Evidence of meeting #68 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was soccer.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
Yes, they produce audited financial statements, but they're a high-level overview that doesn't get into the detail of the finances with regard to equity.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
Could you take a few minutes, anyone, just to paint a picture of what it is like for someone who gets onto the national team? What's their life like with regard to finances? If you want to invest everything you have to be on the team, it's a huge investment of time. What do your financials look like? How challenging is it? What are your options? How difficult is it for someone to give everything they have to be on the national team?
This is for Canadians, so that they understand what it takes. Are you sacrificing more than you're receiving in compensation? Someone said earlier that even getting to certain locations is sometimes a challenge for players. Can you just describe that a bit more for us?
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
Women's soccer is in a difficult space in comparison to the men's game. Christine spoke on it earlier, about when you look at our male counterparts on the men's team playing and you're up.... Even in MLS, their salary will be significantly different from our salary. A lot of players who are coming into our program are NCAA athletes who are not on salary, who are still in school and who are hopefully on scholarship, but they are not making any money of their own. When you look around the world at federations that are doing things at the highest level, they're providing an incentive for players to play on the national team, because they're being paid.
I don't want to lose the sense that it's very, very great—the biggest honour—to play for your national team, and a lot of people will come and say, “Well, it's an honour. You should be grateful to play for the national team. There are a lot of people who would take your place,” but where we are in sport is that it's not the reality for our male counterparts. It hasn't been for years. They've made a lot of money. I know for a fact that the England men's national team doesn't even take money from the national team. They donate it to charity. They don't need it, because they make that much more in their club environments.
When you paint the picture of what a player looks like coming into our environment, most of them don't have a stream of income. They're coming in to play, enjoy the game and represent their country for all the right reasons, but there's absolutely no reason they shouldn't be compensated for that work.
We spend more than a third of our year with the national team away from our families. Players take time away from school. For some of us who play in the domestic league in the U.S., we're taking time away from our professional teams because of the way things are run. When you're spending that much time and using that much energy to perform for a country to the level that we have, you absolutely should be compensated, and players should be coming into the national team environment with absolutely no doubt that they will be set up for success as they move through their life.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
Regarding this model of the Canadian Soccer Business, is it a common model, or is this specific to Canada? Have you heard about this model being used in other countries, the monetization of your sport?
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
Yes, I believe U.S. Soccer had one years ago. I can't remember off the top of my head when it ended, so no, it's not the only time we've heard of this, but I don't know of any other countries that are currently involved in a deal like the one with CSB. It was more in the past.
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
I believe U.S. Soccer used it when the MLS was created in a similar way to the CPL, but it was shut down after a few years, because I think the reality of it is not correct.
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
A point was brought up in regard to the federal government's investment into—
Liberal
Michael Coteau Liberal Don Valley East, ON
I'm sure someone else can take that. We have another round.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you.
Now I'm going to go to a fourth round, but that's going to have to be quick. We may not be able to do the complete five minutes, five minutes, two and a half minutes, two and a half minutes, five minutes and five minutes. We may just do five minutes, five minutes, two and a half minutes and two and a half minutes. That's all we may be able to do.
I'm going to start with Kevin Waugh for five minutes.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Kaylyn Kyle showed that anybody can make the Olympic team. She was from Saskatoon. You guys played with her. I think because of her, we're seeing a big uptick in soccer.
Here's the issue I have coming forward in the next three years. FIFA's coming to this country, as you all know, in 2026. There will be two games, in Vancouver and Toronto. There is a lot of sponsorship, and there are a lot of eyeballs on television and games, but it's all for the men.
I am very worried that the Canadian Soccer Association is not prepared for soccer to be the number one sport in this country, if it isn't already.
I would like you guys to talk about the next three years. It's going to be key in this country for soccer. You may be left out, unfortunately, because of the men's program getting the World Cup in the next two years—certainly 2025 and 2026—leading up to FIFA.
Do you have any thoughts on that and how the game in this country is going to be reshaped?
