Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 28th, 2013

[Graham Fraser]

I would like a recommendation to the effect that athletes be guaranteed the services they need on site in the official language of their choice, whether it is for training or for other needs.

I would like to give you an example. When the Royal 22^nd Regiment was in Afghanistan, there were never any complaints because the entire infrastructure from Valcartier had been moved to Kandahar in support of the soldiers. I hope that there will be support and all the infrastructure necessary for the athletes and their families and coaches in the official language of their choice when they are in a foreign country that is hosting the Olympic Games.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

So you would like the bilingual infrastructure that we have here to be moved to Russia, to the extent possible.

[Graham Fraser]

To the extent possible, yes, please. That is what I would like.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Okay.

Mr. MacQuarrie, for Sochi in a couple of weeks from now, is there something, an ultimate request, that you would address to the government through us?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

Well, the activities we're involved in are going to play out the way they're currently engaged. I would suggest that it would be of great value to have a commitment in your report to investigate and explore this complex legislative environment that prevents the access and sharing of information. The commitment won't affect Sochi, for sure, but it would definitely affect the Pan Am Games coming up, the Rio Olympics, and the world championships in other events that were mentioned earlier.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Can you be more explicit about the legislative problems you just mentioned?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

We have learned from other countries that their legislatures have enacted regulations and changed laws to enable the sharing of information. They have empowered their anti-doping agencies with certain powers and authority, in Australia, for example, to compel individuals to come and testify and provide information. This is a monumental move in the world of anti-doping, which exists in civil law under contract as opposed to the legislative environment that would be affected through federal regulation.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

You would like to see Canada update its legislative framework?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

We have encouraged Sport Canada to work with its counterpart agencies to create the legislative environment whereby this information would help the efforts we undertake with respect to clean sport.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Is there something you might feed to the committee about this specific problem that we may study?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

Yes, certainly. We would be happy to provide additional information.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Fulton, for Sochi, do you have any recommendations that you would like us to carry to the government?

[Duncan Fulton]

I think directly for Sochi, Mr. Dion, probably not. For future Olympics, I think that if you have an objective to unlock more private sector funding to support athletes in the sport community, then you need to make it more compelling for the private sector to do that.

You'll make it more compelling if the athletes are celebrated more and have bigger brands. If the brands of the athletes ride, it's easier for a lot of companies that otherwise wouldn't think of it to align themselves with those athletes and invest money against the athletes in those sports.

The Government of Canada is spending hundreds of millions of dollars investing against athletes and, respectfully, is not telling the story of the success of those athletes in between Olympic Games. There's almost no marketing effort at all on the dozens and dozens and dozens of successes of these athletes all the way through. I think that if some small reasonable investments were made to do that, to raise the profile of those athletes, the profile of those athletes in those sports would attract a lot more private sector attention, and you would unlock a lot more private sector funding.

Right now, there are hundreds of millions of dollars going to good use, and Canadians don't know it's going to good use, and the private sector doesn't often see it.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

So there's a lack of communication about that?

[Duncan Fulton]

I think there's a lack of marketing of the success of the athletes. Personally, if I spent a few hundred million dollars to invest in athletes and they did a great job and no one knew about it other than every two or four years at an Olympics, I don't think I'd be maximizing my investment by not telling the success stories our athletes have. Fifty medals on a world stage this year is an exceptional accomplishment, and no one knows about it. The private sector doesn't know. I don't think Canadians know.

It's too late for Sochi, but unlocking private sector funding towards future events is going to be tied to celebrating the successes that, frankly, your funding is generating.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Do you have inspiration that we may find from other countries that are more successful at advertising the success of their athletes? I would say the United States.

[Duncan Fulton]

Yes, the U.S. probably does a bit better job of telling those stories. Canada's pretty good at hockey. There's a great hockey culture here. But, you know, there are incredible things happening across two dozen different sports that people don't even know about. You could unlock a lot of value creation for the entire sport industry in Canada if you just made it easier for the private sector to see the successes you already have in front of you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Okay. Thank you both very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Boughen, for seven minutes.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Let me add my voice of welcome to the panel. Thank you for sharing your day with us. We appreciate your involvement and your expertise.

I have a couple of questions.

First of all, Doug, let me run this by you. If Canada were to legalize marijuana and one of the Olympians tested positive for marijuana, would the other countries disqualify him or her from competition, given whatever the current situation is on marijuana?

[Doug MacQuarrie]

The anti-doping rules are governed by the World Anti-Doping Code. It's a uniform and global set of requirements. Currently, cannabis is a prohibited substance in competition. It has a specific threshold associated with the tests we conduct. An athlete in competition found to have cannabis present in their system above that threshold would be subject to an anti-doping rule violation regardless of the legal and civil environment of whatever country they come from.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Okay, thank you.

Jeremy, you've been working on this for a long time. Maybe you can share with us how athletes get started on doping. We're talking playground to podium. Now, little kids don't get doped. Maybe they get a popsicle at the end of the day for a reward, but they're not into doping. But somewhere between that playground and that podium they get hooked on something or other. Can you tell us how that happens?

If I look back on my own time in athletics, which was fairly extensive, it would never have entered my mind, or the minds of any of the people I competed with, to get into the doping bag. That was totally not doable, not viable. You would be looked at as kind of a nut case if you even smoked. What's happened? How has this happened?

If we don't know how it happens, we'll never change it. Putting together—I don't know—35 labs does not change that landscape. It just tells you there are 35 labs busy checking folks who are hooked on dope.

[Jeremy Luke]

Thanks for your question. It's a complex problem to understand.

The experience we've had, in speaking with athletes who have chosen to go down the road of doping, is that it has been for differing reasons. If you think about cycling as an example and some of the experiences we've had in that, there are athletes who shared the same view you have as far as never thinking they would do it until they encountered a culture within that sport at the professional level and made the decision at that point in time to go down that route.

Certainly the work we do in anti-doping on the protection of side of things and the enforcement side of things is important and it's effective to a certain degree. But I think the key message is it comes down to values and the values within our sport system in order to create an environment so the young athletes at the playground level, as they move up, can withstand the pressures that may exist to dope, based on the proper values they've experienced in sport before getting to that level.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you.

Graham, the Canada Games in Sherbrooke last summer had some hiccups. In your opinion was the Official Languages Act enforced in Sherbrooke? Was it evident that athletes had a choice? Can you talk to us about that a little bit?

[Graham Fraser]

I was extremely impressed with the performance of the Canada Games in Sherbrooke. I attended the opening ceremonies. I visited a number of the sites, and one of the things that I felt was that it was a reflection of the amount of planning that had gone into the language component of the organization of the Games.

There was somebody on the executive with that responsibility who told me that he had constantly referred to the manual that we had developed. There's a little tear out, a quick reference page in the middle, and he told me that it was pinned to the bulletin board in his office and that he worked carefully through establishing agreements, creating a structure, designing an effective plan and tracking progress, assembling the team, communicating with the public in both official languages, cultural activities, quality control, and all of those elements. From what I saw personally and from what we heard from the team who was there on the ground throughout the Games, reports were all very positive. I saw it as a real success.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you.

I guess, Duncan, Canadian Tire has taken a very positive step in sponsorship and acknowledging athletes and their success. How do you think you might encourage other corporations to become involved in that sponsorship program when in fact it's not a sponsorship competition, it's a sponsorship program?

Do you have any ideas about how you could go to other corporations and ask them to jump on board, tell them that there's something there for them at the end of the day? I mean, that something is people being more aware of what the athletes have done. As you've said, people aren't aware of which athletes have competed, or where they've competed in the past year, and their success.