SINS Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE STUDY OF SPORT IN CANADA OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON CANADIAN HERITAGE

SOUS-COMITÉ SUR L'ÉTUDE DU SPORT AU CANADA DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DU PATRIMOINE CANADIEN

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Monday, November 16, 1998

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Dennis J. Mills (Broadview—Greenwood, Lib.)): Colleagues, you know our affection for Madame Tremblay is such that over the last year, we've never, ever started a meeting without her. I believe she may have a problem getting here today because of connecting flights. It's not easy for her; she doesn't have a direct shot to Ottawa. So we're following through the office to see if she's on the way, but out of respect for Mr. Pound, I think we should go. We have a quorum; we only need one opposition member to start.

Mr. Pound, thank you very much for coming here today. I have a little preamble before you begin, and I'll take a couple of minutes, in the hope that Madame Tremblay will show. Monday is a tough day, because members are coming from all across Canada to be here, and sometimes Monday's flights just don't work the way they're planned.

All of the members on this committee have taken the view over the last year that it's our responsibility to dust off the sport policy file in the Government of Canada. All of us on this committee are aware that in the last eight years, the Sport Canada budget has been reduced in excess of $200 million. And all of us on this committee believe that sport, especially amateur sport, is essential to maintaining, reinvigorating, and building the fabric of every community across this country, and of the country as a whole.

We will table our report probably either December 3 or 4. As we round off this year-long session, it's only fitting that have we you before us, as probably the most senior person from our country who is representing sport on the world stage. We're just delighted that you could find the time to come and see us, and we would like to have your thoughts on making sure that we put this report on the right pathway. Your insights are appreciated.

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That is my short preamble.

Madame Tremblay, I said to my colleagues before you arrived that I would try to kill a couple of minutes in the hope that you would arrive, because I find it good luck when we start a meeting with you in the room.

I now turn it over to you, sir.

Mr. Richard Pound (Vice-President, International Olympic Committee; Past President, Canadian Olympic Association): Thank you, Mr. Chair and the members of your committee, for meeting here today. I'm sorry there was a mix-up last week, and I really do appreciate the fact that you've taken the extra time for this occasion.

Just to follow up your chairman's opening comments, I'm delighted you've taken the initiative to look at this question. Sport is certainly a very important part of the fabric of this country, perhaps never more so than when that fabric itself is under some strain. It's a great initiative, and I hope you're very successful in what you do with it.

Mr. Chair, I don't know how you normally proceed in this. Do you want some personal background or just an identification of some of the issues that I thought you might be interested in? Do you like to ask questions as one goes along, or do you like to wait?

The Chairman: If it suits you, we would like you to chat for a few minutes, and when you feel you've given us most of your thoughts, then we would like to go to questions and go from there.

Mr. Richard Pound: Aside from education and all that sort of stuff, it might be of some interest to you to know what are my principal areas of responsibility in the international sport scene for the International Olympic Committee.

Since 1983, I have been responsible essentially for all of the revenue-generating activities of the International Olympic Committee. This includes chairing the television negotiations committee, the IOC marketing commission, and our marketing coordination committee, which manages the international sponsorship program we have. In general our marketing activities include sponsorships, supplierships, licensing, coin programs, and anything that generates either financial or commercial support for the Olympic movement. So I have some degree of familiarity with that, if that is an area in which you would like to move.

Unburdened as I am with any real knowledge of what you've heard already and where you hope to go, I put together some thoughts as to some of the elements that I thought would probably be in play, were I a member of Parliament and considering these issues. I thought of six, and some of them may be of no interest to you, either because you've covered them or because they're simply of no interest to you, but they include the following.

What is the proper role of government, in particular a national government in a federal system, in sport? What are some of the things that ought to be thought of?

Secondly, what distinctions, if any, should government make between sport that is organized on a professional basis, i.e. as a profit-making activity, and on the other hand, to use a somewhat outdated term, amateur sport?

Thirdly, how can sport be raised on the governmental radar scope to the extent that we at least intuitively think it deserves, as an important part of the glue that does bind the country together?

Fourthly, what, from a structural perspective, is the most effective manner of ensuring maximum results from government involvement in sport?

Fifthly, what are the appropriate goals for Canadian sport? How should they be established, implemented, and evaluated?

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And finally, as a topic that might be of interest to you, how can the activities of the public sector and the private sector best be coordinated to achieve optimal results without either duplication or important gaps?

Those are the areas where, absent any direction, I directed what passes for my thought. We can discuss any or all of those as seems appropriate. And I don't suggest that this is an all-inclusive list. There are many other issues that you, as parliamentarians, have to deal with, clearly.

I will start with the proper role of a federal government, a national government. Obviously you live with this every day; you face the transcendental Canadian problem of what is a federal and what is a provincial matter. Against that, though, in sport there would be a tendency on the part of provincial governments, even though they don't want to give up the jurisdiction, to dump the financial responsibility for sport at the national level, on the federal government. So you have two songs being played.

Some points that you may wish to consider in this context would be the following.

One, you should not agree to fund facilities from a federal sport budget, except in the context of international events that will provide an ongoing legacy, and only then as part of an integrated plan of financing that involves the junior levels of government as well as possibly the private sector, depending on the nature of the facility. I don't exclude the possibility of other policy initiatives such as regional development and stuff like that. That's a different budget, and there may be differing considerations there as to whether federal involvement should occur. But from a federal sport budget, I would make it my business not to do anything except under the conditions I've mentioned.

Secondly, you should probably not fund sport activities that are below the national and international levels. You're a national government. You represent Canadians across the country and you reflect the Canadian presence at the international level.

Thirdly, national sport budgets should probably not bear the costs of essentially cultural initiatives such as

[Translation]

the Francophone Games.

[English]

They're not important as a sport event generally, but they are important as a cultural event, and that should be a different budget from the sport budget.

There's a role for the national government, and I know efforts are ongoing in this area. Certainly you have the role of facilitators in establishing consensus between the federal government and the provincial governments. A lot of work can be done, and I know a lot of work is done, but it is an area in which the federal government is uniquely positioned to try to achieve a consensus.

In my view, properly constituted sport governing bodies and their constituents—that is to say, their clubs and local associations—are the best means of implementing sport programs. That's their business. It's not a business that lends itself well to government. Government has other areas of expertise in which it can provide added value, but the actual implementation on the ground of sport programs is probably not that.

Government can certainly—and should, I submit—encourage the establishment of sensible planning and evaluation of programs against agreed-upon objectives. That is an area in which government is expert and can add value.

I also believe government has no obligation to fund programs that are not well considered and that are poorly implemented. You have a duty, as you all know, to make sure public funds are properly used, and that doesn't include just pouring them down the drain.

Against that, of course, you have to take into account the nature of sport, which is that no success can necessarily be guaranteed. That's determined in some respects by what we do here, but in many respects by what's done elsewhere.

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And finally, from a national government point of view, in this broad area, the hosting of appropriate—and I do underline the word “appropriate” here—international events can have a very a positive effect on the development of sport in Canada and can provide an ongoing legacy. The federal government, because of its presence and reputation internationally, can have a significant beneficial effect in attracting such events to Canada.

I've read a little in the press about the next topic: the distinctions that government ought to make between sport organized on a profit-making basis and amateur sport. Clearly this is part of a larger picture in which government has to decide conceptually whether there is any difference between the business of paper-making, banking, or any other business, and the business of making money out of sport. To what degree is government, in general, prepared to assist any business in this country in the objective of either becoming or remaining profitable?

