Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 28 - Evidence - May 29, 2007
OTTAWA, Tuesday, May 29, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 7:17 p.m. to examine and report upon rural poverty in Canada.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good evening, honourable senators and witnesses. Good evening to all of those who are watching our Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Last May, this committee was authorized to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada. Last fall, we heard from a number of expert witnesses who gave us an overview of rural poverty in Canada. On the basis of that testimony, we wrote an interim report which we released in December and which, by all accounts, struck a nerve. We are now in the midst of our second phase of the study where we meet with rural Canadians in rural Canada. We are pleased to say that we have now travelled to every province in Canada. Along the way we have met truly wonderful and diverse groups of rural Canadians who welcomed us with open arms into their communities and sometimes even into their homes.
The committee still has much work to do. We still have to visit rural communities in Northern Ontario and in Quebec. The committee will be holding meetings in Kapuskasing, Ontario, this Friday. We still want to hear from as many people as possible. We will be going north to the three territories. This is a rural study, not just an agricultural study. In short, we still have to make sure that we get this right and that we understand rural poverty at its core. To that end, we continue to invite visitors to Ottawa as witnesses.
This evening our first witness is Raymond Pong, Research Director of the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research. A sociologist by training, Mr. Pong has many years of public service and academic experience in health services research, planning and policy.
Raymond Pong, Research Director, Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research, Laurentian University, as an individual: Honourable senators, first I wish to say how delighted I am to be invited here. You are doing an important and difficult job. I realize that.
I want to start by saying a few words about myself. I am the research director of the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research at Laurentian University. It is one of a very few centres in Canada devoted to studying rural health. Ours is probably one of three or four centres of this nature. Tonight I am presenting my own views, not necessarily the views of the research centre. However, I will be referring extensively to some of my own research and the research of my colleagues.
This presentation focuses on one aspect: health. I read through your interim report and I understand that your committee is charged with the responsibility to study rural poverty in all its dimensions. I am unable to talk about all the dimensions, so I will focus on one, rural health, an area that interests me and that I know a little bit about. I also realize that health is an important issue for rural Canadians, in particular those living in poverty.
I have submitted a written presentation, so I will not go into great detail. I will spend a few minutes flipping through a few slides with you and then I will leave time for questions, which I hope to be able to answer.
First, I want to talk about what we know about rural poverty and health. As a researcher, I want to stay close to what research tells us, rather than just my own personal opinions. However, I realize that sometimes we must go beyond scientific evidence, simply because in some areas there is very little scientific evidence. I will tell you what it is.
On this slide I am using three circles. The green circle represents the body of knowledge about rural; the red circle represents the body of knowledge about poverty; and the blue circle represents the body of knowledge about health. There are probably tens of millions of studies done on health, so we know quite a bit about health.
You will notice that the three circles intersect. For example, rural intersects with poverty. The areas where two circles intersect I have labelled ``A,'' ``B'' and ``C.'' ``A'' represents the area of knowledge about rural and poverty; ``B'' represents the area of knowledge about poverty and health; and ``C'' represents the body of knowledge about rural and health. As you probably know by now, we know something about rural and poverty. We know something about poverty and health. Hopefully, I can tell you a bit more about rural and health tonight.
Where the three circles intersect, it is an area that we know very little about to date. Doing a literature search to find out what we know about rural poverty and health in Canada, I came across hardly more than a handful of articles in this area. That is why I want to say something about this area.
Since nothing has been published about rural poverty and health, what will I tell you? I will tell you what we know about rural and poverty, poverty and health, and then rural and health. I will then make some extrapolations of what we know. That is why you see the three arrows. They stand for inferences or extrapolations, based on what we know at this stage. I call those hypotheses because they are inferences, not scientific evidence. Those inferences could be treated as hypotheses so that, in the future, we will find evidence either to support them or to refute them.
