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 referred to in the brief around training and certification, participation, and how the federal government might further promote coaching in Canada.
A little bit of background on the Coaching Association of Canada. The organization was established in 1970. It's a not-for-profit national organization that has received the mandate from both levels of government. The federal-provincial-territorial ministers responsible for sport have given the mandate to CAC for the development of coaching across all sports and at all levels.
It is very much a partnership organization, relying on all of the different national sport organizations and provincial-territorial coaching groups that are involved in coaching.
In terms of the importance of coaching development, there was an analysis done by the Conference Board of Canada in October of 2011 in preparation for the new Canadian sport policy. These were three of the areas that were addressed in this very wide-ranging study. It looked at the number one priority for Canada's sport development system and concluded that it was coaches and instructors; the number one priority for the high-performance delivery system was coaches and technical leadership; and the number one program change related to long-term athlete development was the training of coaches and volunteers.
Again, I reinforce the fact that you're doing this study and addressing coaching, and it's very much supported by that analysis done by the Conference Board of Canada, leading up to the new Canadian sport policy that came out just over a year ago.
In terms of the training and certification of coaches, that is the primary role and function of the Coaching Association of Canada and its partners. The slogan we use is “Every athlete deserves a certified coach”. We train coaches right from the volunteer community level to the Olympic and Paralympic level.
I have a little video clip that's not going to work. It doesn't matter. It was just to demonstrate some of the work being done at the base level with regard to teaching young children fundamental movement skills—balance, coordination, running, jumping, throwing—as the starting point, and a really essential part of the sport delivery pathway, right from that level up to the National Coaching Institute, which has an advanced diploma for high-level coaches that are preparing to be Olympic and Paralympic coaches.
In addition, we have specific programs for women in coaching, who are very underrepresented in coaching in Canada. At the national team level, approximately 15% of the coaches are women, and even through the delivery system women tend to be quite underrepresented. In addition, the aboriginal coaching program and programs for coaching athletes with a disability are part of the program we offer.
I just want to bring your attention to a study that was done by the University of Toronto evaluating one of the modules called “Make ethical decisions”, within the national coaching certification program. This was done by two professors at the University of Toronto in 2011 and is a very important part of the program we offer: the whole ethical framework for coaching as an important foundation. It found that 73% reported that they had changed their thinking about ethical decision-making as a result of their course participation. Over 50% were looking for further education on things like fair play, athlete maltreatment, health and safety, equity, doping, honouring sport, and social ethics.
Again, this is a real foundation part of the program, and the feedback on it has been very positive.
When we get to the area of regulation of coaches, which was another point that was referred to in the brief, I think it's important to state the opinion, backed up by some publications, that coaching is quite different from other professions—law, or medicine, or accounting—in that it is termed here as a blended professional area. It is very much a mix of volunteer coaching and professional or paid coaching, whereas those other real professions don't allow anyone outside of their professional sphere. In the case of coaching, it is very much a blend between volunteer coaching and professional coaching, and it's important that we respect and value both aspects. We need more paid professional coaches to lead sport development, but the system is also very dependent on the volunteer coaches who really enable such a breadth of sport opportunities across the country.
However, both have to address the whole risk management and adherence to the code of ethics that really applies to any coach, whether volunteer or paid. That is a critical component of the work we are doing, and it's an area that we see needs further attention. The codes of ethics exist, but we need to address, in a more fulsome way, the adherence and the disciplinary process to ensure that if there are people who are breaking the code, they can be removed from the system.
In terms of participation from a coaching aspect, over 90,000 participants take part in NCCP courses each year, making it one of the biggest adult education programs in the country. Over a million coaches have taken a course since the program began in the 1970s.
Referring back to the Conference Board of Canada report:
“It is the coaches that define a quality experience. ... Having quality coaches, leads to quality sport.”
Again, I think there's a very strong consensus on the importance of the role that coaches play.
In terms of looking forward to areas the federal government might further promote, to highlight some of the barriers and challenges we're facing, we are in the process of conducting a number of different focus groups to get input from the field, from coaches and the people teaching the coaching courses. Some of the issues that are quite prevalent are the cost and time to get certified. In many cases here, we're dealing with volunteer coaches who are already volunteering their time. On top of that, to be expected to take an education program is another ask of them, as well as the cost to be involved in that. Those are big issues within coaching across the country and across different sports.
Accessibility to and awareness of NCCP training.... Again, in many of the bigger cities the program is quite accessible, but as you go into rural areas...and when you go across 67 sports, some of the sports are quite small, so they don't offer the program that frequently. So accessibility is a big issue. Part of that is the capacity of the sport organizations to actually offer the program, both in terms of human resources and financial resources.
I'd also like to bring attention to two studies, the “Report on the Status of Coaches in Canada”, which was done in 2009, and the “Improving High-Performance Coaching” study done by Own the Podium and the Coaching Association. They have really highlighted the need for more full-time coaching positions to support Canadian athletes.
I've identified four areas here that I would like your committee to consider. One area is around e-learning, to try to help address that cost and accessibility to training to support the sport organizations. To deliver elements of the NCCP online would open up some of the accessibility and reduce some of the costs. I believe there are some federal government programs that really deal with technology, so that could be an area that would have a very big impact on the training of coaches across different sports.
Another idea that comes up quite frequently is the potential to have tax deductibility of the course registration fees for coaches who take an NCCP course. There is the children's fitness tax credit, but the volunteer coaches who are taking NCCP are having to pay for that, and the incentive of a tax credit is something that comes up quite frequently.
Another area is linkage with universities, especially when we get to the high-performance and the paid coaching end, to look at coaching degree programs and research in coaching. Again, the federal government puts a lot of money into research through the different council grants, but very little of that money goes into sport. That's a comment we get repeatedly from the university professors who play a major role in the design, development, and delivery of the coaching program, but they're being pulled off to other areas where there are grants in health and other areas. So there really is a need for additional research in sport and in coaching. That's really the lifeblood of universities, and we really value that contribution that university departments of physical education and kinesiology make to our programs.
Finally, with regard to federal-provincial cost-sharing programs for coach salaries, although there has been a lot of progress made in the recent past in terms of more coaching positions available at the national level, when you go below that national team level, there is still a big gap in really defining a career as a coach. That's an area where we've had a lot of discussions with provinces, and there seems to be quite an open attitude to things like cost-sharing programs.
Let me stop there; it must have been about 10 minutes. Those are some of the key ideas I'd like to put forward. Thank you.