Within the sport sector, it has to be recognized and acknowledged—and it often is not—that sport businesses already benefit, at least to the extent that Canadian athletes are already involved, from a vast sport infrastructure for which they pay nothing and to which they've generally contributed little, if any, dollars. The hockey players are generated from the hockey system in Canada. Baseball, football, and so forth are the same. The professional sport organizations do not pay for that, but they benefit from all of that work.

They also benefit from many other government incentives in the form of facilities, concessions, and tax treatment. It might be an interesting study for government to undertake to compare those incentives with those offered for the benefit of amateur sport, and see to what extent the tip of the iceberg gets all of the benefit, at the expense of the 90% that's under the water.

A more interesting consideration for you—and I'm sure this has occurred to you, but it may bear mentioning—is that professional sport is market-driven. We in Canada are at a competitive disadvantage in certain of these sports, as a result of our size and the size and nature of our underlying economy. Taking in receipts in Canadian dollars and paying out salaries in U.S. dollars is a tough proposition these days. You have to decide, here at the level of the national government, as to the degree to which the Canadian public should support organizations that cannot otherwise survive without that kind of assistance, other than by the eventual sale of a franchise from which the money is derived.

In reaching a decision on this point, you probably ought to consider the fact that the collateral economic activity—and I'm sure everyone involved with professional sport who's appeared in front of you has told you about the collateral economic activity that results—is essentially of a local nature. What's spent on the Montreal Canadiens benefits Montreal; what's spent on the Toronto Maple Leafs benefits Toronto. In that sense, this may not be a matter to which national attention has to be directed, and properly, final decisions of this nature ought to be taken at provincial or local levels.

If, however, you want to consider assisting, my recommendation to you would be that any federal support should be determined against the background of a commitment by the professional associations or organizations to assist in the development of national athletes. If they don't give, they should not get.

The third topic, which is perhaps the most interesting for sport in this, is how can sport get itself raised on your radar scope here at the national level? This has always been one of the most difficult issues in sport and its relationship to government.

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Much of the reason for this derives from the inability of sport to articulate its case in a manner that is intelligible to government. That's a failure on the part of sport.

While accepting that that's where the primary responsibility rests—that they have to make their own case, as any group of constituents does, in dealing with government—you might, as parliamentarians, consider trying to identify the factors to which you would be most likely to respond, if the case could be made and if it could be brought to your attention, so that at least sport could say, “Okay, this is what we need to do. This is what they're looking for. Can we generate the data or the information or the level of public interest, whatever it may be, to justify attention?”

Something that I think would be very interesting to you—and it's a way in which you could be very helpful to sport—is you might suggest in your report that sport undertake an economic analysis of its importance to the Canadian economy. I expect that many economic models exist within government—the Department of Finance, just to name one—that are used for similar analyses of policies or industries, and that probably wouldn't have to be tinkered with too much to make them applicable to sport.

You might even consider the possibility of trying to co-opt a small group of economic planners or economic modellers, let's say for a period of a year, to assist in the design of an economic model so that the appropriate data could be generated and presented in a form with which you're familiar and with which you can work in committees and within the various government departments on a basis that enables comparisons to be made.

One thing that would be helpful to know is what kind of statistics are compelling to government. If an economic study could show that each swimming club established in Canada generates x thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of an economic multiplier—through equipment purchases, facilities rentals, coaches' salaries, travel to swimming meets, paying bills and motels and all that sort of stuff, tourism if you're having invitational meets, and so on—would those kinds of data encourage government to encourage in turn the creation of more swimming clubs, or more baseball clubs or whatever it may be?

And finally in this area of economic indicia, how is the soft dollar case best made to you as parliamentarians? How do you evaluate, if you can or if you do, the societal benefits of better health, less delinquency on the part of youth whose energy is directed to sport, the mobilization of millions and millions of dollars worth of volunteer time and effort, and so on? Does that matter to you? And if it does, other than it being something warm and fuzzy, how do you deal with it? I must say that most members of the public—and I include myself—really don't know what you would be looking for in that area. If there is something, it would be helpful to know it.

On the structural perspective, which is the fourth area, I submit—and I do this with the greatest of respect and notwithstanding the good spirit with which it's been implemented—that the central planning model of Sport Canada hasn't worked. It just has not been successful.

Sport is essentially entrepreneurial in nature. It's on the edge of performance, constantly pushing back some border or some boundary of what has gone before. It's going to develop in different areas at different times at different rates. And it can't really be preplanned as an exercise.

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It can be encouraged, it can be nurtured, and all this can be done on a systematic but nevertheless ad hoc basis, because you don't know where the next pool of talent is going to develop. The factors may appear to be entirely random. It's a new swimming pool built somewhere. It's a new hockey arena. It's a company town in northern Ontario or northern British Columbia that gets a new coach who moves into the neighbourhood and starts a club, and who has talent and can generate that talent. Or maybe just a star comes along—some immensely talented athlete comes along—and it's like Boris Becker or Steffi Graf were to tennis in Germany: they suddenly appeared, and all of a sudden millions of Germans were out playing tennis.

You just never know in advance where that's going to happen. All we have to do within a sport system is be ready to seize the opportunity when it arises and to apply resources to take advantage of whatever those dynamics may be. You can plan for that on the basis of the law of large numbers, but you don't know whether it's going to be in Hamilton, Kapuskasing, or Rivière-du-Loup. You just don't know where it's going to happen.

This traditionally is an environment in which government does not seem to operate with comfort. So you have to consider whether you're able to change the internal methods of dealing with sport, which you may or may not be able to do, or whether you consider a different model for the delivery of your part of the overall solution. My suggestion is that you not try to change the nature of government itself, because that's a job that's been tried on many occasions, but think of a different model for delivery.

One other suggestion is based on something that I understand to be an evolving shift that's now under study in your budgetary process, and that is developing the ability to make longer-term commitments and not to be stuck going budget year by budget year. If you can hook sport into that ability to plan on a longer basis, I think you'll end up with a much more effective and much more reliable ability to have a good effect. Living from year to year in a process of developing a sport, an athlete, or a club that may take five, six, or seven years is an anathema to good development.

You may want to consider something. I don't suggest this is the only model, but in the United Kingdom they have a sports council. Consider the establishment of an arm's-length sports council in which government will participate but—and I leave this to your discretion—not necessarily control. Have that council determine how the resources that are available to sport will be applied to maximum effect.

This has the advantage, which I'm sure you would all love to enjoy, of insulating government from the populist concerns that always come up and that invariably lead to a lowest-common-denominator approach and a gradual and roughly equal starvation of the entire sport system. Democracy, as we know, has many strong points, but these do not include the running of a meritocracy, and meritocracy is what sport, or at least competitive sport, is all about.

As to the goals and how they should be established, implemented, and evaluated, my recommendation is that the perspective of a national government in these questions should be that of a conceptual overview—a view taken, as it were, from 30,000 feet, and not from the trenches of the day-to-day concerns. That's not what I think you ought to do.

Philosophically, if you're looking for a governing principle, I should have thought it might be one of so-called enablement. That is to say, government should do what it can to help enable its citizens to achieve their full potential in sport, practised on a national basis in Canada.

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What's a goal in this area? The appropriate goals for Canadian sport are those that lie within the means and abilities of those who practise and administer on a national and international level. They will vary necessarily from sport to sport and from time to time, as individuals rise and as the level of means available and the level of abilities that exist vary during any given period.

