've got everything right underneath that. It's actually that a great coach has come in and has worked with that group of players and they overachieved. They'll tell you that themselves. What we have underneath that at the grassroots level is broken and needs to be fixed. It needs to come from a huge push to train coaches to teach those children who are 8, 9, or 10 years old how to kick a soccer ball, how to skate, how to swim. The skills that they learn in those sports can stay with them for the rest of their lives. The lessons they learn through sport they will be able to apply to their education, to their jobs, to their families, to their relationships. Everything they do in life, they can apply the lessons that they learned in sport.

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

I have one last question for both of you.

Mr. Esau, you mentioned the idea of a university degree for coaches. What's the challenge there in terms of keeping it accessible? I think that's a fair point, in the sense that there is coaching the coach. Do you feel that might create extra barriers for sports that are actually becoming increasingly difficult to access, whether it's financially or whatnot?

[Shane Esau]

I think financially it will become more difficult to a certain point. If you use the model of having that professional, whether it be at the young ages, at the grassroots level, being a mentor and helping along parents who are volunteers.... The big issue is just that: we aren't teaching our kids how to be just generally active.

You'll hear parents at a hockey rink or on the soccer pitch say, “My kid's going to make it. My kid's going to make the professional levels.” As a parent, you hear it from just about everyone. I sit back and say, “Do you really know what the numbers are? Do you know that two in 100,000 kids who play hockey are going to make the NHL?” The numbers are staggering, but they all think their kid's going to make it.

I think if we go the education route, where we're teaching our kids to be physically literate, those kids who are going to make it are going to make it. I've been a professional coach for 20 years. Parents are more apt to listen to someone who has an educated background than to someone who doesn't. So if you can, educate the parents. Your kid may make it, and if they're going to make it, they're going to make it. But what we want is someone who at the age of 40 can strap on a pair of skates and go skating and have fun playing beer league hockey. For someone like me, because I was in swimming and could never go skating, I didn't learn to skate until I was 30 years old. I can't play beer league hockey—I just can't—because I don't know how to skate well enough.

Those are the sorts of things we need to teach our kids, especially in Canada: how to skate, how to swim, how to throw a ball, and how to kick a ball. That's what we need, and then the cream will rise to the top.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Moore]

Thank you, Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Simms for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, gentlemen. This has been quite interesting indeed.

The MPs actually have a soccer team. I'm a member. We're called the Commoners.

[Jason deVos]

Are you any good?

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

Well, I'm getting to that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

We're called the Commoners. Your analogy of the swarm of bees hovering around the ball is not exclusive to children. It actually applies to....

That's a fair assessment, don't you think, Pierre?