Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to what the member had to say. He is right. We should never be in a situation where high performance sport is the only objective of the system, the only objective of our young people. I think of sport as having to do with far more than simply training the body. It has to do with training the mind and many of the points made by the member.
I do not know if the member has looked at that part of the government's sports program which deals with the Canada Games. I use the Canada Games as simply one example. The federal government commits $60 million to sports. We are missing a great deal if we forget the volunteer activity which the member describes and the activity and roles of the provinces and the schools. This is not the be all and end all of sports in Canada.
A part of the budget goes toward supporting the Canada Games. My understanding is that 45,000 young people between the ages of 18 and 22 or 23 have participated in the Canada Games in the last few decades. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of young people have tried out for the Canada Games.
I have attended two or three of them and they are far more than sports events. They are festivals at which students from all over the country, young athletes of different standards, come together and participate. For some of these athletes it is the peak of their sporting career and often the peak of their career as young Canadians.
The Canada Games which come out of federal funding is part of a pyramid. I was chair of the Ontario Summer Games which is for younger athletes. We had in our community 2,000 to 3,000 young people, younger than those in the Canada Games. Tens of thousands tried out for the Ontario Summer Games. I am sure the same applies in Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec and other provinces across the country. Those games were funded in part by the provincial governments and lead toward the Canada Games, the national festival of sports.
Has the member been to any Canada Games? Is he familiar with the sort of festival of sport it is for young people, not simply for high performance athletes?