Canadian Heritage committee  The proudest, I would say, are the people we have been able to invest in, whether that's the athletes or the coaches. I get excited every day when I get to see young committed Canadians who are out there trying to be the best in the world. I'm simply very proud of the impact we have had, we meaning the team of us, the wide variety of people who have contributed over a long period of time.

Canadian Heritage committee  Our primary focus is to provide that support service for the top-end athletes, but as I mentioned, I think for Sochi we'll only have about 215 athletes from across the country. Not all of them, maybe two-thirds of them, might be from our area of the country in terms of Canadian athletes who have relocated to the Calgary-Canmore area.

Canadian Heritage committee  It does, but the level of support the top athletes get is different from maybe someone who's on a development team or a junior team. They would get a little bit, but certainly not nearly the same quality or quantity.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. It's actually the national sport federations that would identify the athletes. Again, they do that across the country at any one of our seven institutes. The sport would identify the athletes, and we would provide the services, but we do that on a priority and targeted basis, and it's dependent on the athletes the sports have identified for us.

Canadian Heritage committee  Maybe I could start by answering that. If you look at our medal performances, the women are outperforming the men, so I'm not sure I need to say any more than that. In terms of opportunity we try to look at the ability and provide services to those athletes with the ability and potential, but if you look at Canadian performances, summer and winter, our women are outperforming our men.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, our primary mandate is at the high end. It's absolutely critical that our partners deeper down in the system are working with those young athletes. The one concern I would have, and I would maybe tag onto a question that was asked earlier, is you can certainly help us by advocating for corporate investment that would help some of those younger kids, who are good kids, who maybe do not have the wherewithal or their parents don't have the wherewithal, to stay involved.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll start and say that the facilities absolutely from 1988 have really been a catalyst to a lot of things that are going on. Once you have the facilities, then I think you're able to bring in the people, meaning the science and medicine personnel, and attract the athletes and coaches from across the country to use those facilities.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, I don't believe it's always financial resources that are needed. At times it's more will than wallet, but if we want to maintain our position and improve our position internationally, I think we do need some investment in people, and that's primarily, I'm going to suggest, first and foremost, in coaches.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, if I got all of your question, it was whether we have enough dollars to keep the expertise. That's always a challenge. We're trying to generate our own new dollars because certainly the dollars we've been getting from existing sources have not changed since 2008, so it's a challenge for us to continue to keep the best people.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, we have a network of institutes across the country. There's a new Institut national du sport du Québec. That would provide a lot of the base-level services also for Canadian athletes. As an example, for a bobsledder, I guess today there are two places you could compete, one at Whistler but primarily in Calgary.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, my comment would be if you look at it from a winter side, countries like Korea, Japan, and China are investing heavily in sports such as speed skating and snowboarding, sports where we have traditionally done very well. It's a real challenge for us to continue to get the number of medals that we have in the past, because as I said, they have really targeted their investment.

Canadian Heritage committee  I guess from a people standpoint, yes. As a service organization we do have back-of-house expenses for which we would get some Sport Canada support, but we do not get any support for some of the ongoing costs that we have in terms of continual increase in salaries or compensation for some of the key experts that we have.

Canadian Heritage committee  Some of it is through corporate Canada. We are doing a number of things with WinSport in terms of new revenue generation programs, trying to look at how we can work together to deliver some programs and services to the sporting public in the Calgary area to try to generate revenue, but it does distract us from what we're supposed to be doing on a day-to-day basis.

Canadian Heritage committee  First of all, excellence in any endeavour is a worthy pursuit. It is long term. It is difficult and expensive, but we should try to be excellent in everything we do in this country, just to pursue excellence, regardless at what level. If you're a young kid, if you're a piano player, if you're in business, we should be trying to pursue excellence in everything we do.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It's my absolute pleasure to speak with you about Canada's preparations for the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi. I do so from the perspective of the Canadian Sport Institute in Calgary. I thank you for this opportunity, and I thank you for your interest and support of Canadian athletes and their coaches.