There's certainly no guarantee that the economic conditions required to support national or international sport are always going to be there. Sport can't be insulated from the economics that affect the rest of the country. And there's certainly no guarantee that Canadian performance will be the same at any given time. Nobody can legislate either good times or high performance. That's something you can follow, but you can't legislate it.

The most difficult problem or aspect in setting policy is the process of differentiation, that of deciding what to support at any given time and what to abandon, on occasion, as ineffective. That's always been part of the process and has been a problem at the national level, since the most noise and the most pressure comes invariably from those who are denied support. There's a tendency to try to be all things to all people. That's one of the reasons I suggested you give some thought to an outside agency that will insulate you a little bit.

But certainly, concerning those who are not funded, you should not be swayed at the national level by this kind of anvil chorus. Sport, as I say, is essentially entrepreneurial, and if federal support is not available, other means will be found to get the particular sport back to the level where it does merit support. Pockets and centres of excellence will emerge, as they always have, with or without government support, and they'll fight their way back to the threshold that entitles them to support at the national level.

You also have to accept, as we all do, that there will never be enough loaves and fishes to feed the multitude. There never will be. No matter how much money we put into any kind of budget, it won't be enough. Why should it be any different for sport from the way it is for any other sector of society? The only thing I would say is don't let that lead to paralysis and an inability to act. Take what you have, know what your policy is, and then act aggressively to the extent that you have the resources. That's where they'll have the greatest effect.

You may want to explore some of those other areas, but just so that I don't take up too much time, I'll deal with the final portion of this rather lengthy set piece—and I apologize for that, Mr. Chair—and that is how you get the activities of the public sector and the private sector coordinated to the maximum effect.

Sport has always been very slow to understand the needs of business as they relate to sport. Sport has become more accustomed, but not thoroughly, over the past 30 years of government support, particularly that which was put in place following the 1968 Rae report. But again, they don't fully understand it, and it's only after many years of exposure.

I'm not certain either of the degree to which sport and government understand each other's needs and objectives. More work could be done in communicating that back and forth. I don't lay this in front of government only. Sport is probably more than 50% responsible for any lack of communication. But you're the big organization; you probably could undertake a communication of that understanding.

Certainly over time sport has understood that government has its accountabilities for the application of public funds, and I think that's generally well understood. That penny has finally dropped.

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A lot more work could be done between government and business. This is a problem you face not just in sport, but in many other areas. It's perhaps less understood at the business level than it is at the government level that business has its own accountabilities for the application of shareholder funds. Business managers and directors in fact have fiduciary responsibilities with respect to corporate funds. They can't apply funds to purposes unrelated to the business objectives for which they were contributed to the corporations.

There has been an acceptance over the years—and it's been a good evolution—that a small portion of corporate assets can be applied to charitable purposes in the exercise of what's often referred to as good corporate citizenship. But this is a very small amount of money indeed, and it has to be allocated across the whole broad application of charitable purposes. In comparison with cancer research and hospitals and support of universities, sport is a fair way down the food chain if you're dealing with corporate donations. We have to accept that so long as sport is going to the corporate community on the basis of looking for charity, the amounts of money are not going to be very significant.

On the other hand—and this is where the potential lies, and it's one we've tried to tap within the Olympic movement—sport possesses some very valuable assets that can be harnessed by the business community in furtherance of its profit-making activities. In the past couple of decades, as you probably have noted, a very thriving sport marketing business has developed—initially in North America, but elsewhere in the world now—to harness the combination of business and sport and to take corporate support of sport away from the charitable donations budget and put it into the marketing departments, where the budgets are far greater in the first place and far more flexible in the second.

Sport can be good business. I cite as evidence of that the multibillion-dollar television sponsorship contracts that support the Olympic Games. But it's not easy money. It's not manna from heaven. It's hard work, and it requires sport to make a considerable effort to understand the business imperatives and to respond to the needs of business partners. Because if there's no demonstrable return from the business investment, it's going to shrink and eventually disappear.

How do we get the public sector and the private sector together with common objectives in mind? As I'm sure you know from experience, it's more easily said than done, but it could be possible in relation to sport if you could find some way to agree on some fundamentals right from the start.

I'll just throw this up as an example, not as a considered suggestion. If you could find some way to agree on a sharing formula, a funding formula, a matching of funds—two to one, one to two, dollar for dollar, or whatever it may be—and a process for making decisions, just those two things, it would be possible to establish a degree of coordination that does not yet seem to me to exist.

As for what money you might be prepared to put in, if government could find some way to have access to non-tax base revenues for that purpose, the amount of the funds could be increased and the attendant concerns of government regarding the application of public funds could be reduced, thereby providing a flexibility that is unlikely to occur with the strictures you now face regarding public funds.

As a personal observation—and I expect you've had a thousand and one cure-alls put to you in your role as members of the committee—were I in your shoes, I would be inclined to find some way to get back into the federal lottery business for some limited purposes. The surrender, without any satisfactory quid pro quo, of the former Olympic lottery in favour of provincial lottery activity was, in my view, a most unfortunate decision. If there were some way to get that particular toothpaste back in the tube, I would urge you to give it your most earnest consideration.

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My guess, having said that, is you're not going to be able to get away with just a sports lottery. In order to make it palatable across a broader section of the community, you would probably have to include culture and the arts in it, and that's not bad. That's not a bad suggestion at all, but just make sure, wearing your sport hats, that a particular percentage is allocated for the benefit of sport and protected.

This has been done—and your research staff may already have brought this to your attention—in the United Kingdom. Another one of the continental Olympic committees, the Italian National Olympic Committee, benefits from the soccer pools they have in Europe, and the level of funding generated by that support enables the National Olympic Committee to act virtually as the ministry of sport in Italy. The sums are just enormous. That may not be something that fits our particular model, but it's nevertheless something you might wish to look at.

We have a different tradition of lotteries and so on in Canada from what they have in Europe, but it was very interesting with respect to the United Kingdom, because there was a fair amount of opposition to the idea when it was first suggested by, I think, then Prime Minister Major. He eventually went to people, including, I believe, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and said, “Archbishop, if we don't do it here, our people are going to be spending their lottery money in Europe on the continent, and we'll get nothing.” Eventually I think even the Archbishop of Canterbury, with some reluctance, was able to find a means of resolving that particular concern.

Mr. Chairman, I've gone on for some time, and I apologize for that. These are clearly not all the answers to any of the issues, and I haven't discussed many of the issues that are important, but if I can be of any assistance, I'd be only too happy.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Pound.

Mr. Lowther, would you like to begin?

Mr. Eric Lowther (Calgary Centre, Ref.): Thank you.

I'm new to this committee and actually am just covering for one of our other members, but I have been following it a little bit from a distance. You've covered many areas, as you say, and I'm sure there will be a variety of questions and clarifications. I'm not bringing forward this one in order of priority, necessarily; it's just one I made note of as I listened to your talk.

You talked about the need for government and I think it was private business or business to agree on a matching or sharing formula and a process for making decisions. I thought that was interesting. Then after that—I wasn't sure, but maybe you can clarify—it sounded as if you were saying that some sort of tax-based funding or tax recognition would help the funding process there. Could you clarify for me where you were going there, please?

Mr. Richard Pound: Do you like these questions to be answered one by one?

The Chairman: That's fine.

Mr. Richard Pound: Let me deal with the second one first, if I may, Mr. Lowther. I may not have said what I hoped I was going to say. I was suggesting that what would be best is if you could find some non-tax base source of funding.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Oh, okay.

Mr. Richard Pound: Once you're dealing with consolidated revenues, you have this whole range of considerations that apply to the use of it.