First, there is rural and poverty. You have already done quite a bit of work in this area, so I do not need to tell you very much. I read your interim report. What I am telling you in this section is not new to you.
We all know that Canadians' incomes tend to be lower in rural Canada. Many studies have found that out. There is nothing new about that. However, the income gap between rural and urban Canada has been increasing in the last couple of decades. As I mentioned, most of the studies cited are in my written brief, so I will not go into individual studies.
Depending on how poverty is defined, rural Canada either has a higher or lower proportion of poor people. For example, if we use the LICO definition, the low income cut off, rural Canada has a smaller proportion of poor people than urban Canada. However, if we use the LIM, the low income measure, as a definition of poverty, rural Canada has a slightly higher proportion of poor people than urban Canada. Importantly, and interestingly, although there is a higher proportion of poor people in rural Canada, the incomes of rural Canadians are more evenly distributed, though they are lower on average. That is all I want to say about rural and poverty.
Second, I want to say something about poverty and health. There are two views about how low income affects health. One is what researchers typically call the absolute deprivation hypothesis, which means that when people have very low income, that in itself generates poor health. The other one is called the relative position hypothesis, which refers to the fact that even if you are not in desperate poverty, the very fact that you are low on the socio-economic scale will likely generate poor health. My presentation will not try to support or counter that; I just point it out for your information. Many studies have shown that people with a low income or a low socio-economic status have poorer health.
Poverty seldom exists by itself. It is very often a part of a syndrome of adverse situations, for example homelessness, illiteracy, lower education levels, food insecurity and so forth. Health is related to a whole slew of factors that contribute to poor health in one form or another.
I want to say a little bit more about rural areas and health. We all know that rural Canadians have a poorer health status and a heavier burden of illness. I have borrowed, without permission, a table from the Romanow report, which was published in 2002. In the chapter on rural health there is a table that contains several health indicators, including life expectancy at birth, infant mortality and total mortality. He looks at health regions across Canada that are divided into predominantly urban areas, intermediate areas and predominantly rural areas. The findings shown in this table indicate that it does not matter which definition you use: people living in rural areas tend to have poorer health.
Our research centre has done a study called How Healthy are Rural Canadians? An Assessment of Their Health Status and Health Determinants. The study was conducted by our research centre together with the Public Health Agency of Canada and a number of other research centres across the country, and it was published late last year by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, CIHI. Earlier this month, when Dr. David Butler-Jones talked to you, he also referred to this study because his agency and our research centre conducted it jointly.
Based on our study, we know that rural residents have higher morbidity rates, a shorter life expectancy and higher mortality rates due to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, injuries, suicides and so forth. More disturbingly, as you go from the less rural to the more rural areas, the health status decreases. In other words, health status is inversely related to rurality.
I want to use a couple of graphs from the study to illustrate what I am telling you. In this chart, we look at life expectancy at birth divided between men and women. There is no difference between women, regardless of the region. Whether metropolitan areas or the most rural areas, the life expectancy of women is more or less the same. However, it goes down for men. Interestingly, the life expectancy is slightly longer in strong rural areas than in urban ones, but after that it goes continuously downwards.
This chart shows a few other things, like all-cause mortality rates, mortality based on circulatory diseases, and mortality due to injuries and poisoning. Again, with few exceptions, the more rural the area, the poorer the health status. Take, for example, injury and poisoning. In major metropolitan area, the mortality rate per 100,000 people is 43; whereas in the most rural or remote areas, it is 97.1, more than double.
Not only do rural people have a health status different from their urban counterparts, they also use health services differently. Again based on our study, we know that rural residents have different patterns of health services utilization. More rural residents than urban residents have not seen a family physician in the last 12 months. Rural residents see specialists to an even lesser extent. However, they are more likely to see a nurse. This is because in the most remote areas, nurses are probably the only health professionals available locally.
