It has changed enormously. People like me made the Olympics on the basis of public and community programs that were largely accessible, given the nature of society in those times, and particularly for working-class children. It was mostly for boys. There was nowhere near the access for girls then, but in class terms, it was widely accessible.
My friend Rick Gruneau has written an article on it. Gordie Howe wouldn't make it to the NHL anymore because the costs in the pay-for-play system of Canadian sport are so high that only the upper middle class, with a few exceptions, plays sports. That's one of the big reasons why participation in sport is so low and is dropping like a stone.
We need to restore public programs in municipalities and also in schools, which have been eviscerated by both neo-liberalism and COVID, and we need to provide a much more complex capacity, as panellists have said, to the volunteer community programs, because the expectations today are much, much higher than they were when I was able to develop success in a volunteer community program.
I'd love the idea of—