As to the agreement on funding and processes, as I say, I don't know what the substance of any agreement would be or whether there would be other areas of possible agreement, but in getting the public and private sectors together, one of the difficulties is always, “How much is it going to cost me or us relative to you, and who's going to be able to decide whatever it is we want to decide?” Government is suspicious occasionally of public sector agendas, and the opposite is true. So if you could find some way to manage that and reach some agreement in advance, you would have the basic elements of a way to proceed.

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Mr. Eric Lowther: That's all for now, Mr. Chairman. Maybe I'll come back later.

The Chairman: Madame Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay (Rimouski—Mitis, BQ): I must tell you, Mr. Pound, that I am very pleased with the thoughts that you have so generously shared with us. Usually, I do not come to Ottawa on Mondays, but the trip will have been worth it.

[English]

The Chairman: Wow! This is all being recorded. You can take that, Mr. Pound, and—

Voices: Oh, oh!

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I would like to get back to a number of points that you raised. Quite honestly, I very clearly understood points 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6, but I am unclear about point 3. Therefore, I would like you to give me a general idea about it. I don't know why I couldn't understand it. Perhaps it's because of fatigue.

By the same token, at the beginning, when you talked about the "proper role", you gave the example of the Francophone Games. Would this same example include the Commonwealth Games and the Panamerican Games? If not, how are they different from the Francophone Games? Let's begin with this clarification.

[English]

Mr. Richard Pound: Let me deal first with the second point.

Every international competition should be evaluated, from the sport perspective, against its sporting value. If the Pan-American Games are not good sporting value, I don't think we should participate in them, or we shouldn't participate in those particular sports in them where they're no good. The same would be true of the Commonwealth Games.

You have to look at the mix of the countries that makes up each of those organizations and you also have to take into account that in some cases—and the Pan-American Games would be one—the level of sporting competition might not be what we would hope, but they are qualifying events for the Olympic Games. Therefore, if you didn't participate in the Pan-American Games, you would be precluded from the Olympic Games.

We in Canada have already made our assessments of both of these competitions. The Commonwealth Games used to be a very high level of competition. Now they're less so. We do not send our best athletes to those. We use them as development exercises in many sports.

Point three was how does sport demonstrate to you, as a parliamentarian, how important it is? This is one of these cases where I think I know the question, but I don't know the answer. I'm saying you know what's important to you as you face the difficult task of allocating public funds.

I've always thought, anecdotally and intuitively, that government doesn't really understand how important, on an economic basis, sport really is to this country, and that's probably because nobody's ever developed an economic model that allows it to be measured. My guess would be, if you paid the minimum wage to volunteer sports administrators—people who go out to swimming meets and track meets and hold watches and set up everything, organize competitions—you'd probably be talking in the tens of billions of dollars of economic value.

Every time you start somebody in the school hockey league, you have the economic effect of buying equipment and renting space. Your kids, at least if they're like my kids, about every three months grow to an entirely different size, so you have to buy the stuff all over again, and so it goes. It's a huge business that nobody has ever really quantified. Nobody has ever said, “If we could stimulate that business—if we could stimulate 100 more hockey clubs in Canada—we would have an economic multiplier of $1 billion”, or whatever it would be.

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We don't have a model that allows us to do that. My guess is that you have models like this, or models that could be adapted very easily, because you do evaluate programs, industries, and the application of aid in others areas. Why not in sport? If you could find a couple of economists in Finance or wherever you hide them—

The Chairman: Statistics Canada.

Mr. Richard Pound: —they might, with very little effort, be able to develop something. They may go out and fill in all these blanks within the swimming association or the hockey association or track and field, and then come back and find out, “Holy smoke! Look at what activity comes out of this. This is important for the country, so we should be encouraging it.”

Another multiplier effect that would be harder to model would be to say, what is the multiplier effect of Myriam Bédard winning two Olympic gold medals in Lillehammer? All of a sudden more people are skiing, more people are interested in the sport. There's a downward multiplier, and then there's an upward multiplier from the base, none of which we can ever get our hands around, because we've never looked at a model. That's what I was trying to raise, but not answer.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: For the moment, I will let someone else have the floor. However, do I have your assurance that you will provide us with the notes?

[English]

The Chairman: Yes, absolutely. We'll have a complete translation.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Okay.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Coderre.

Mr. Denis Coderre (Bourassa, Lib): Mr. Pound, first of all let me say that we all have found what you are proposing today extremely interesting. Basically, the points in your statement cover a year's work and summarize the results that you have obtained.

From my personal point of view, three principles stand out in the work that was done since the beginning: leadership, partnerships and financial accountability. These principles underlie everything that you have said. We are talking about leadership, without necessarily agreeing on how to achieve it. However, we do agree that someone, somewhere, has to assume leadership.

The issue of partnership was also raised. When we talk about an economic model that involves the public sector, the private sector, professional sports and amateur sports, I think that this implies partnership.

Finally, it is perhaps in the area of accountability that we have the most questions. I will get back to an incident that creates some doubt concerning your proposal of an agency. At Nagano, there were some problems with respect to the use of French. The federal government had given money to the Canadian Olympic Association. But in view of the accountability problem, the association sometimes looks like a big club where people get together to have fun and travel a lot. If we want to be more effective and assume leadership, the Canadian government, on behalf of Canadians, will have to play a larger role.

Therefore, do you not think that the solution to the problem would be the creation of a genuine Department of Sport, rather than an agency? You have said, and I agree with you, that Sport Canada is a failure, and that it was a mistake. The thought that a department was created rather than a ministry, deprived the organization of the accountability that it should have had.

Do you think that a ministry of sport with a staff and a standing committee to review overall expenditures would be a better solution than the creation of an agency?

It is true that Great Britain, France and Germany adopted a new sports policy, but they did so precisely by strengthening the government's policy role in the field. Don't you think that this would be the solution?

[English]

Mr. Richard Pound: Those are very good remarks, Monsieur Coderre.

On the leadership, leadership is sometimes difficult to grasp. The only thing I would recall are the famous words of President Truman of the United States, who said it's amazing how much you can get done if you don't care who gets the credit. That's one thing to bear in mind, and a lot of people will have difficulty with that.

• 1630

The partnership issue is of course the hardest to define. In the case of professional sports, the model is quite easy, because everything is measurable: you know what franchises cost, you know what they pay the players, and you know what the income is. That's really quite easy. The difficulty is to deal with the 90% of the iceberg that's essentially below the level of public consciousness. Nobody really thinks about it in terms of an industry.

On the accountability, you make some good points, and I'm not a parliamentarian, so I can't decide that for you. I would say don't be too harsh on the Canadian Olympic Association for the mix-up in Nagano. That was bad, and it won't happen again, and everybody knows that.

I would also not be too hard on the folks who travel around. I don't know how much travelling you do. I do a lot of travelling. I hate the process of travelling. It is not fun. Don't let anyone tell you it's fun to go to these things. If we could do Star Trek and say, “Beam me up, Mr. Scott”, that would be fine, but getting there is no longer part of the fun.

It's probably not fair to say Sport Canada was an error. It's a 30-year-old central planning model, and all around us we've seen societies in which central planning has been the watchword break apart. After 30 years, it's time we took a new look at Sport Canada.

The Chairman: Excuse me. Just on that point, in fairness to Sport Canada, every year over the last 30 years, we've been stripping the engine.

Mr. Richard Pound: Well, I'll leave that in your hands.

