Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2016

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Those are exceptional suggestions. In education the curriculum needs to reflect that aspect, which is crucial.

I love the point you brought forward, Shelley, about challenging. Are municipalities, communities, and school systems truly doing as much as they can? That's the question. That's the challenge. Your point of going to the swimming pool, how you would get in, and what programs are there to help you, is totally amazing.

I'm emotionally caught up, because you allowed me to better understand this, and hopefully I'm a better person today.

I'll leave my comments at that.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Maguire]

That's not just because he's a former school principal as well. Those are very good points.

If it's fine, we'll move to Mr. Kitchen.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I thank all of you for coming today. It was a pleasure meeting some of you yesterday at the luncheon, then on the floor of the House, as well as at the reception afterward. It was a great time.

Yes, Tracey, you and I had that conversation, and you definitely are feisty.

I want to ask a number of question and try to get through as many as I can.

Goalball is a great sport. It's great to watch. During the Paralympics, it was one of the ones that was shown the most. I believe there should have been more Paralympic sports shown in Canada.

Are there programs in Canada that do this in the schools so they can educate Canadians?

[Whitney Bogart]

From my understanding, as Shelley was saying, they were trying to put disabled sport in the school system in Ontario.

There's a whole package you can buy to have the kids learn goalball, and it comes with everything you need. Goalball is a little more complicated, because you need to tape the floor, you have eyeshades, and a specific ball. It's not like any other sport and people don't understand it, and so it's not as easy to bring in. But it's supposed to be brought into school gym class as a sport taught to the kids.

Usually it's only taught when there is a visually impaired student in the class. If that student is no longer in the class, they no longer do goalball. I've done so many demos with kids, and they love the sport, but then they never play it again.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

They forget about it, and they never see it again unless—

[Whitney Bogart]

Until we come back again.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

That's right. Okay, great. Thank you.

You're all on the Paralympic team, and this study is on women in sport. From your own experiences—and if you feel this question might be putting you in jeopardy with the powers above, feel free not to answer it—do you see any discrepancy between the male and female versions of AAP funding?

[Whitney Bogart]

At least in goalball, it's actually equal. I can say for women and men, our national teams, money-wise it's always been equal, and our AAP is equal. We're lucky in that way.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Does anyone else want to...?

[Shelley Gauthier]

Do men get more than women?

[Whitney Bogart]

No.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I'm just wondering if you've ever seen or come across any of these issues, just so we can make sure we're not seeing that treated differently. My assumption is that it isn't; I just want clarification that you're not seeing or hearing about it. The reality is that when we're dealing with other sports, some get sponsors, etc., and that's a challenge.

[Tracey Ferguson]

I think the government support has elevated the visibility of Paralympic sport and sport for athletes with disabilities. Without that federal support, we wouldn't have the ability we now have to seek out sponsors. Because we had no visibility, what could we market to them? Once the federal government raised it to the status of “Here's your funding; here's your baseline”, and we got some coverage of the Paralympics, whether on CBC online or elsewhere, the visibility of our sport increased. As you said, when people see it on TV.... I got emails from strangers during the games asking me a million questions. They would say, “It's a tremendous sport. You're a role model for my children”. Their children aren't disabled, but they just really had a passion for wheelchair basketball and an enthusiasm. If we're not visible, that doesn't happen. We can't tap other marketing sources.

We've been very fortunate with the policy that existed to ensure there's baseline funding and some equality between men and women in sports at the federal level.

Now, in the public realm, the funding that's available and the access to sponsorship are slightly different.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

Erica, you mentioned how big an influence your coaches and your role models have had on you over the years, in particular, Lisa, and what she's done for you.

Have you all had the same experience that Erica has in having female coaches as you've gone through?

[Whitney Bogart]

In my career, I've had one female coach who was a national level coach, and I had a female provincial coach, but it's been mostly male coaches.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Tracey.

[Tracey Ferguson]

I've had very few female coaches, but some assistant female coaches that the head coach was trying to groom into a coaching position. That's definitely an area we need to improve upon so that we will see female leadership and support the development of female athletes transitioning into coaching, or we provide avenues for female coaches to have more experience and exposure so they can step into those head coaching positions. But opportunity needs to be provided for that to happen.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Shelley.

[Shelley Gauthier]

From my opportunity in elite sport, I've always had a male coach, except for in the four years at U of T, when I played ice hockey, and Niki Nicolaou was my coach.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

We talked a bit about coaching, but how do you see our getting more women involved in coaching, providing them with that training background so we can continue to have those coaches for you? Do you foresee yourselves becoming coaches once you decide your career is done?

[Erica Gravel]

Currently, I'm pursuing a career in coaching. It starts from the top down. From what I've heard, people are more likely to hire people similar to themselves. The people at the top right now are generally males. There are fewer coaching jobs for women in Canada. Another problem is that you don't want to separate the two, but there are a lot of men coaching women's sports, getting those coaching jobs, and there aren't a lot of women getting those men's coaching jobs. Girls are different from guys. They operate differently. From my experience, from a mentorship standpoint it's harder to work with a male coach than it is with a female, just based on gender. That can push people away from pursuing those mentorship opportunities.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Larry Maguire]

Thank you, Ms. Gavel.

I'll go to Mr. Nantel.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In French we say that you are inspirant, that you're very inspiring for us. Clearly, it's outstanding, and we did have a very nice moment yesterday. Again, it was a very good opportunity for us to encounter all the challenges you've been facing.

Mrs. Gauthier, you have a very active foundation, and you're very active in spreading the word about the issues you are facing and trying, if I am not mistaken, to propel and to stimulate the activity and make it better known. I'm looking at your bio and I notice that when you said you were stuck in your living room watching TV wondering if you could do something like this, you are actually pointing at a very important detail. Most of the time here we've been talking about giving access to sports, making sports more appealing to young girls, but you are referring to an adult situation.

Is it much different for a Paralympic athlete? You're not in a Paralympic sport if you're stuck at home and you look at this and say, “What can I do?” How can we reach out to you? How did you get in touch with the Paralympic competition spirit?

[Shelley Gauthier]

I think the idea of getting a bigger grassroots level is really important. It's like hockey. Kids go and play and they say, “Oh, I want to be like that person”. Then there's a pool to grab them from.

With disabled people, get them to get out and, for example, to ride a bicycle, or to ride a tandem with somebody, if they have a visual impairment. You can get them out of their house. You can get them socializing with an individual, and they can go for a beer or they go for an ice cream afterward. Then they think, “I kind of like this. Maybe I'm going to try to be elite”. My foundation is trying to get adults involved, and we do go to the school in Brampton and get high school students involved. We're doing that. I'd love to get kids involved, because that way they can have dreams and hopes to do more later, and get that working.

I think, right now, just getting people involved is very important. I have played sports all my life. I started playing soccer when I was six years old and I went to the Ontario Cup, and I went to Canada Cup. I went all over the country playing, and that was really important. I stayed in Canada to go to university. I was a goalie, so I could have gotten a scholarship in the United States and maybe stayed there. But I'm proud to be Canadian and I'm happy I'm here.

Getting hopes and dreams in disabled people's lives and getting them involved in recreation is way more important than saying, “Let's go find the elites”. I think by getting young people and young adults involved, we can get more elites that way.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I can clearly see the passion you have in sharing the fun of doing sports. We had testimony in that range, too, with someone trying to tell us.... He was not actually relating it to women in sports, but saying that there were competitive sports and also leisure sports. The fact that we stigmatize it with performance and competition may turn some people away.

I have to ask you, and anyone else on the panel here, are there more men than women getting interested in Paralympic sports? If so, why would that be?