Canadian Heritage Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2013

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I think that Mr. Leung is being too modest. With respect to risky activities, he also makes the House of Commons staff sing when he plays the bagpipes. That is risky, but I congratulate him.

I would like to come back to something you said a little earlier, Mr. Wilson. You talked about attracting private sponsors and so on. You said that you had to run after all the kids who go really fast on their toboggans. Clearly, the visibility of certain sports is an issue. That information is relevant for a committee like this one.

On a number of occasions, and even here today, we have heard the expression

“the cake is baked”.

Where Sochi is concerned, the cake is baked. Mr. Lyon, Mr. Judge and Mr. Wilson, thank you for being here to share this information with us.

Mr. Judge, I also noted that when you knew that the next games were going to take place in Sochi, you took the trouble to go there in order to be prepared. That is interesting, because I think that in order to be prepared and get where you are going on time,

timing is everything,

Visibility is also an issue. You alluded to that fact.

In that connection, I would point out that public meetings like this one are rare. So I want to take advantage of the fact that this meeting is public in order to call for a vote on the motion that I introduced last week. The motion is to have Mr. Blais, from the CRTC, appear before the committee on February 7, 2014. Time goes quickly, and since our next meeting will not be until February, if we want to give the clerk enough time to invite Mr. Blais, I would like the committee to vote on this motion that I presented last week. As you can understand, our being televised here has a direct connection with your point about visibility in sports. I would therefore call for a vote on my motion.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mrs. Emma-Leigh Boucher]

Are we doing a recorded vote on the motion?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Yes. He first needs to read the motion.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

He's out of order. He has called a vote—

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I can read the motion:

That the Committee invite the President of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to appear before February 7th, 2014 for a two-hour televised session to present the Commission’s approach to the future of Canadian television to the Committee, including measures taken to solicit Canadians’ participation in the “Parlons Télé” consultation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Is there any debate on this?

[An hon. member]

Call the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Okay. We'll proceed with the vote.

(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

I'd like to thank our witnesses for contributing to our study.

We will briefly suspend as we bring in our next panel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

We will start up the meeting again.

We have two witnesses: Canadian Olympic gold medallist Katie Weatherston, and from the National Hockey League Players' Association, Robert Zamuner. If I remember right, he was pretty handy on the face-off.

Katie Weatherston, we'll start with you for 10 minutes.

[Katie Weatherston, Olympic Gold Medalist, As an Individual]

I brought notes, but I'm just going to talk, I guess.

I'd like to thank Rick for inviting me here. It's a pleasure to be here. Usually we speak in schools, so I'm not used to this.

My name is Katie Weatherston. I'm 30 years old. I played on the women's Olympic ice hockey team in 2006. We won gold in Turin, Italy. I brought the medal to show you guys today if you'd like to see it. I won gold as well in the world championships in 2007 in Canada. It was great to win gold in my home country. We won silver in 2008 in China. I will quickly show you this to get you excited about sports. It's pretty big. It's heavy. The 2010 one was a little bit bigger, but ours is pretty unique with a hole in the middle.

As for my story I was pretty fortunate because I got to play hockey in Canada. It's our national sport. We were pretty well taken care of by Hockey Canada. We were not as well taken care of as the men were, of course, which kind of annoyed us at times—no offence. We always had our flights, our meals, and all of our equipment covered. While we were with Team Canada all of our physio and training expenses were covered as well. Those are the two biggest things for an athlete: having full time to dedicate to our sport to train, and with that comes money, because we cannot work; and the other big one, especially for me, was the number of injuries I sustained and keeping my body physically fit and healthy. Those are two big things that I think you guys should focus on and work towards helping athletes with.

With hockey it's a little bit different, because we usually train in our cities. We'll train in the city for the entire year and play on local club teams. Club hockey in Canada is not that great once you're out of university. We'll meet five times during the year for three training camps and two major competitions. We're really only together about seven weeks of the year. It's a little bit different from the way some of the other athletes are constantly on the road and travelling.