Regarding a ministry of sport, this is something you have to consider. You're a microcosm of the Canadian public, and you have to decide whether the government's role is to enable or to control. If you have a ministry of sport and a minister of sport and budgets and public servants, they're going to want to do something, which is to control what happens. I should have thought we were closer to a free enterprise society than that.

Government can really do a lot of good things without having to actually control them, but I do think, where you're using funds—whether they're lottery funds or funds from consolidated revenues—you can say you're not going to support something that isn't properly thought out in advance and properly implemented.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Coderre: Mr. Pound, there is a difference between your position and mine. We know how the international conferences presently operate; the real control lies with the Olympic Association.

I don't want to take control of the Olympic Association. However, the International Track Field games will take place in Edmonton, things are planned for Montreal and Toronto, and, in addition, there will be the Olympic Games. Therefore I think it is necessary and even essential, since you will be receiving our money, that there be a link. Instead of having physical fitness linked to Health Canada, and some of it is linked to Sport Canada and something else to Industry Canada, it would be preferable if all of that were under the same roof so that we could be ensured of policy input.

When you need money from Canada, whether for sponsorships or legitimate national support, you obviously have a very high profile. But it is obvious, that, somehow, there is not a consistent approach.

If we want to have a rapid and worthwhile input and you want to have a voice in Cabinet, there has to be a man or woman to make the link. It's not an issue of control; don't you think that the issue is coordination and supervision in the interests of greater efficiency?

[English]

Mr. Richard Pound: Government has to decide for itself how best it can deal with these issues.

Mr. Denis Coderre: What do you think?

Mr. Richard Pound: Well, if you could put together an inter-ministerial working group, whether you'd do that at a deputy or assistant deputy level, that's one thing. If you would take all of these different aspects of sport now and put them all into a single department, I can't answer that. If you're talking about international events, you're probably talking about 10 or 11 different departments, by the time you deal with security and import and all that sort of stuff. My guess would be that it wouldn't happen often enough—

• 1635

Mr. Denis Coderre: Would it be more effective? That's the main question.

Mr. Richard Pound: That's right. I'm not sure it would be more effective than an interdepartmental working group in which you decide what's the best way to create the political input.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Coderre: I have a final question for the moment, Mr. Chairman. I would like to get back to the issue of taxation. When we met Mr. Bob Goodenow in Toronto, I was overwhelmed to find that there is an 80-million-dollar tax-exempt war chest. Therefore, Canadians—

[English]

The Chairman: It was $84 million.

Mr. Denis Coderre: No, $80 million was tax-free.

[Translation]

Therefore, the Income Tax Act helped the National League Players Association.

I was very pleased to hear you say that professional sport should do something in return. Do you think that taxation could be a way of addressing this? We talked about parents. We talked about how to fill arenas and all of that. Could a tax deduction on sports equipment for young people help parents and have an impact? If so, would the federal government's role not also have an impact at the local level, to the extend that the tax measure or measures would have an impact in all regions? Can a national policy have a regional impact? So we would have to look at this.

[English]

Mr. Richard Pound: There's no question that a tax incentive of that nature would be an enormous stimulant—no question at all. Parents and families bear a considerable expense that is never really taken into account, as kids move up through the system.

Will that have an effect on the local level as a result of a federal initiative? Yes. Presumably the provinces share too, under their tax collection arrangements with the federal government. But then that's a policy for you to consider. You already provide a benefit to professional teams in the tax treatment of the cost of the franchise and how that can be deducted. A lot of them are deducted as business expenses, and then if the franchise is sold, it's a capital gain, so to the extent that there's a rate differential, there's a net benefit.

But yes, if you wanted to do something that would be of enormous assistance to amateur sport, proper fees— Maybe you can cap them—the mechanics I leave to you—but say the first $400 or $500 per year of club memberships or of travel as part of a national team or whatever it may be— Professionally, as a tax lawyer, I'd love to help you on that, and I hope you'll consult me sometime.

Lots of things could be done. I don't know how many suggestions you've had of different things.

Mr. Denis Coderre: Okay. I don't have any other questions for now.

The Chairman: Before I go to Mr. Solomon, I wonder if I could ask a question going back to this department of sport.

You mentioned in your remarks, Mr. Pound, that one of our challenges is to put the whole package of sport on the government's radar screen. Well, one of the things we've discovered around here is that the pieces related to sport are in all these various departments.

I want to give a very specific example. The fitness program is buried in the Department of Health Canada. Those highly respected officials who manage that program have given us a study showing us that if every Canadian were to spend half an hour a day doing some form of exercise, we could save the health treasury anywhere between $6 billion and $8 billion, which is pretty serious money in terms of economic impact. Yet that little unit buried in the Department of Health never, ever gets to see the light of day, because the Minister of Health is fighting other issues on a day-to-day basis.

So Mr. Coderre's point, which I tend to agree with, is that if we were to package those pieces, that would ensure proper coordination and it would ensure that the whole package of sport was on the government's radar screen, so that what is below the tip of the iceberg finally got its fair due. That's where we're coming from.

• 1640

For example, until we started this committee, Statistics Canada really never thought of developing all of these complex models that are required to put the whole economic impact of sport together. So for the machinery of government to really listen to what's required to get what's below the iceberg above, we have to pull some of these pieces together under one umbrella.

Can you see why we think this way?

Mr. Richard Pound: I can certainly see why you think that way, and I have some sense of the frustration.

Fitness is an obvious one to get back into sport, or sport into fitness; you could do it either way. But as to whether you could extract from the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, from the Department of Labour, or from Foreign Affairs all of these pieces that have a sport component, I don't know enough about government to answer that. My guess is it would be hard to do. What probably could be done is to arrange for better access to the underlying data that a sport minister could use.

Then your problem—and you know this better than I do—is how to establish a sport minister with clout, because the nature of the department is such that it's going to be a relatively small department. As I understand government—and I'm not sure I do—the bragging rights seem to vary directly with the size of the particular department.

The Chairman: No, it's not, Mr. Pound, with respect. It's not necessarily the budget; it's whether or not it's a full department—in other words, whether it has full ministerial status, versus a secretary of state—and whether or not it sits on Priorities and Planning. In other words, it's inner cabinet position that really allows a minister to wield strength.

As I mentioned to Madame Tremblay in Toronto—because we at this moment are debating this amongst ourselves—my experience, after having worked around this town for 20 years, is that unless you are a full minister sitting on Priorities and Planning, you really don't have the clout necessary to make your cause go forward.

Mr. Richard Pound: I don't think you'll get that clout until you generate the economic data.

The Chairman: That's why our report is primarily around linking sport and the economy.

Mr. Solomon.

Mr. John Solomon (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, NDP): Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Pound, for a very informative presentation. I'm from Regina, Saskatchewan, where our Olympic curling champions are from, and I'm very proud of them, as most Saskatchewan people are.

I just wanted you to elaborate, if you could, please, on something I'm quite intrigued with, and that is the sports council in the U.K., which you made reference to. How does that work? Do they have a budget? What purpose, objectives, or goals do they have? Has it been a good thing for the U.K. in their sports activities?

Mr. Richard Pound: I can't give you chapter and verse on its precise constitution, but it has been effective within the British system, because the British were among the first to invent the concept of the gentleman amateur in sport, and they were one of the last to exit that mode of thought. So they've had trouble figuring out a mechanism in which to work in a parliamentary system not unlike ours, other than the federal-provincial complex, which is not present.

