Yes, that's very good. That's a good reaction time, so I'm happy for that.
The only thing he didn't put in there...I'd like to see it be free. That's one of the things we can do. We spend a lot of money on things like this, where you bring people in, but perhaps we could have introductory coaching courses online so that people can go online and take those courses at no cost to them and at their own convenience. Those are the ones who will probably become involved with their sons and daughters in different sports. If they want to go further, as I did, and become a professional coach, there are the higher levels of coaching certification, it's more time-consuming, and you need to know more.
But at that grassroots level, if we think back—some of you who are of my vintage anyway—it was our moms and our dads who coached, and I sure the heck know they didn't have any coaching certification. They just had a love for the sport, a love for their kids, time, interest, and a sincere desire to be there and get it done.
A lot of time in sport now we hear—and I know that from hockey studies, football studies, baseball studies, and basketball studies—that we play too many games and we don't practise enough. Well, that's a result of not necessarily having great coaches, because a lot of times for those coaches it's the luck of the draw: who is in your area?
I would say that now we try to recruit coaches on a quarterly, once-a-year basis, and we struggle to get coaches from Canada. We now have to go overseas. We're getting them from Romania, Russia, England, and Ireland. It's a very difficult profession, so we have to find ways to make it more attractive, especially if we want to take it seriously and especially if we want kids who are really working hard to embrace activities...because we tell them to; we tell them to get away from the computer and be more active. But we don't have people there ready for them.
We built a dedicated facility in Oakville seven years ago. Like a lot of sports, we were located in a commercial building. We went from 800 to 1,600 kids a session—you can multiply that by three—and 1,000 people at summer camps.
Facilities play a big part in it, too. If you build a great facility and you get coaches running good programs, the kids will come.
We have 240 competitive kids. We went from some 30 coaches to employing about 65 or 70 now. We have about 500 kids on the waiting list.
We built the new building with the help of federal and provincial government money in a project in Oakville. It cost us personally $1.7 million—the whole facility was $3 million—and we paid it off in 10 years instead of 20 years.
Based on our agreement, we're going to have rent-free access for 30 years, but because we're so full and we think we have the right formula, we're now asking the town to build another facility with us. We don't like to see those kids on a waiting list; we want to get them active.
I think there are a lot of things that can happen in sport in Canada. I hope your committee can identify a lot of them and make some inroads with them. I think some are a lot easier than others, and I know some are very daunting challenges.
Again, I've been doing this for 46 years. We used to have quadrennial planning when I was a national coach, and we'd bring people in from all across the country. We'd have all these great plans, only to learn that we didn't have enough money to follow through with the plans. Then we'd have to plan again, based on the money we had.
All I'm suggesting is this. I know resources are limited. I'm not a big person asking for money; I'm a big person asking for support. I like to generate money through corporations, and I like to generate money by running sport like a business. I think it can be done that way, but I think there are probably some things the government can do provincially and federally to help most sports. You just have to be creative, think outside the box, and challenge sports people to come up with the ideas.
Thank you.