Funding of athletes a $64m question
Some asking if Own the Podium money should be distributed more evenly among various sports
The federal government is contemplating a review of the way money is doled out to this country’s elite athletes to see if it might be causing “unintended” consequences, a briefing document shows.
Under the “Own the Podium” banner, $64 million is allocated each year to athletes and teams viewed as having the best chances at clinching Olympic medals — an approach known as “targeted excellence.” This is on top of core funding provided by Sport Canada.
However, some critics say this decade-old approach creates two classes of athletes and puts too much emphasis on medal counts.
“I think there is an argument to be made for a flatter system of funding,” said Peter Donnelly, director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies at the University of Toronto. “Kids are already in a to-the-death struggle to get to the national team level and then they get to (that) level and they find out their team or their sport is not getting the extra funding. They’re second-class citizens.”
Josh Vander Vies, president of AthletesCAN, the association representing Canada’s national team athletes, said in a statement while athletes are grateful for Own the Podium funding, there is also some skepticism about whether the model is sustainable.
“Predicting future podium performance is a difficult task and not an exact science. In some cases this strategy is creating a system of athletes either under an immense amount of pressure to perform ... or who are disenchanted,” he said.
“We have seen this environment cultivate counterproductive … relationships between athletes and the sport administrators making decisions on their behalf.”
Vander Vies suggested a better solution might be to decentralize funding across clubs and athletes.
John Furlong, chairman of Own the Podium, the organization that assesses the performance of sports and advises the government on how the “top-up” money should be spent, said in an interview targeted funding has led to tangible results, such as the record 14 gold medals won during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.
Funding “can’t be a whole lot of things to a whole lot of people,” he said. And the way Canada invests in its athletes now is essentially the same approach taken by the world’s top-performing countries. Let’s face it, he said. Canadians like winning.
“We don’t want to let them down. … The public expects us to reach higher,” he said.
According to Own the Podium’s website, rowing received $4.5 million in 2015-16, while taekwondo received $50,000. In winter sports, freestyle skiing pocketed $3.7 million, while ski jumping got $50,000.
Canadian Heritage, the federal department that oversees Sport Canada, wants to hire a contractor to review the “targeted excellence” funding model, according to briefing notes prepared for Melanie Joly, the new heritage minister, and Carla Qualtrough, the former Paralympic swimmer now the new minister of sport and persons with disabilities.
One of the aims of the review will be to identify the “intended and unintended impacts of the targeted excellence approach and of Own the Podium’s role as expert advisory group on the Canadian sport system,” the documents state.
Asked what sort of unintended impacts have been identified, Heritage officials cited the increased presence of foreign coaches in Canadian sports. A 2011 independent evaluation of Own the Podium raised the same issue, noting that some in the industry believe the program is “biased” towards international coaches because they are presumed to be superior.
Heritage officials said the review will also consider calls for more “balance” between funding for sport development versus funding to improve Canada’s medal haul.