It consists of representatives of the sport community and of government, and it attempts, in so far as it can, to establish a sport policy and funding guidelines. I don't know what timing is involved, but I'm sure we could get for you, if it would be of any assistance to you, the background documents to it. Or your research staff may already be aware of them. We can get them, if you would like to examine that kind of model.

• 1645

The Chairman: That would be appreciated.

Mr. John Solomon: Yes, I would like to see a little more information on that. Thank you, Mr. Pound.

The other question I have relates to the scholarship approach to athletes, in particular Olympic athletes. What would be your view and the view of the Olympic Committee with respect to scholarship programs at post-secondary institutions for athletes? Is this something you might conceivably support to improve our athletes or give them another venue in which they can train?

The best example is in the States. They do have scholarships for a lot of sports, not all of them Olympic sports, but football, golf, hockey, and other things. Do you see this as an opportunity for Canadian universities to pursue, and do you perhaps see a role for government to assist in that way: it's an education thing, it helps more than just sport, it provides our country with an additional education opportunity for athletes?

Mr. Richard Pound: Certainly the idea of scholarships is one that is supported here in Canada by the Canadian Olympic Association already, and it's supported internationally by the International Olympic Committee through a program that we call Olympic Solidarity, in which we give scholarships to athletes from developing countries.

How it would work in Canada is an interesting question. Our tradition in Canada is not that our high-performance sport system is carried on through the universities the way it is in the United States. There, for example, there are universities that are known track and field universities, and the Olympic team-in-being of the United States trains there. Therefore a scholarship program has a direct and very positive impact on that.

In Canada that's not our tradition. You could do it in certain sports, such as swimming, where basically you're dealing with university-aged kids. But you'd have to then tie that to a financial support, generated elsewhere within our educational system, that would be committed to high-performance sport. And most universities, in these troubled times, don't have those budgets.

If you think there's been trouble over the millennium scholarship program already, if you start offering to student athletes who are studying in the provinces scholarships that will force the universities, if they're to have any effect, to invest in high-performance competitive sport programs, my guess is you haven't begun to hear the noise that will emanate from the provinces.

If you can find some way to keep athletes in school, that's fine, but I don't know how politically feasible it would be for the Government of Canada to encourage me, as a swimmer, by giving me a scholarship to go down and swim at Florida State. My guess is that's one of these things that would not compute.

Mr. John Solomon: I meant Canadian universities.

The Chairman: Yes, Canadian universities.

Mr. Richard Pound: There are a lot of these programs around. I'm governor of the Quebec Foundation for Athletic Excellence, which gives scholarships to students to enable them to play high-level sport and still remain in university in Quebec. So it's done to some degree, and it's effective, and one or two of those students would be of Olympic-level performance.

Mr. John Solomon: I have a final comment, if I might, Mr. Chair, on an interest of mine.

Universities are for the most part funded provincially, but a lot of federal money goes into them, although, not to be political, but less and less as time goes on. I introduced in the House of Commons a motion to undertake a scholarship program named after the Olympic medallists, the first one to be named after the Schmirler rink in Regina. Of course it wasn't adopted; it was defeated in the House of Commons. But I just mention that because I thought it was a good idea at the time.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Richard Proud: I share your interest in diminished funding to universities, because I'm chairman of the board at McGill, and we're going through the compression that all universities are in Canada.

• 1650

The Chairman: Just before I go to Mr. Cannis, I'd like to make a comment.

I don't understand why the Canadian university system doesn't support athletic scholarships. I know the Atlantic Canadian universities want it, and now you're telling me you're doing it in Quebec, and the western university systems want it. So is the Ontario wing of the university system so strong that it can defeat the whole scholarship program for the whole nation?

Mr. Richard Pound: Welcome to Ontario.

The Chairman: Well, if I can get the support of this committee, I am one member from Ontario who would be happy to take that political heat, because I find it extremely selfish that Ontario, with all of its richness, would shut down an athletic scholarship program for the rest of the country.

Mr. Cannis.

Mr. John Cannis (Scarborough Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be right by your side—

The Chairman: Great.

Mr. John Cannis: —maybe pushing this in Ontario caucus.

Mr. Pound, it's good to see you again.

I want to start off by elaborating a little bit more on the lottery industry. You were right on when you commented and used the examples of other nations. I too have had that opportunity to look at some other nations. It's no wonder they have strong athletic programs, because the central government is in charge or is in control or is overseeing or is administrating the sports lotteries. The vast amounts of moneys that come into this pool are disseminated through a national sports foundation independently, in consultation with the government. That is working so well.

Maybe this is the reason that countries such as Germany, England, Italy, and Greece pour in tremendous amounts of money—more than we have, even though, as I'm sure the committee members are aware, Heritage Canada announced last year a $50 million funding for the next five years.

Gaming and betting have taken on such an international scope as well, and that somehow could be looked at in accessing more funds.

I want to ask your views. Can you comment on the partnership program you spoke about? Not too long ago we found ourselves in Vancouver at the Athletes CAN conference, where Sport Canada announced the support of the National Sport Centre of Greater Vancouver. The federal government will be supporting almost 50% of a budget of about $750,000 per year. What I was pleased about was the fact that there were other partners on board, whether it was municipal, provincial, or whatever.

I was wondering if you could comment, for the benefit of the committee members, on the benefits of the national sport centres.

And could I ask another question after this, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman: Yes. We have to be conscious of the fact that we have seven or eight minutes left, and Madame Tremblay is on the list, but fine.

Mr. Richard Pound: The idea of national sport centres in Canada is absolutely essential. For 300 years we've fought against our geography. We're 6,000 miles long and 200 miles deep, so we need places like that. The partnership formula, which has been led by the federal government in this area, has proven to be very effective, and the centres are very effective.

Mr. John Cannis: One aspect of the centre that I enjoyed was the diversity of the centre in terms of the services it offers to the athletes, not just for their athletic participation, but also for their life after their athletic life—counselling, employment, and so on.

I'd like you to elaborate on one area for me. You indicated that you're not all that receptive to supporting the lower end of the athletic world. I don't know what you meant by that, but how do we get to an Elvis Stojko, for example, who was at the skating rinks of Richmond Hill?

I'm not saying we should be supporting it in terms of funding, but yes, maybe in terms of funding. I know one of my colleagues mentioned earlier tax benefits for the parents. I believe you yourself indicated that every year, your children outgrow the shoulder pads or what have you.

My view is to keep in mind that we have to support the younger athletes, because they hopefully will be our next high-performance generation of athletes. I don't know what your views are on that. Could you elaborate as to how we can, and whether we should— Correct me if I'm wrong, but you indicated you're not all that in favour of supporting the lower end of the athletic ladder.

• 1655

Mr. Richard Pound: I'm very much in support of support being there. I'm just saying that as a national government, you have to pick your role. If you wanted to put seed money in there in the sense of a tax expenditure, the deductibility of fees or sports equipment and that sort of thing for parents would be terrific. I just think you'll never have enough money to go to every Richmond Hill to do all this.

As you facilitate the agreement between the provinces and so forth, you can say, “Look, this is your baby. Once you put in the facilities, once you get the coaches and the programs and the kids start to develop, then we'll come in and support.” But I wouldn't take it on from day one, because otherwise everyone is just going to wash their hands of it.

Mr. John Cannis: My last question, Mr. Chairman, is very short.

I just want to hear this for the record, Mr. Pound. You do believe in the federal government hopefully once again recapturing the sports lottery sector, which unfortunately Mr. Clark literally gave away to the provinces some time back. And you believe that a national sports foundation could unfold, independent from the government, to develop and nurture our athletes as well?