Surprisingly, rural Canadians have much higher hospitalization rates, and the hospitalization rate increases positively with rurality. That means that the more rural the area they live in, the more likely they are to be hospitalized. However, they have shorter lengths of stay in hospital. If they are hospitalized, they get discharged earlier than their counterparts in urban centres. Also, rural Canadians more likely receive care in emergency departments of hospitals or in outpatient clinics.
These are a few items to show you how rural Canadians utilize health services differently than their urban counterparts. We all know that to a large extent it is related to the maldistribution of health care resources, including health human resources. A study that I did, Geographic Distribution of Physicians in Canada: Beyond How Many and Where, which was published just under than two years ago, found that in 2004, fewer than 10 per cent of physicians were located in rural Canada where about 22 per cent of Canadians live; 16 per cent of family physicians were located in rural Canada, but only about 2.6 per cent of specialists were located there.
In addition to physicians, we find the same kind of maldistribution of other health care professionals. The only exception is probably licensed practical nurses; there is actually a higher proportion of licensed practical nurses in rural Canada than in the rest of the population. The others, ranging from registered nurses and medical laboratory technicians to physiotherapists and occupational therapists, all lag behind the proportion of the rural population.
Having told you a little bit about rural areas and poverty, poverty and health, and rural areas and health, what can I say about rural poverty and health? As I said, the following are my hypotheses or inferences, which will wait for confirmation by researchers.
Although living in poverty is not conducive to health regardless of where the poor people live, I would argue that people living in rural Canada have a much greater disadvantage simply because of the maldistribution of health services and the great distances to travel to access care.
Canada has a universal health care system, medicare. We all know that medicare should ensure that all Canadians have access to needed medical and hospital services, regardless of their economic ability to pay. However, if services are not available locally or are located far away, that will disadvantage rural Canadians, particularly those who live in poverty. I would hypothesize further that services not covered by our medicare plan — in other words things that are not what we call needed hospital and medical care — will be even harder for rural Canadians in general and poor rural Canadians in particular to access, simply because the care is either not available locally or is far away and too costly for many poor people to access.
I also argue that special programs for rural poor may be needed. In almost every province and territory, the health departments have special programs and strategies to ensure that rural Canadians have access to basic and essential medical and hospital care. In Ontario we have the Underserviced Area Program. However, most of those programs are generic in nature as they target the general population in rural Canada, not specifically the rural poor. I would argue that in some instances it may be necessary for government and for this country to develop special programs targeting the rural poor.
Even though there are many more poor people in urban Canada, they are more concentrated geography-wise, whereas in the rural areas, poor people, as your interim report pointed out, are more or less invisible. Their problems may not get the attention of the bureaucrats and politicians. I argued earlier that special programs may be needed for the rural poor, but it may be more difficult to develop special programs for rural poor people who have health problems.
Not that I want to be too pessimistic, but I have to be honest. We think that things are difficult for rural Canada, particularly for the rural poor, but the worst is yet to come. Canada has witnessed an incessant urbanization. In the last few decades there has been rural depopulation, and I think the trend will continue unless there are major policy changes. At present, about 21 per cent of Canada's population is rural. I suspect that in ten years it will go down to perhaps 19 per cent or 18 per cent. When rural areas have even fewer people and they are more dispersed, the health care and other services will be even more difficult to provide. When rural Canada has even less political clout, there will be fewer people to advocate on their behalf. That is why the worst is yet to come.
There is no one single magic bullet that can solve the problem of rural poverty or poor health among the rural poor. We have to use multiple approaches. The study we did with the Public Health Agency of Canada discovered that there are many factors related to poor health status. It is not just rural, lower education or low income; rather, a whole slew of factors is involved. We need to tackle this problem from a multidimensional perspective.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. We appreciate your presence here, Dr. Pong. We have to look into this as we carry on in our travels. It is important that we hear from someone who has spent as much time and has the skills and knowledge that you do on this issue.
