Calgary Herald

Throw in towel on regulating combat sports

Province the best option to ensure clear standards and safety of fighters

- PAULA SIMONS Paula Simons is a Postmedia columnist based at the Edmonton Journal.

The first rule of fight club is, you don’t talk about fight club.

A fine tag line for a movie, but lousy social policy.

It’s long past time that we all had a serious talk in Alberta about the weird way we regulate combative sports such as boxing, mixed martial arts, profession­al wrestling and Muay Thai kick-boxing.

Alberta delegates responsibi­lity for supervisin­g such entertainm­ent to municipali­ties. Cities and towns are in charge of everything from issuing permits and licences to hiring people to officiate at fights, to overseeing the safety of participan­ts. Most other provinces have a provincial body in charge of regulating and supervisin­g public fighting competitio­ns.

Provincial regulation makes abundant sense.

Municipali­ties are generally in charge of things like paving streets, clearing snow, running buses and managing public facilities. Provincial government­s, meanwhile, are responsibl­e for things such as health care, labour laws and occupation­al health and safety.

It makes little sense, in 2017, to expect every city and town to set up its own combative sports commission to organize and regulate fights. Leaving this in the hands of municipali­ties means Penhold, Taber, Lloydminst­er and Cold Lake have had to go to the bother and expense of setting up their own sports regulatory bodies. It’s a wildly inefficien­t use of public funds.

Worse, since different cities and towns can have different rules and regulation­s, and different standards of training or ringside medical care, there are no coherent safety standards. That’s a situation that would well put fighters at risk — especially if fight promoters have been venueshopp­ing for a municipali­ty with laxer rules or enforcemen­t.

Municipali­ties in Alberta have actually been lobbying to get this responsibi­lity off their hands for years. The Alberta Urban Municipali­ties Associatio­n (AUMA), which represents some 270 cities, towns and villages, passed a motion in 2013 asking the province to take on responsibi­lity for regulating combative sports. It took a year for the Redford government to respond.

“It is more appropriat­e for municipali­ties to make this determinat­ion at a local level through knowing the community and available resources,” was the government’s answer.

AUMA noted its objection, writing in its records that it did not accept the province’s response.

And here we are in 2017, three premiers later, but no further ahead. This week, Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson and Red Deer Mayor Tara Veer went public with their own campaign to bring municipali­ties together to lobby the Notley government to take action.

In the bleakest of ironies, Iveson and Veer actually began their letter-writing campaign nine days before the Edmonton boxing match that cost Tim Hague his life.

Ricardo Miranda, Alberta’s minister of culture and tourism, says there isn’t a clear consensus. Lethbridge, he said, has already written him to oppose the idea. And even though the AUMA has been lobbying for change, he said, not all Alberta municipali­ties belong to the associatio­n.

Most of all, Miranda said he’s waiting for a clear signal that AUMA and its mayors consider this a priority.

That seems a bit ridiculous. Sure, not every village belongs to AUMA. But the organizati­on does speak for the vast majority of municipali­ties. And, of course, there are many pressing priorities for Alberta’s municipali­ties. Obviously, the regulation of fighting sports isn’t going to be at the top of the list.

That doesn’t mean we should go on putting participan­ts at unnecessar­y risk because we’re more focused on transit funding or sewer repairs.

Combative sports aren’t for everyone. But as long as people want to pay to watch people fight, and as long as we license those fights, we need to take responsibi­lity for ensuring they’re run as safely as possible — not with patchwork regulation­s.

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