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
It's important to mention that our men's team is currently in the same situation we are. Their budget has been cut for this year as well. We haven't done them justice yet in this conversation by saying that they are very much a part of this, just as we are, and we speak on behalf of them, as well, here today.
Yes, they were given all the resources they needed to participate in their World Cup last year. They are 100% on board with the fight that we have here, and they understand what's on the table for them as we move forward to the 2026 World Cup.
It's concerning that this deal is still so much of the conversation. It's concerning that this was just brought to our attention in the last year and a half. Before then, personally, I had no idea about anything in this deal. As I stated in our opening statement, the upside is so massive that if we don't take the chance to capitalize on that upside, Canada Soccer, the players and the youth are going to pay for that lack of going after it for a long time coming.
It's absolutely crunch time for the CSA to figure out with CSB how to capitalize on the World Cup coming to Canada.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
The elephant in the room is the $9 million from FIFA that the men got last year.
Where's that money going to go? That's the elephant. Everyone's talking about it.
Where does the $9 million from the men's team last year...? Everybody wants to know where that money's going.
Don't you guys want to know?
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
We'd like to know as well.
Conservative
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
Unlike the CSA, we are not going to go into details about our bargaining here, but the CSA has publicly come out and said it's committed to pay equity, and part of that is a percentage breakdown of World Cup bonuses for the men's and women's teams split.
That's all we can say about that.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
We have some companies stepping up in this country. Canadian Tire, for the first time, is 50% women's sponsorship and 50% men's sponsorship.
I think the dialogue in this country's starting to come to where it should probably have been years ago.
Again, thank you for having the courage to do what you did at the SheBelieves tournament, and for coming here to tell your story. I want to compliment you and the teammates going forward to Australia and New Zealand. Hopefully, you get a shot at another Olympics as well.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Kevin.
We're going to go to Anthony Housefather for five minutes.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
There are just a couple of things before I start asking questions.
I wanted to clarify some points that were raised. The women's team is now actually ranked sixth in FIFA rankings, and the men's team is 53rd.
In terms of the money that Sport Canada allocated to the CSA, $805,109 was for core operations, $2,007,350 was via Own the Podium for the women's team, $125,000 was for the next generation initiative—through the women's team, as well—through Own the Podium, and $40,500 was for safety in sports. The vast majority should have gone to the women's team.
I want to come back to something that I think both Monsieur Lemire and I have raised about your participation at the board level. You told me something that shocked me, which was that you have not been asked by the board for your opinion on anything.
Let me ask the question. When Bev Priestman was hired as the women's national coach, were you guys involved in the selection committee in any way?
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
I wasn't.
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
I wasn't.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
You were just told in the end who the coach was. You didn't get to interview the candidates, see the CVs or give feedback as to who would work most effectively with the team.
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
No. However, I would like to say that it came to a point at which Diana Matheson and I.... Obviously, there was COVID, and it seemed like the CSA was dragging its feet a bit in making a hire after Kenneth stepped down. It got to the point where Diana Matheson and I had to call up the general secretary of the CSA and say, “Are you ever going to announce a head coach?” A week later, that happened.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Christine, I think that one of the things that's missing here is that you're not a kids team. It's not an age group team. The men's and women's national teams are made up of adults. It sounds like the CSA doesn't treat you as such, and you're not involved in any way in the decisions.
To me, when a national team coach is being chosen, which I think is very different from an Olympic coach, who's there once in four years and not on an ongoing basis, there needs to be some mechanism whereby there's an involvement of players. I think we need to go to the administration of Canada Soccer and have it take into account both the men's national team and the women's national team, including you in the decision-making one way or another. That's done in some sports. It's not done here.
I want to come to another thing. I think we all understand that this initial deal with Canadian Soccer Business was done because we needed to have a men's professional league in Canada in order to bid for the 2026 World Cup. Why do we not have today a women's professional league in Canada? Have we not done anything since 2012, when the Whitecaps closed? You guys play in Portland and in Houston. Why do we not have a Canadian women's league?
Player Representative, Canadian National Soccer Team Player, Canadian Soccer Player's Association
That's a good question.