Senator Gustafson and Senator Peterson are both from Saskatchewan and Senator Mahovlich is from Ontario. My other colleague is from Manitoba. I am sure they are eager to speak with you tonight.
Senator Peterson: Was all of your research done in the Sudbury area?
Mr. Pong: No. The Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research is located in Sudbury, but our research is not confined to either Sudbury or Northern Ontario. The study I quoted is national.
Senator Peterson: It is relevant across the country then.
Mr. Pong: Yes.
Senator Peterson: There is a lot of information and you have identified the problems. The rural poor do not have good health, do not eat well, and do not tend to see a doctor until they are in dire trouble because there is not one available locally. They have to go a long way. If someone is booked for a knee operation they will drive 100 miles only to be told that they are bumped because someone else has a more serious problem. After two or three times they tend not to access that operation.
Where would this go? Who gets this information? How do we act on this? What would be your recommendation?
Mr. Pong: As I pointed out earlier, this is one of those issues that probably will have not a single solution. In fact, most health issues have no single solution. We need to address the social, economic and ecological determinants of health and of cost. Poverty is one of those determinants. They are what researchers call the upstream causes of good health. Unless we address some of those issues, the whole issue of poor health in rural areas will not be solved. However, I also realize that it is easier said than done to solve those problems. Even if we find the right solutions, it will take years, if not decades, to address those issues.
In the meantime, we also need to pay attention to the more equitable distribution of health services and resources. Studies have shown that timely medical intervention can lower mortality due to major diseases such as cardiovascular diseases. We need to approach the problem from both ends and from multiple perspectives.
Senator Gustafson: You did not touch on the area of drugs and substance abuse. Is there a vast difference between rural and urban or are they much the same?
Mr. Pong: To be honest, senator, this is one question I cannot answer because I have not done any research in that area. I do not know whether drug addiction is more or less severe in rural areas. We do know that consumption of alcohol is higher in rural areas than it is in urban areas and it is the same with smoking. However, I cannot tell you about hard drugs.
Senator Gustafson: You said that the worst is yet to come. Is that because rural populations are lessening and people have to travel further to receive care and services?
Mr. Pong: My hypothesis that the worst is yet to come is mostly based on demographic projections. The rural population will continue to decline, whether it is faster or slower we do not know, but it will continue to decline. When there are fewer people in rural Canada, naturally services will be even more scarce and more difficult to access. No doubt there will be more hospital closures. Services will increasingly be located in bigger regional centres, making access to service even more difficult.
I should point out that based on health care workforce projections, the problem is also getting worse. You probably have heard that we are already experiencing a shortage of physicians. How we define a shortage is arguable, but most people will tell you that we have a shortage of physicians, and the problem is not likely to be reversed in the near future. It is not only physicians but also nurses, many of whom will retire and not be replaced. The projection is that there will be fewer health care providers in the future — physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, et cetera. When that happens, access to care will suffer. That is anther reason behind my argument that the worst might be yet to come.
Senator Gustafson: Money does not seem to be the problem. A large percentage of governments at both levels fund health care but it does not seem to solve the problem.
Mr. Pong: I agree with you that in Canada we spend quite a bit of money on health care; 9.5 per cent of our GDP is spent on health care. We are trying to train more physicians and nurses, but, as we all know, most physicians tend to prefer to work in major urban centres. It is difficult to attract physicians to small, rural communities. However, I should tell you that even though that is the case, it is not all gloom and doom. We know that there are better ways to encourage physicians to work in rural Canada. One of the most effective ways, based on research, is to train physicians in rural and northern small communities. I am pleased to tell you that two years ago, Laurentian University together with Lakehead University started a brand new medical school called the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. It is the first medical school built in Canada in about 35 years. It is a fairly small medical school with only 56 students per year, but it is built entirely to train physicians to work in rural northern and remote areas. Whether the graduates will eventually settle in those places remains to be seen, because no one can tell them where to go. The idea is that if you train physicians, nurses and other health care workers in rural and northern areas, they are more likely to work in those areas. That has been shown again and again by research.
