National Roundtables on Future High Performance Sport Funding

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA

April 16, 2004

Chair:

The Honourable David Anderson
Minister of the Environment

Main Themes

• Early introduction to professional, committed coaches, so kids develop the right skills immediately
• Network of support including sport scientists, classifiers, medical support, psychological support, etc
• Increased living allowances
• Training and competition opportunities
• Good Athlete Development Model
• Athlete support to address their needs
• Need increased number of full-time, professional coaches
• Salaries, mentoring and professional development for coaches
• Good coaches ensure good program delivery
• Need good coaches for developing athletes, in clubs
• Coaches have impact on athletes, performance, participation in sport and are role models.
• Need to target funding to National Sport Organizations (NSOs) to help them develop and implement systematic plans from grassroots to international.
• Need development to achieve high performance
• Sport Centres need to include all sports, and have full services (eg. Medical, Psychology, Specialists, etc.). Being all together, sports can learn from each other.
• Need to create a system, an effective environment for athlete and coaches, which include ancillary services
• There is a direct correlation between dollars and medals; “You get what you put in”
  • Canada should be happy with results, as that is what we are putting in… until we put more in, we should not expect better results
• Canada does not have a driving force for excellence
• Government funding reflects this lack of direction, ambition or stated goals
• Canadians have to stop linking sport with other elements (health, fitness, fair-play, building ethics, building esteem). Linking sport with other elements has an anesthetizing effect.
• Currently, Canadians do not recognize or reward excellence. Canada needs to have a “desperate desire” to win – and funding has to support that.
• Medals come from centres of excellence, whether consciously created or happen by chance. Need to establish more centres of excellence.
• Learn from examples of winning nations
  • Eg. Australia made decisions 30 years ago to be a winning nation.

Other Comments

• Sport needs a plan to drive its programming and support.
• Need to apply funds based on the NSOs plan and expectations of the future.
• Private sector, business, speculate with future potential, not just past performance.
• Athletes have been consulted over and over again. It's time for results.
• Canada has some great programs; we need to support better programs and not just more programs.
• The new $10 Million injection represents 0.5% of the gun registry.
• General consensus that there is a correlation between fitness and High Performance (HP) Sport.
• Community supports its athletes, hence does impact their participation.
• Sport providers have a responsibility to treat all participants as if they have the potential to become HP athletes.
• In current school sport system, PE teachers do not know how to make sport fun and keep kids involved.
• Need money at the top, but also need money at the lower level to encourage youth to go on.
• Kids need to learn to run, jump, throw and have fun. Excellence comes at a later stage.
• Kids not in sport because of Olympians, they get put in sport by their parents. However, kids leave sport because of poor coaching. Hence need quality coaching at entry level.
• One participant questioned the value of medals, specifically the impact of one team medal where 20 athletes are on the podium vs. individual medals where one sport may have 6-8 medals. What is the impact on participation, involvement of people? What value does the government put on the one team medal vs. the handful of individual medals?
• Double AAP Stipends.
• Double current contributions.
• $8-9M High Performance; $5M on coaching; $20M on La Relève; $1-5M on Aboriginal.
• $150M total investment.
• Need similar amount as what other winning nations are investing; and need to fund participation with 1-2% of the Health budget.
• Participants suggested Canada learn from other successful countries.
• Need clear focused plan, and the decision-making process will become evident once that is in place.
• Norway : retired athletes are put into decision-making roles
• Some participants favoured a process similar to the Sport Review Process: a panel of experts, sport people who can make knowledgeable decisions.