Mr. Richard Pound: I certainly believe in recapturing the lottery. As to the best mechanism to administer funds from that, that probably deserves more study, but if you get as far as re-establishing the principle of a national lottery, you'll have done a great service for the community.

The Chairman: Well, we'll start the debate, but as you know, the provinces guard this jealously.

Madame Tremblay.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I would like to raise another subject which does not apply directly to the content of your presentation, but rather to your role as Vice-President of the International Olympic Committee.

There is an old saying about bread and circuses, but we have reached the point that we will have to put so much money into the circuses that there will be nothing left for the bread. The competitions have become so important that we have seen serious incidents, such as one athlete attacking another, or questionable decisions made by judges, as was the case at Nagano. The judges know that if this American athlete wins the gold medal, she will receive a million dollars; so they fix it to give it to her.

More and more ordinary people are disturbed by what is happening to the Olympic movement. They are developing an attitude somewhat like that which put an end to the Olympic Games in Athens and perhaps created the Olympic Games in Delphi; people are fed up with the competitiveness, dishonesty, corruption and so on. We hear growing talk on television about chokers and the money it costs to hold the Olympic Games. The Committee members are considered freeloaders, parasites. Even though you don't like to travel, it seems that a lot of people do. You co-opt your members.

Well, I don't quite know how to say this because I don't want to be politically incorrect—I have learnt something in five years, after all—but I think it's going from bad to worse, with all due respect. I'm not targeting the people, but the organization as a whole. We no longer know just how—

In Nagano, I was surprised to learn that the Canadian government was not involved in the Canadian Olympics Committee, except in that it provided a grant. You can see how naive I was. But still, the government could impose the same requirement it imposes on all companies receiving government funding—that they be bilingual.

But you demonstrate a certain lack of awareness in forcing us— Well, you say it won't happen again. What I find difficult to understand is that it happened in the first place. The Olympics have been around for some time. Initially, the games were francophone. French was almost their first official language.

Hosting the Olympics is becoming an increasingly expensive proposition. Quebec City will be spending quite a bit for the 2010 Games, but we are already hearing rumours that Quebec City won't get them—we'll know for sure in two weeks. So why raise people's hopes and ask for so much money? Why do the Games have to cost so much?

• 1700

[English]

The Chairman: That was a short question.

Mr. Richard Pound: I think there were a couple of questions and a fair amount of assertion, and let me say that with a lot of the assertion, I'm in complete disagreement. But let's deal with the economics of this first.

The Olympic Games today have changed enormously from the time we hosted them in Montreal. If Toronto wins the Summer Games in 2008, about $2.5 billion will come to the City of Toronto from television, sponsorship, tickets, and suppliers, without a single penny coming from any other source.

You should be able to organize an Olympic Games, even a Summer Games, with 28 or 30 sports, for less than $2 billion. So there's a profit to the host city, in terms of straight cash coming in, of somewhere in the order of $500 million. That's before you consider all of the economic effect of whatever facilities may be built and whatever tourism may arise. The Olympics are unique as a sports event. They pay for themselves.

What happened to us in Montreal is that, despite the best advice of all of the Olympic authorities, the mayor of the day put his infrastructure budget and his Olympic budget together. So lots of people think the Montreal Olympics lost $1.2 billion. They didn't. They made about $150 million on the operating level. What's in the $1.2 billion you hear about is the extension of the metro out to the Olympic site, the construction of the stadium, the construction of the velodrome, and the construction of the Olympic village, which are not Olympic expenses.

So the economics are huge.

Second, I'm not here to suggest that everything we do in the Olympics is perfect. It's evolving, and we've made a lot of progress over the years. But it is the only sports movement in the world that has as its base a set of ethical principles. Nobody's doing it for the money. It's not like professional sport.

It doesn't seem to bother people, probably not even you, to watch a 345-pound lineman in an NFL game smash his head into another 345-pound lineman, and they didn't get to be that size eating hamburgers. But the minute somebody does that in the Olympics, it's a tragedy. The minute somebody makes a bad decision in an Olympic event, that's a tragedy. How many bad calls have we seen in hockey and football games? Life goes on. Most of the athletes can accept that, and they do; it's part of the risk.

In Nagano— We're trying to do something to change the skating judging in the dance event, and I think we've done it. That has to happen from time to time.

The Olympics, as an ongoing movement, first of all has the highest recognition factor of any organization in the world. You know our five rings, the Olympic rings? We did a test in nine countries on five continents. It's more recognized than the Red Cross, the United Nations, Coca-Cola, and McDonald's. It's the most recognized symbol in the whole world.

We're doing a study now on public acceptance of the Olympics. I'm concerned here. You're a member of Parliament, and you're telling me all these awful things about the Olympics. We want to check that out and see whether what you think is really what everybody thinks. The people who are doing this for us—we have an independent study—have never found any organization or any cause that has had higher support, north, south, east, and west.

So we may not have it all right, but I think we're a long way ahead of whatever is in second place, and more important, we're determined to get it right. I don't know that in two minutes, I'm going to convince you that the end of the world is not upon us, but think about it. In 1996, 197 different countries all participated at the Olympics in Atlanta. It doesn't happen anywhere else. Only the Olympics can do that, and there's a reason: they're universal, and the values underlie them.

• 1705

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Pound.

Colleagues, we're five minutes beyond, and I know a couple of members have other events and we have a resolution to pass. Does somebody want to ask a short question? Did I see a signal?

Mr. John Cannis: I just want to make one comment, Mr. Chairman, on the Nagano Games as well.

The Chairman: Sure.

Mr. John Cannis: On the travelling aspect, Suzanne and I spent an hour and a half to get to Nagano at 5 o'clock in the morning and an hour and a half to get back at 12 midnight.

An hon. member: Poor John.

Mr. John Cannis: At times we have a tendency, as individuals, to talk about some of the things that went wrong, and some things did go wrong; we experienced it. But also, we've made a good effort to now recognize our athletes here in the nation's capital.

I'd like to close by saying what an excellent job the committee did at Canada House, the place where the athletes were able to gather and share highlights, positive moments, and some not-so-good moments. Mr. Pound, you were there as well.

For the organization and the work that was done by the committee, I tip my hat to you. I know you're working hard to fine-tune the effort, but I say to this committee, having experienced it in Nagano, that Canada can stand proud and hold their head high, because we stood above the entire crowd. Thank you for that, Mr. Pound.

Mr. Richard Pound: Thank you. I wish I could say I had something to do with it, but I will certainly pass on your comments to the Canadian Olympic Association.

The Chairman: Mr. Pound, we are grateful to you for coming before us today. We're coming down the home stretch after a year's work, and our report wouldn't be worth a tenth of what it's going to be worth now that we've had your insight and your credibility, as we evolve this report.

So from all of our members, even the ones who regretfully couldn't be here today, we thank you sincerely. We're proud that you're such a senior person on the International Olympic Committee. I'm going to make the prediction that one day you'll probably be chairing that whole IOC, and we're going to be right there rooting for you. So thanks for coming.

Mr. Richard Pound: Talk slower and louder.

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Chairman: Madame Tremblay, we need you for one second. We have two resolutions.

Colleagues, our meeting in Toronto didn't happen.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chairman: In order to receive the proper translation and evidence as part of our meeting, this motion needs to be approved. It will cover the costs of the translation and the other indirect expenses that were needed. I'm not talking about television or members' travel or anything; that all comes out of our own budget.

Could I have a mover that these motions be put to the House? Moved by John, seconded by Madame Tremblay.