Senator Gustafson: Our social health support is questioned at times. I live right on the U.S.-Canada boundary and some people in my area travel to Minot, North Dakota, for quick service. I do not know why that is, but have we become laid back in our health care system?
Mr. Pong: I would not say that we are laid back in our health care system. In fact, Canada's health care system probably ranks as one of the top in the world. However, there is no doubt that there is a waiting list, which is a problem that every government and every ministry of health is trying to address. Health care, like anything else, is a scarce resource, and a scarce resource leads to an allocation problem. You allocate either based on who has the money or based on who comes first. Generally speaking, Canada has chosen to allocate on the basis of severity. If you have a heart attack, you will get the service first and you will bump someone who needs a knee replacement, which is painful and inconvenient but you do not die of a weak knee. Canada has chosen to allocate its resources based on needs, to some extent, rather than on income or the ability to pay. Inevitably, there will be waiting lists. However, we hope that the waiting lists will be as short as possible.
Senator Gustafson: This example might not be fair, but we had two young hockey players' whose arms were broken. The boy in Minot, North Dakota, was treated quickly at the hospital and released. The boy in Regina had to wait over the weekend to have his arm set, even though Regina is bigger than Minot. That is a problem but it might be an isolated incident.
Mr. Pong: I have to agree with you.
Senator Mahovlich: I was born in Timmins, Ontario, and we were poor but we did not know we were poor. We had doctors who would make house calls so we did not have a wait problem. I do not think the population has decreased much because the mines have been replaced by other corporations. When the mines were closing the town attracted other forms of industry, so things are still active in Timmins. However, they did close the high school in Schumacher, near Timmins, which would make it very unattractive for a family to consider moving there. If they did move to Schumacher, they would have to bus to school in Timmins. In other rural towns are schools and hospitals being closed?
Mr. Pong: I have certainly heard about schools being closed, not only in small towns but also in big cities, including Sudbury. Some hospitals have been closed as well. Hospital closings vary from province to province. Saskatchewan has closed many rural hospitals, while in Ontario very few hospitals have been closed, although some hospitals have been amalgamated. Northern Ontario has 8 per cent of the provincial population but 25 per cent of all hospitals in Ontario, although most of them are very small. Hospital closures depend on provincial policy.
In Timmins, although you may have school closures, you have the Shania Twain Centre.
Senator Mahovlich: That helps too.
Senator Chaput: Historically, rural life was thought of as healthier than urban life. How did rural Canada change from being a good thing to a bad thing? People are no longer as healthy in rural areas, for example. Where did we go wrong? Although salaries are lower, if the cost of living is lower, that might not be the main problem.
I come from a rural area. We must keep health services, although at a different level. You said there were more licensed practical nurses. Licensed practical nurses can hold clinics open. Health services can be delivered in a different way.
Having heard Senator Mahovlich speaking about schools, is it not infrastructure that is lacking, perhaps? Maybe Canada should start looking at different ways of delivering services in rural areas. What do you think of that?
Mr. Pong: You have asked a very important question. In fact, a World Health Organization report indicated that you are right. In the 18th and 19th centuries, people in rural areas in Europe, particularly England or Scandinavia, were healthier than those in urban centres. You can read about urban health at that time in Charles Dickens' novels.
That changed in the 20th century. I do not know the cause. It may be that rural populations are the victims of their own success. In the past, many people were needed to farm, to mine, to cut down trees and to fish. Now everything is mechanized.
Sudbury is a mining town. I was told that 30 to 40 years ago a huge proportion of the labour force was employed by two companies — Inco and Falconbridge. Those companies are now much more productive. They produce more nickel, but they hire very few people. That happens in forestry and agriculture as well.