I asked a few of the other athletes what they thought I should tell you guys today. One suggestion was to focus on more in-house training. There are a bunch of satellite training centres, but for us to have a big centre in Ottawa would be great. We have one in Toronto, one in Montreal, and one in Calgary. I don't think we have enough.

The other thing I think we could do a better job at is partnerships. We definitely need more medical coverage. It's a bit of a soft spot with me because my career ended in December 2008 due to a severe concussion. I was given my carding money, $1,500 for the rest of the year. We also got $500 from Quest for Gold. That made a total of $2,000, tax-free, that we were getting. I had no support after that.

Being an athlete and getting injured on the job left me with no medical coverage. I'm sure there are not as many people in my situation, but it has been pretty hard trying to come up with the funds to pay my medical bills. Dental plans and health benefits are huge. We need physiotherapy, chiropractic, and all that stuff to be good athletes.

Funding is pretty good at $2,000 a month, but it could be a little bit better. That's what I think you guys can do better. That funding is great. It definitely helped me when I was a rookie trying to train for the Olympics in 2006. We moved to Calgary. In Olympic years we move and train for about eight months straight. We were by far the best prepared country, and I think that's why we won. We trained longer than any other team did. The U.S. quickly followed suit, but we still beat them in 2010. I'm sure we will beat them in Russia again.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you for inviting me here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you.

Mr. Zamuner.

[Robert Zamuner, Divisional Player Representative, National Hockey League Players' Association]

Thank you very much for having me here today. It's an honour to talk to this committee.

First, I'd like to congratulate Katie. I know she gave me a little shot before. In 1998, I learned to appreciate what the women's team went through: the dedication, the hard work, the sacrifice they made. We went to their gold medal game and supported them. Congratulations to them. I'm jealous. I wish I had one of those medals. It's a testament to you. You make Canada proud. The history of the Canadians' program is outstanding, so congratulations.

[Katie Weatherston]

Thanks very much.

[Robert Zamuner]

I think I'm a little different. Obviously, being an NHL player, I come from a different angle. Wayne Gretzky, a teammate of mine in Nagano, said that hockey had given him everything, and it's very true.

When I think about it in my own way, I went to Guelph and played junior hockey for the Guelph Platers. I met my wife there, and had three kids. I've travelled the world. I've met some amazing people. I've had the great honour of representing Canada and having that maple leaf on my jersey. It's very difficult to articulate. Katie's had that opportunity. I played in 1997 and won the world championship in Helsinki. In 1998 I was in Switzerland and then in Nagano—probably the greatest professional moment of my life and also the biggest disappointment in the sense that with Canada if you don't win gold in hockey, it's a disappointment.

Something that I take more from being on that hockey team was being a Canadian, and part of that experience in Nagano was absolutely amazing. Two moments stick out for me.

If you recall, Roots had outfitted us all in these red and white uniforms with the poor boy hats. We were quite distinguishable. Obviously, we're big guys and we had these uniforms on, but I'll never forget. Keith Primeau, who's about six feet five inches tall, and I wanted to go down to the city of Nagano, just to see the local sites. You can imagine the two of us in the train. Just like in the movies, you think there's no room for one or two more people and 30 or 40 more local Japanese jump on this train and we're all tight in and you've got Keith and me looking over everybody, and no exaggeration, people were literally poking us and saying, “Canada, Canada,” and smiling at us. I get emotional about it because I'd never felt so patriotic. Walking through the village at Nagano people were stopping us and taking pictures of us. They didn't know I was Rob Zamuner, the NHL hockey player; they thought of me as a Canadian. That's what I found was amazing.

The second moment from that Olympics that I recall and which sticks with me is the closing ceremonies. As I said, we didn't win gold—the Czechs had this guy named Dominik Hašek who was insanely good. We had a team meeting after we lost that semi-final game against the Czechs. It was quite remarkable. Wayne Gretzky said, “Listen. We're Canadians. Let's go to the closing ceremonies and represent our country.” We had the choice of going back and joining our NHL teams and getting the NHL season back under way, but we all decided to stay and attend the closing ceremonies. It was an amazing night. I still remember us all walking into the stadium with our uniforms, fireworks, the long two- or three-hour ceremony. At the end, one of the Canadian athletes had snuck in a big flag. I don't know how he snuck in this flag because it was the size of a football field; it was massive.

