Dennis Mills

[Speech From The Throne, October 14th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of listening to the member for Winnipeg—Transcona for a number of years. Philosophically there are a number of issues we are compatible on, but he was not putting out factually correct information on four specific issues related to my community in downtown Toronto.

The first point is on the issue of homelessness. City councillor Jack Layton is having a heyday capitalizing on those 500 to 700 people who are living on the streets of Toronto which none of us like to see. The reality is that the issue is affordable shelter. Yesterday the Prime Minister spoke very specifically about an infrastructure program. I think the member and I know the people of my community will be quite satisfied in the very near future as the whole issue of affordable shelter will be central to the infrastructure plan which is unfolding.

The second issue is that of banning exports of water. The Minister of the Environment even before we had recessed for the summer break took very specific measures in the announcement banning exports of water. That is something the member obviously missed.

Another issue relates to the children's legacy. I do not think anyone in the House would deny the fact that the Prime Minister's remarks in the House last night went a long way toward moving the commitment to children forward. I think it is important that the member when he is criticizing also acknowledge some of the very specific initiatives that were taken.

Finally on the Onex deal where I have very strong views myself, we had assurances yesterday from the Minister of Transport, which I am sure the member read in the paper, that on the issue of air transportation in this country we will have a full and vigorous debate in the House. Every member will have an opportunity to put his or her views forward and will be accountable.

It is important when we are having this debate that we at least acknowledge those areas where the government has acted immediately.

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot let the assertion by the member that the government has made a commitment to professional sport and not to amateur sport stand. There are ongoing discussions with the smaller market teams in Canada which are struggling, but no decision has been taken. If the member would read the sport pact section of the report he would see that it is all quid pro quo. In other words, not 10 cents would be spent on the professional side of things unless there was an equal or proportionate amount for the amateur sport fabric in Canada.

When I say the amateur sport fabric I am not just talking about hockey. We have over 550,000 registered soccer participants, boys and girls, in this country. Even though hockey is our national sport and even though we are going to work very hard to figure out a way to keep the smaller market teams in Canada, make no mistake about it, nothing will be done unless the amateur fabric is also on the table.

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we have a coaching crisis in the country today. The Coaching Association of Canada appeared in front of our committee and went into fine detail about the lack of support for coaching and the need for more certified coaches.

We have appealed to the Minister of Human Resources Development Canada. One of our recommendations was to have the whole area of coaching put into human resources development in the same way we classify information technology people, the construction industry or any other sector of the economy.

I believe that if the private sector through industry and government work together to top up some support for properly qualified coaches, we could quickly re-invigorate the coaching system in Canada. It seems to me that the teaching realm no longer has the same type of commitment to coaching that it had 25 and 30 years ago.

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have to humbly say that we never advocated $500 million to the professional sports realm. That was never part of the deal.

Our commitment to the developmental part of the amateur sport fabric in the country, including the physical fitness component, was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $60 million a year for the next five years, which was $300 million.

We also put on the table some areas where we thought moneys could be generated. Currently, all the lottery moneys in the country, which the then Prime Minister Joe Clark gave away to the provinces in 1979 in exchange for support for his leadership, or a payoff for his leadership, are going directly to the provinces.

I believe there is an opportunity for getting together with the premiers and saying that a portion of those moneys should come back into the amateur sport fabric, especially those gaming systems where they use the professional sports' logos. I see great hope for that in the future. The Minister of Industry for Canada has currently set up a system where all those things are being explored.

As far as interfering with the operations of the amateur federations on a day to day basis, I really do not think as parliamentarians we should interfere with the way they operate other than the fact that I think we should make sure that all of the facilities and all the opportunities across the country are there in both official languages.

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, quite frankly I wish I had a little more than 10 minutes. To spend a year of parliamentary life on an issue and to summarize it in 10 minutes will be a challenge. I will deal with a couple of issues I feel passionately about in terms of my commitment to their being implemented.

I have to say to the hon. member for Longueuil, I celebrate her initiative in putting this debate on the floor of the House of Commons. I salute again the hon. member for Rimouski—Mitis who I know is with us here in spirit. Her contribution throughout the whole year and a half as we listened to hundreds of witnesses and read hundreds of briefs will be around for a long time in this Parliament of Canada.

