COC repeats calls for increased federal funding as Paris athletes honoured in Ottawa

OTTAWA — As Canada’s Paris Olympians and Paralympians were celebrated in Ottawa Wednesday, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) also used the occasion to renew calls for increased federal funding.

Across the street from the West Block of Parliament, some 200 athletes were welcomed by dozens of dignitaries, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, several cabinet ministers, senators and MPs from different parties.

The athletes were later welcomed to the floor of the House of Commons, with MPs erupting into a collective rendition of O Canada.

While holding the attention of parliamentarians, COC president Tricia Smith took the opportunity to lay out the dire state of Canada’s sport organizations.

“If I can be so bold, what is now needed is updated support for the national sports system. That’s the system that provides Canadians (with) the coaches, the training camps, the competition opportunities,” she said in a speech.

“Those are being cut by the national sport federations these days because they don’t have the funding.”

Earlier this week, the COC submitted its latest budget request to the federal government, though a spokesperson said the exact details of the request have not yet been made public.

Chief executive officer David Shoemaker said the ask is for $144 million — up from $104 million the COC requested in March ahead of this year’s federal budget. The March figure represented what the COC characterized at the time as a backstop to avoid “substantial reductions” in programs and services.

Shoemaker said the event in Ottawa was an opportunity to tell the stories of Canadian athletes’ successes at the Olympics and Paralympics, but also chance to tell the stories of the financial shortfall facing Canada’s sport organizations.

“The 60-plus organizations who set the programs and policies for sport nationally, that are responsible ultimately for the athletes who appear in Paris, haven’t had a funding increase since 2005,” Shoemaker told The Canadian Press.

“So 20 years now, they’ve been operating on those same funding levels that have been eroded by inflation by over 50 per cent. We’ve been coming to Ottawa for the last five years calling on the government to make an increase in core funding in budgets. We haven’t been successful.”

In July, the federal government fulfilled a budget promise and committed $55 million for athletes’ monthly payments, safe sport and removing barriers to sport.

The commitment was about half of what the COC had requested, and it was money which, in part, supported athletes directly rather than organizations as a whole — although the money for Olympic and Paralympic athletes’ monthly payments was more than what the athletes had asked for.

The $104 million COC request was based on a Deloitte study commissioned by the COC. That study has not been made public, but its findings were summarized by the COC in its last budget submission, which was shared publicly.

“We also did a survey of these sports. Seventy per cent of sports are cutting back on programs, 80 per cent cutting back on competitions they go to, 90 per cent on training camps and other things,” Shoemaker said.

“So we’re starting to see real impact within this sport system and we’d love to see it addressed because it matters to the future of sport in this country.”

Gymnastics CEO Andrew Price was among several Canadian sport officials in attendance Wednesday.

He said organizations are at the point of having to cut programs and services because rising expenses make it no longer feasible to stretch budgets to do the same work.

“We need to support our athletes that are here right now,” Price said in response to how the lack of funding has trickled down to affecting grassroots programs.

“It has meant, certainly at gymnastics, that many of those longer-term sustainable-type programs have been put on pause and defunded, and staff positions that would be responsible for that actually eliminated, in order to make room for the stuff that’s urgent.”

Sport Minister Carla Qualtrough — a three-time Paralympic bronze medallist in swimming — was one of several cabinet ministers at the celebration event.

She said she has continued to bring funding issues to the cabinet table, but acknowledged there are “competing priorities” for the government.

“Nobody would ever look me in the eye and say we don’t want to invest in sport. It’s just making sure that they have all the information that they know how long it’s been since any government has invested in the sports system,” Qualtrough said.

“That they know what each dollar gets in terms of value, in terms of the health of our citizens, in terms of the cost to our health care system that we avoid when we invest in sport.

“It’s my job to tell that story, and that’s the story that I pretty stubbornly tell all the time.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 4, 2024

Nick Murray, The Canadian Press