[Katie Weatherston]

They do it every year.

[Robert Zamuner]

Is it every year? Okay, there you go. We were not aware of it.

All the Canadian athletes started waving this flag and an amazing thing happened. All the athletes from the different countries swarmed the Canadian flag and started grabbing the flag and waving it with us because they wanted to be part of our team. It was just incredible.

I think what I'm trying to say here is, when we talk about Katie and we talk about the challenges that the athletes have, funding is obviously an issue. For us it's a little different. About 14 years ago, we, at the NHL Players' Association, established a goals and dreams fund. Mike Gartner and Adam Graves and a bunch of us wanted to give back to grassroots hockey.

The gentleman who presented before us talked about grassroots. That's very important, obviously, in sport. Over the last 12 or 13 years, we've given hockey equipment to over 60,000 kids around the world. That's coming personally from NHL players, from those who played 12 or 13 years ago and from present-day players.

For the 10th anniversary, P.J. Stock, who's on Hockey Night in Canada and was my teammate with the Boston Bruins, Devin Smith, and I travelled around. We went to Bosnia, to Moscow, to Sweden, just to give the gift of hockey equipment and sport, for kids to be active. I hope that one day one of those participants will be in the Olympics and have the opportunity that Katie and I also had.

In closing, I'd like to say that what Katie talks about with the funding and the grassroots is something that I'd encourage everyone in this room to be creative about to try to help our athletes, because our standing internationally is quite remarkable, and to have that experience to be proud of—not being part of the hockey team, but being part of Team Canada—is quite remarkable.

I thank you for your time. I very much appreciate it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Mr. Young for seven minutes.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today and coming all the way from Oakville. I just had to get that on the record. It's my riding, so thank you.

Thank you for being here as well, Katie, and for telling your story. It's a very important story.

With regard to injuries in sport, concussions are, as we've heard, life-changing events. We also know that they're not always an accident.

I just wanted to ask you, Robert, have you done any analysis into the frequency of concussions at the NHL level and trends you may have witnessed?

[Robert Zamuner]

Actually, ironically, I've been part of a joint concussion working group with the NHL and the NHL Players' Association. I represent the players, obviously, and I've been on that committee for approximately the last five years.

The program has been around since 1997. As for what we do, we look at the mechanism of the injury, the recovery times, and the return-to-play protocols. It's obviously very important to us as an association to make sure that the well-being of our players is taken care of. It's an ongoing challenge, if you will.

On rule 48, two years ago we changed the rule to try to make the game safer. You acquire all this information. You acquire how these injuries happen, and you try to figure out how you keep the integrity of the game and try to make it safer.

I don't know if I've answered your question.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

You answered it, but I would like to follow up a little bit. How do you communicate the issue? How do you address the issue with the players themselves?

[Robert Zamuner]

Right now, we're actually in the process of doing what we do every fall. We meet with all 30 teams. I met with three teams last week. We actually have a doctor come and present for about 20 minutes. Our meeting is about two hours long. We dedicate that whole 20 minutes to it. We have three doctors who work with us: Dr. Rizos, who consults with us, Dr. Kutcher, and Dr. Comper. Those three are available for our players 24-7.

It's a constant educational thing that we do. We talk to our players. It's a big part of it. You can imagine that hockey is this big tough sport, and your jobs are on the line, so we're trying to tell the guys that there's time after their hockey career.... I think the awareness is much better, but I think we still need to improve on that.

Every time we get a chance, we get the doctors in front of the guys without any distractions, without the GMs, the coaches, or the media, in a meeting room similar to this one. We have 25 Montreal Canadiens and the doctor, Don Fehr, and me in the room, so we have their undivided attention.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do you have any ideas on how concussions can be reduced at the lower levels of the game?

[Robert Zamuner]

You're nodding your head, Katie. Do you want to take this?

[Katie Weatherston]

Yes.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

That would be great if you want to reply. Thanks, Katie.