My passionate interest in amateur sport stems from an educational background during my formative years in high school. I had the privilege and pleasure of going to a Catholic private high school in Toronto, St. Michael's College School. The school was run by the Basilian Fathers, an order of priests who believed that the whole person could not be developed unless sport was an integral part of their development. They believed that the key to a young person developing academically, spiritually and obviously physically was to make sure that sport was an integral part of their program.

I had the privilege of knowing men like Father Henry Carr, CSB, Father Mat Sheedy, CSB, Father Art Holmes, CSB, Father Brian Higgins, CSB, Father Tom Mohan, CSB, Father Jim Enright, CSB, Father Cecil Zinger, CSB, Father Norman Fitzpatrick, CSB, and lay teachers Jack Fenn, Dan Prendergast and Mike Lavelle, men who believed that coaching and working with young people was a vocation. These men believed that there was a theology of sport. In other words we were not there just to develop the body but it was part of developing and maturing the soul as well. That is something that has slipped today.

We heard witnesses. The Coaching Association of Canada told us that hundreds of schools across Canada no longer had coaching staff to look after their representative teams. It is almost unbelievable in a country like Canada that there are high schools without coaches.

We need to get back to pressing the nerve of Canadians that developing the fabric of this community and country must have a sport component attached to it.

A few years ago Cardinal George Flahiff, CSB wrote a paper on the theology of sports. He gave a lecture in 1955 to a group of coach educators. I only want to read two paragraphs from it but it is very important:

The immediate or proximate end of sports, as well as of gymnastics, physical education and similar activities, is not hard to define; it is the training, development and strengthening of the human body from both the static and dynamic points of view (i.e., from the point of view of its physiological development and from the point of view of its use in action). But there are higher ends, too, towards which all sports must tend if they are not to fall short of the function they are meant to fulfil as truly human activities. The body is not an end in itself; along with the soul, which animates it, it makes up the unity that is a human person. The soul has the higher function; it directs the body and, so to speak, uses it for the purposes of the human person as a whole. As a result, sports and all physical education can serve higher and more remote ends than the one mentioned; for, the more developed and better trained the body is, the more readily and effectively can it be used to further the development, interior as well as exterior, of the whole man. This is to suggest that sports have a very real role to play in the perfecting of a human person and, common with all human activities, they must have as their ultimate aim to bring man closer to God.

That was a quote from Cardinal George Flahiff, CSB, from this paper in 1955.

I believe this is a part of the report that we are not focusing on. When people ask me which recommendation in the report I am most committed to, I tell them that it is the recommendation that deals with the 1,300,000 young people under 16 who are living in poverty and do not have access to organized sports. That is the essence of the report.

We talk in the House about fiscal priorities. We have been obsessed with the fiscal priorities here over the last eight to ten years. We heard witnesses, doctors with qualifications, who came to us from the section of Health Canada that deals with physical fitness. Those doctors told us that if we could mobilize, motivate and energize another 10% of Canadians to spend half an hour a day on physical fitness, the treasury of Canada could save approximately $5 billion a year just in health care.

Here we are scratching our head over $60 million to look after young kids who do not have access, when we have been told by the best in the Government of Canada that if we mobilize Canadians to become more physically fit we will save billions.

The report is not about professional athletes. It is not about sucking up to millionaire hockey players. The essence of the report, the 68 out of 69 recommendations, as we said when we tabled it, are like a seamless piece of fabric.

The professional system in the country depends entirely on the amateur development system. We cannot have a good professional system if the amateur system is not sound. I am saying something on top of that point. Forget their commitment. Only one in 250,000 young kids becomes a professional athlete. What we need is a society where people have the dignity and the confidence to feel that their potential has been fully developed.

I go back to my Basilian mentors: the Father David Bauers, the Father Ted McLeans, the Henry Carrs, the Tom Mohans and the Cardinal Flahiffs who have convinced me that one cannot develop a whole person academically and spiritually unless sport is an integral part of their life.

I want to say to all members in the House that I salute my colleague, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who after 90 days tabled 53 of the 69 recommendations in a positive way.