The resource extraction industry is becoming so successful in terms of productivity that it no longer requires people. There are fewer farmers, loggers and miners. Communities such as Timmins and Sudbury are able to diversify into other things, and they thrive.
Elliot Lake, whose economy was totally based on uranium mining, nearly disappeared overnight when the uranium mining company decided it was no longer profitable to mine there. Instead, Ontario Hydro purchased uranium from Saskatchewan because it is much cheaper to produce there. However, Elliot Lake refused to disappear. There were many houses left behind by the mining companies. The people decided to turn those houses into retirement homes and they marketed Elliot Lake as a retirement community. Elliot Lake is still there. It is probably not as prosperous as when it was a uranium mining town, but it has not become a ghost town.
Economic and technological change is driving much of the transformation of the rural economy. Whether that is a good or a bad thing depends on your perspective.
Senator Mahovlich: There are Shakers near Kitchener who maintain tradition. They keep their horses rather than buying cars and they still build their furniture.
Mr. Pong: I do not believe that many Canadians want to ride in a buggy.
Senator Chaput: How can it get worse?
Mr. Pong: My hypothesis that the worst is yet to come is based mostly on the population of rural Canada. As I said, when you have fewer people, you have less political clout. It is more difficult to provide services in a huge country like Canada where the population is widespread.
In Northern Ontario, there are some communities that have no roads. You have to fly to get to them or wait until wintertime when everything freezes over and trucks can drive over the lakes and streams. Those places are very difficult and expensive to serve. When the population decreases in rural Canada, that problem will be magnified.
Senator Peterson: Do you think we would be better served by having more registered nurses in rural areas supporting a doctor? They could certainly handle more patients. Many patients do not require a surgeon.
Mr. Pong: In fact, that is the current trend. Most provinces are experimenting with primary care reform. The idea is to encourage health care providers to work together as a team with physicians, registered nurses, nurse practitioners and sometimes dieticians and social workers.
You are right that some of the things that doctors do can probably be done to some extent by nurses. We certainly need more nurses in rural Canada.
Senator Gustafson: It appears to me that the main difference between urban and rural centres is the advanced scientific developments to which urban centres have access. We do not have that in the rural areas. They might be 100 miles away, and how to get there is the question.
Mr. Pong: It depends on what you mean by advanced technology. Rural areas can overcome some of those difficulties with the advances of information technology. We all know that Canada was created because of the railway. We built CN and CP to link Canada together and we built the Trans-Canada Highway and many others to link our gigantic country together.
In the future, it seems to me that the information highway may help rural Canada. You can be located in Kapuskasing and you can do a lot of highly technical work. For example, I have been doing work for the World Health Organization, but I have never been to Geneva. They send me an email asking me to do something, and I work at home in Sudbury and then send the results to Geneva.
If that can happen, I cannot understand why a lot of what we call white-collar, high-level work could not be done in rural areas. We do not all have to be located downtown in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver to do that work. In the past, people have stayed in rural Canada because that was their livelihood. In the future, people will stay in rural areas or not out of choice, not necessity.
Some people prefer a rural environment — closer to nature, quieter, less chaotic, you do not have to spend an hour and a half driving to work. With information technology, some people can do that. I would like to suggest that Canada should use the information highway to link urban and rural Canada, just like we have linked the whole country together by railways and highways.
Senator Gustafson: Canadian Pacific did a study a number of years ago on workers that worked in offices and those that worked on the railroad. The workers on the railroad outlived the workers in the office by seven years. Today it has gone the other way. Farms are becoming bigger, but the farmer sits on a tractor 16 hours a day and does not get much exercise. He sits there hanging on for dear life and he is played out by nighttime. I speak from experience.
My neighbour is 10 years younger than I am, and he said his knees have gotten him. He sat on that tractor for a month. There you sit, hanging on.
Mr. Pong: I am sure you already know that some of the most dangerous occupations in this country are occupations found in rural areas — farming, logging, mining and fishing. Not only are more people killed because they farm, log or mine, but there are also occupational health hazards.
