Thanks very much.
I thought I'd use my time this morning to give you a few views on why the private sector, Canadian Tire in particular, has an interest in Sochi and Canada's performance on the world stage.
Private sector companies align themselves with sports, in this case the Olympics, generally for two reasons. One is brand for commercial reasons, to elevate your brand, because you're tying yourself to a great symbol like the Olympics and some of our greatest athletes. The other reason is out of a sense of greater social responsibility, to give back to communities and invest in sports, because it's core to your DNA.
Certainly in our case, for 90 years we've been investing in communities in sport. We today spend more than $40 million a year in communities in sport. For us, associating ourselves with the Olympics and the Paralympics and the Special Olympics, which is a relationship we're forming now, is just a natural thing for us to do.
Our view on the ability for Canada to succeed in Sochi or at any world venue is not necessarily the year or the months before the competition; it's the journey from the playground to the podium. It's about getting kids involved at a very early age in sport, getting them excited and inspired about the power of sport, and helping them understand the importance of living healthy and active lives.
At a playground level, we are big supporters of Hockey Canada, Soccer Canada, Skate Canada, Alpine Canada, and thousands of community sport programs. We just announced last week, with 60 partners, a national movement to compel our provinces to inject an hour a day of activity into schools, recognizing that 88% of Canadian parents are extremely concerned that their kids are not active today or nowhere near as active as any of us were as kids. In fact, we have a fairly exciting announcement next week in one of the provinces that will be among the first in the country to commit to getting kids in their province active for an hour a day at school.
We obviously use athletes to help inspire kids to live healthy and active lives. We have relationships with Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Charles Hamelin, Christine Sinclair, Mark McMorris in snowboard, and Rosie MacLennan. She actually works for us at Canadian Tire two days a week, and is gaining some real-life job experience.
Mark's Work Wearhouse, which is one of our business divisions, is getting heavily involved in community coaching. Sport Chek, another one of our divisions, is increasingly getting involved at the high school and university levels.
At an elite level, we support major organizations that are critical to things like Sochi for their success: the Canada Games, B2ten. We fund the Olympic committee, the Paralympic committee. We direct money to Own the Podium.
I will say, just as an editorial comment, that we need to do a better job as a country of celebrating our athletes and celebrating the success of the investments that the government makes. The government's putting hundreds of millions of dollars against athletes and their performance—in the journey to Sochi, in this case.
Canadian athletes have won more than 50 medals on the world stage this year, but we don't hear about it at all, right?
These are world events where, because of the funding of the Government of Canada, through Own the Podium and others, our athletes are succeeding. But we don't put a big enough spotlight on their success, so Canadians only care, once every two or four years, how many medals we get.
I recognize that it's tough for the government to spend money marketing the success of those sport figures. It's tough for Own the Podium to take money away from athletes to market that success, which is why I think the private sector has a role in doing that for others. Certainly our objective for the next eight years as a partner of the Canadian Olympic Committee is to elevate and make heroes out of the athletes that you and many others are funding.
In Sochi in particular, we've invested against approximately 10 athletes. They're going to be featured in all of our advertising. In fact for Sport Chek, every single ad we do for Sport Chek for the next eight years will feature amateur athletes just to elevate them and make heroes out of them to help inspire other people.
For the friends and families of athletes in Sochi, we helped fund Canada Olympic House in Sochi to make sure they have a place to come to celebrate the athletes and their lives.
In terms of promoting patriotism in stores, we have a number of merchandise lines that are out there right now. We have a new Adidas line of high-performance gear at Sport Chek and a number of Olympic-branded things at Canadian Tire. Certainly the royalties all go to the Canadian Olympic Committee.
I would suggest that, as we look to the contributing factors to success on the podium, we bear in mind that it is not so much what happened last year or this year. As a country, if we want to be successful on the world stage, we need to start investing in kids and start inspiring them to live healthy and active lives. This is a major issue compared with where we were 10 or 20 years ago. We view our role as contributing everything from the playground to the podium.
Those are my comments, Mr. Chair. I'd be happy to take questions.