I know the spirit of the Liberal Party and especially the vision and spirit of the Prime Minister. I believe in the not too distant future that every single recommendation in the report will be implemented in some way, shape or form. I thank all members who worked on the committee for their co-operation. We will continue to move forward.

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre for his great contribution to the subcommittee. His insight and his own family experience in terms of working with young people and bringing that knowledge to the subcommittee were sincerely appreciated by all members on all sides.

I have to go back to the member's comments on the professional side of this debate. We will repeat this many times today. In our report there was only one recommendation called the sports pact which dealt with the professional sports systems. It would have been very easy for us to say let us forget about the professional stuff because it is going to create too much controversy and criticism because all Canadians will do is focus on the salaries of the multimillionaire players.

It is very important for us to let the House and Canadians know the reason we took on that very tough decision of signalling to Canadians that we have a problem on the professional side. The NHL alone over a five year period contributes $1.35 billion to all levels of government. That money goes into the treasuries.

These NHL teams are not being subsidized. They are sending huge sums of the money to the various treasuries in Canada, those of the municipal and provincial governments and even the national government. Canadians in the end will decide. I think it is very important that as we criticize the high salaries of the players, we should also be well aware of what the treasuries in Canada are receiving from the professional sports industry. I think $1.35 billion over five years is a substantial amount.

We know that our smaller market teams are facing difficulties. We know there is a strain because of the exchange rate of the dollar and the disadvantage to our tax system. We did not say the government should absolutely deal with tax fairness, but we did we have a problem and it is a debate for all Canadians. When we have this debate, let us not refuse to acknowledge the great contribution made to the treasuries by the professional teams.

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, the member stated in his comments that he boycotted the committee. However, because he spoke today he obviously read the report. He knows that 68 of the 69 recommendations in this report dealt with the amateur sport fabric of the country. He knows that 53 of those 69 recommendations were accepted almost immediately when the minister announced the response to the report three weeks ago.

Why does the member persist in saying that this report is only about hockey? Why does he not acknowledge the 53 decisions that the government supported and that only one of the 69 recommendations concerned hockey? The House is about dealing in hope. Why does the member repeatedly say things that he knows are not factually correct?

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is very important that our listeners and viewers today understand that the motion on the floor of the House of Commons is essentially about amateur programs in Canada.

They would be a little confused if they did not understand that currently we have a Canada games system where each and every province goes to the games and has its own flag. That condition already exists for the Quebec teams, the Prince Edward Island teams and the Ontario teams. It is called the Canada Games.

It is very important to remind the Bloc Quebecois that there has never been a player from the province of Quebec, who put a Team Canada jersey on his or her body to represent Canada on the world stage, who has said that he or she did not think it was one of the greatest experiences in his or her life.

Let us not bastardize the great work we have done in the House of Commons, as the member from Rimouski has done in talking about amateur sport, by trying to bring in the notion of separatism for athletes. There is not an athlete who espouses that theory who has put on a Team Canada jersey.

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Is was only one recommendation.

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I know what the rules are but I also know that my friend, the member for Rimouski—Mitis, is not with us today. She was unable to be here. I know her spirit and her heart are totally behind the work we are doing in the House of Commons today. She is caring and compassionate.

I must say the only problem I had with the member for Rimouski—Mitis was that I could never figure out why she was part of the Bloc. I sensed in her a real passion for young amateur athletes from coast to coast to coast. As we debate this report today I hope we in the House of Commons can do justice to all the good work she did on behalf of young people, amateur athletes, not just from the province of Quebec, but from every region of our country. I had to put those remarks on the floor of the House of Commons.

I also have to say that the government is passionately committed to amateur sport. When the Minister for Canadian Heritage responded some three weeks ago, she tabled a report wherein 53 of the 69 recommendations were accepted by the government. It is an unprecedented response.

The most important thing that should be put forward once and for all is that in the report “Sport in Canada: Leadership, Partnership and Accountability, Everybody's Business” there were 69 recommendations and 68 of them were dedicated to amateur sport. Only one recommendation dealt with the fact that we have small market professional teams which need to be dealt with in a serious and constructive way.

As we launch this unprecedented debate in the House of Commons, and I realize it is only questions and comments right now, let us make sure that our focus is on amateur sport. Let us not get sidetracked by the professionals. Let us not let the media sidetrack us.