(Motions agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

The Chairman: Okay, great.

I want to say one last thing. Everybody has a copy of this confidential draft document. A number of draft recommendations are in the report. It is very important that, if possible, we have a unanimous report going to the House. It's a rare thing around here, and if we can do it, great. If we can't, I understand.

• 1710

This is what I would like to see happen. Please read the report, and if there's any recommendation in there that you feel is too tough for you to swallow politically, I would like to be informed what recommendation it is—they're all numbered—and we should talk about it, because maybe we could make an amendment to the recommendation, or an alteration or whatever.

We want to table this in the House of Commons on December 3 so that some of those recommendations can be put into Mr. Martin's thought process, but everybody has to have their input.

Suzanne.

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Mr. Chairman, there have been many changes, and a number of versions have been put forward. Just before coming here, I tried to compare the last version from Toronto with the version I had before that. As you would say in English, so far so good—but we will submitting a dissenting report.

I am not certain whether changes have been made to this text, but to be very honest with you, on the basis of what I have before me today, we are considering a dissenting report. We see much too much encroachment on provincial jurisdiction, and not enough detail in cases where provinces would be asked to co-operate. Obviously, we will not be able to endorse some of these recommendations. But it's not a life or death issue, we will just submit a dissenting report.

[English]

The Chairman: That's fair.

I want to respond to that. I would like Claude to sit down with you and identify those recommendations where you feel that provincial sensitivity. When you've identified those specific recommendations where the provincial sensitivity is there, then we'll go over them and see if there's some way your sensitivity can be looked after. You do not see the word “unity” in this file. We took that out everywhere.

Before we make a decision that it cannot be a unanimous report, let us at least listen to your concerns.

Claude, would you sit down with Madame Tremblay?

Mr. Claude Blanchette (Committee Researcher): Sure.

The Chairman: It's just the recommendations, not the text.

Mr. Claude Blanchette: No, no.

The Chairman: It's not the body.

Denis.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Coderre: One thing I found very pleasant about working on this committee from the beginning is not only the pleasant atmosphere, but also the way in which members were able to agree. Obviously, nothing is cast in stone at present. I believe the report must properly reflect the way we have worked together and conducted our deliberations. We made it clear from the start that we had no intention of encroaching on provincial jurisdictions.

From the very start of our deliberations, we tried to define our role such that it took nothing away from anyone, and did not disadvantage anyone. I would therefore tend to agree with Ms. Tremblay, who believes some things should be discussed. I would also not like to see my government encroach on areas of provincial jurisdiction.

But given that we were well aware from the start of the impact this subcommittee might have, and given the fact that both the subcommittee's impact and ability to achieve its goals might be weakened by a dissenting report, I would like us all to work together in finding a solution.

Let me make it clear at the outset, however, that no one—at least among representatives of this party—had any intention of encroaching on areas of provincial jurisdiction. Our goal is to put our house in order. We have also tried to make the organization more financially responsible, and given it the opportunity for more leadership.

We always talked about complementarity, rather than harmonization. I wanted to point this out, Ms. Tremblay, so that it is on the record. I think we all have the same goals and objectives. The work we have done on this committee is in my opinion a model of parliamentary procedure. This has probably been one of the best committees I have ever sat on.

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Even La Presse perceives the committee has having gone about its work in a non-partisan fashion. We genuinely focussed on the issue.

I would therefore hate to see us fall into the dissenting report track, for partisan or political reasons, since this committee's goal at the outset has been to help sports in Canada.

The Chairman: Ms. Tremblay.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: I am perfectly prepared to go ahead in a non-partisan spirit. I have no problem with that. I believe I have demonstrated that attitude on the Heritage committee and on the deliberations concerning other issues.

The only point that remains to be settled is how much time we have left. The Heritage committee is putting on the pressure for Bill C-55. We have three meetings scheduled for this week, one tomorrow, one Wednesday and one on Friday, because it seems C- 55—on magazines—has to be passed quickly. I sit on two committees, so I have less time this week.

[English]

The Chairman: Suzanne, this is the way this is going to work. Claude is going to find time in your schedule, when you're available, and go over those. All you need to do is look at the recommendations that you're most sensitive to, and let's talk about the words.

I've always thought—and I've mentioned this to Claude—that for anything related to a provincial jurisdiction, we encourage the provinces to do things in the area of post-secondary education, in the coaching realm. In my judgment, it's never been that we order the provinces. Encouraging somebody to do something is different from interfering.

I want to make sure Claude sits down with you.

And by the way, John, if you and your party feel that something in there is not quite fitting within our realm, you—

Mr. John Solomon: What's the timeframe?

The Chairman: We have to know by the first part of the week, because if we have to alter some of these recommendations—if we have to get the right words so that the nuance fits and we can have a unanimous report—then we have to get it in the hopper by next week so that they can translate it and package it. We have to get it produced so that we're done by December 1 or 2. That gives you a week.

Mr. John Solomon: What might be productive is if each of us from our own political parties go over the recommendations and—

The Chairman: That's what I'm saying.

Mr. John Solomon: —have another meeting, and come back with a yea or nay on them or an amendment, or an additional comment.

The Chairman: Terrific.

Mr. John Solomon: I'm not sure, for example, whether a recommendation was made in these recommendations to look at establishing a sports council such as in the U.K. That's the first I've heard of it, and I'd like to get more information.

Is that in here, do you know, Claude?

The Chairman: No, not specifically.

Mr. Claude Blanchette: Not specifically, but we have some recommendations already on creating an agency for sport. Chris Lang and the Coaching Association already talked about that.

The Chairman: It was an idea, but we didn't put it in our recommendations.

Mr. John Solomon: Okay. When can we have a meeting, then, to go over these in a point-by-point form?

The Chairman: I'll tell you what we're going to do. It takes 20 minutes to read those recommendations; I did it this morning in the car coming here. It takes 20 minutes.

A voice: Were you driving?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chairman: I was in a taxicab.

If there's something glaring in there, then you should alert my office or alert me. Then by the time we come together, the researchers can give us some alternatives to consider your sensitivities. Is that fair?

Mr. John Solomon: That's fair.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Coderre: I wanted to make one last point, Mr. Chairman. From the start of our deliberations, we have all been intellectually honest. I have no difficulty in understanding Ms. Tremblay's point of view. I agree that we should not encroach on areas of provincial jurisdiction.

We have been doing some very demanding work from the start, and highlighted the status of sports in general. Obviously, saying that provinces should be doing more and that everyone should work together so that we can eventually come up with some agreement is quite different from saying that we will become involved in student sports, something that is part of the educational sector and therefore comes under provincial jurisdiction.

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We can of course point out problems in this area. Take Sports Québec, for example; they did not mince words and targeted everyone. I would also like to ensure that our recommendations are not diluted. Talking about the provinces, or provincial federations, does not necessarily mean we plan to get involved in their affairs.

The Chairman: Ms. Tremblay.

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: Mr. Chairman, I have always been intellectually honest.

[English]

The Chairman: I don't debate that. That's why we're having—

[Translation]

Ms. Suzanne Tremblay: —

[Editor's Note: Inaudible]—

[English]

The Chairman: Okay, we now understand the game plan. Everybody has the report. The bottom line is that the train is going to leave the station on December 3 or 4, so I appeal to you.

We've come a long way in a year. When we started this exercise a year ago, I don't think any of us really thought we could create this much interest in the realm of sports. So let's make sure, as we're coming down the home stretch, that we finish it off properly.

The meeting is adjourned.