The Canadian Sport Policy (CSP) is set to be renewed in February 2023. The CSP identifies priorities for sport that are to provide guidance for federal, provincial, and territorial governments over the next decade. This will be the third CSP, dubbed CSP3. Like the previous two versions—CSP1 operated 2002-2012 and CSP2 operated 2012-2022—the consultative process to arrive at a sport policy for Canadians will be led by the Sport Information Resource Centre (SIRC).
As 2023 approaches, there is much amiss in Canadian sport at its very highest levels—the very highest levels of both performance and governance. Something happened on the way to the podium. A significant number of national sport organizations (NSOs), key stakeholders in the CSP renewal process, are being challenged by their own athletes. Among recent, well-known cases:
- In July 2022, more than 500 gymnasts issued a public letter asking for Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge to suspend government funding to Gymnastics Canada and for “an independent third-party investigation to address the systemic culture of abuse that prevails in Canadian gymnastics” (This followed St-Onge’s intervention the previous month to freeze government funding to Hockey Canada because of the organization’s failure to deal satisfactorily with an alleged sexual assault carried out by multiple members of the national junior team in 2018).
- In May 2022, Daniel Trépanier, Boxing Canada’s high-performance director, resigned four days after a public letter from more than 100 current and former boxers was released calling for his resignation and an independent investigation into “favouritism and toxic training environments” in the sport; a 2014 letter from national team athletes and coaches with complaints about Trépanier’s leadership had been ignored.
- In March 2022, more than 60 of Canada’s top bobsleigh and skeleton athletes called for the resignation of Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton’s president, Sarah Storey, and high-performance director Chris Le Bihan, alleging the organization was guilty of a lack of concern with their safety, discretionary mechanisms of team selection, and an authoritarian leadership style that inspires “fear of retaliation.”
- In February 2022, Rowing Canada announced an independent review of its high-performance culture and governance after concerns were raised by athletes; this followed the announcement of a similar review undertaken by Rugby Canada with a report subsequently released in March 2022 that decried “a vacuum of culture and leadership” such that “bad behaviours take hold across all areas of the program.”
- In November 2021, several runners protested lack of “objective and transparent” criteria underlying Athletic Canada’s recommendations for Sport Canada funding, whereby somewhat older, faster athletes were displaced by somewhat younger, slower athletes deemed to have more long-term potential; in response, Simon Nathan, the organization’s high-performance director, characterized the system as “strong” and “harsh” but necessary for the development of athletes capable of placing in the top eight at the Olympics or world championships within six to eight years.
These are cases of issues arising in high-performance sport that affect Canada’s top athletes. But the NSOs facing these challenges sit atop a hierarchically-structured system of sport governance that extends all the way down to the level of community sport. Community sport organizations (CSOs) are members of provincial sport organizations (PSOs), and PSOs in turn are members of NSOs. Besides their club and program fees, the 5-year-old who registers for U7 “Timbits” hockey in Medicine Hat pays fees of $23 to Hockey Alberta and $23.80 to Hockey Canada (2020-21), and the 13-year-old who registers for four classes of a Junior Learn to Row summer program in Halifax pays fees of $24 to Rowing Canada Aviron and $15 to RowNS (2021-22).
The experiences and expectations of Canadians involved in sport at the community level—that is, of the vast majority of Canadians involved in sports of all sorts—need to be at the centre of any process to renew the CSP. An important aspect of this renewal process is to assess the important role played by the model of Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) in sport policy in Canada to date. “From playground to podium”: the top-down implementation of the LTAD framework by Sport Canada through NSOs has been an attempt to integrate almost anyone who picks up a hockey stick or an oar into the Canadian sport system.
Lisa Gannett 