Funding for Canadian athletes to be altered
Report finds current system produces medals, but some feel left behind
A shakeup is coming in how Canada pays for its athletes to win Olympic and Paralympic medals.
The Department of Canadian Heritage, with Sport Canada under its umbrella, released a report Thursday from its review of “targeted excellence,” a system established over a decade ago that doles out money based on the ability to win medals.
Since that philosophy was adopted, Canada had its most successful Winter Olympics ever with 26 medals, including 14 gold, in 2010 and one of its most successful Summer Games last year in Rio with 22 medals, including four gold.
“I’m unapologetic about my assertion that targeting sports has worked,” Canada’s Minister of Sport Carla Qualtrough told The Canadian Press.
“Our country is better off because we embarked on a path in sport 12 years ago. In order to sustain that, we need to have a longer-term game plan.”
The federal government, and by extension the Canadian taxpayer, is the single biggest funder of the country’s high-performance athletes, to the tune of about $200 million annually.
Own The Podium makes funding recommendations directing $70 million in targeted excellence money — about $6 million of it comes from the Canadian Olympic Committee — to sports federations whose athletes demonstrate medal potential.
While the report concluded that approach produces medals, half the Olympic athletes surveyed said how it is administered “needs a major re-think and revisions.”
OTP came under scrutiny as funding evaluations made annually mean a sport federation and its athletes could be quickly defunded from one year to the next with little time to find other revenue.
An athlete whose sport was defunded said in the report losing the funds was like getting “bombed back to the stone age.” Athletes who didn’t receive targeted funding felt left behind.
The most extreme example is the national skeleton team that got $3.5 million in the quadrennial before 2014, but has received $386,000 in the first three years of this quad.
The report suggests a funding commitment of more than one year would allow sport federations to create a more stable environment for their athletes.
“One of the things we heard loud and clear from athletes is they feel responsible for the financial sustainability of their organization,” Qualtrough said. “That deters from performance. It’s just not fair and it’s not healthy.”
Qualtrough said sports and athletes that don’t receive targeted funding need to see a clear path to getting it.
The report also stated the belief that not nearly enough money is going to athletes five to eight years from their peak performances.
“We cannot sustain this level of success and this level of podium results — given that the field is increasingly competitive — without looking a little further down the pipe to make sure we have athletes to keep generating those results for us,” Qualtrough said.