Unfortunately, people still have the notion that the rural areas are idyllic, pristine areas, as you pointed out earlier. Even in that sense, rural areas are facing major challenges. I do not need to tell you that in the last few years the two major public health disasters in Canada occurred in rural areas, Walkerton in Southern Ontario and North Battleford in Saskatchewan. Rural Canada is not as pristine as we think. We need to address those issues.
Senator Gustafson: It comes down to a political issue. There are not a lot of votes in rural areas, so why be concerned with it? Let us get the votes out of the urban centre. That is a reality of what is happening today. As a result, rural areas get little support from the treasury dollar of the country when it comes to those situations.
Mr. Pong: I have to agree with you. It will be up to Canada to decide what kind of country we want. From reading Canadian history, I know that in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Canada recruited hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of immigrants from all over the world, particularly Europe, to open our hinterlands to homesteads, to turn wilderness into farms.
If Canada wants our country to be a country with six to eight major urban centres and just let the rest go back to nature, that is one vision, but I think it would be an unfortunate scenario.
Senator Gustafson: Have the dice already been rolled on that one?
Mr. Pong: No, I do not think so. I am not as pessimistic as I sound, otherwise I would not be doing research on rural health.
The Chairman: Senator Gustafson has been out on the tractor for quite a while now, and he comes back better than ever. There is definitely something to be said about a life that is not in smog-covered cities. This committee wants our rural areas to thrive and to keep up what they have done for Canada for so long. They have been a foundation, and we want them to stay that way.
Thank you very much for your thoughts, Dr. Pong. We have not had this kind of discussion yet on health issues, and we very much appreciate it.
For our second panel tonight, we have Paul Carson, Director of Development, Hockey Canada. This is an appropriate time for him turn up as the whole country is riveted on this issue.
Hockey Canada is the national governing body for grassroots hockey in this country. As we travelled across Canada, we heard about the importance of sports and hockey, particularly to rural communities across this country.
We are pleased that Mr. Carson can be with us tonight to speak about issues related to hockey in rural Canada. I say with great friendship and pride, we also are glad to have with us Senator Mahovlich, who has not only been one of Canada's greatest hockey players but also came from rural roots in Northern Ontario. It is great to have you with us.
We have one hour this evening to cover a wide array of issues with Mr. Carson. I invite my colleagues to keep their questions as brief as possible to allow Mr. Carson to respond fully and for everyone around this table to be able to contribute to the discussion of the evening.
Paul Carson, Director, Development, Hockey Canada: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to present in front of this committee. I am honoured to have the opportunity on behalf of Hockey Canada to present what I believe is the picture of youth sports in Canada, and not only hockey, but we will lean a bit towards our passion as we work our way through this presentation.
First, I do not profess to represent all national sports organizations, but I believe that many who rely on facilities across Canada would echo a similar message to what I wish to share with you today.
I have chosen as a backdrop throughout my slide presentation the youth in our sport. I chose right in the centre, youngsters who travelled to a European centre to support their father at a tournament as he represented Canada, as well as young players who participated in a video shoot we produced a few years ago because Hockey Canada sees itself as a leader in producing resources that are well respected all across the country and throughout the hockey world.
By way of my presentation outline, I will provide a brief introduction. I want to talk about the structure of our sport, the demographics to some degree and facilities in general. Then, I want to look at issues we have discovered through our investigations of facilities and then talk about challenges in grassroots hockey. Particularly, I think the discussion will lead itself towards challenges in rural Canada.
Then I will talk about future directions, strategies that Hockey Canada is involved with in continuing to grow the game but at the very least to ensure the game provides a platform for the youth of our country to continue to participate in sport.
Hockey Canada's mission is to lead, develop and promote positive hockey experiences. The underlying opportunity in hockey and grassroots sports in general is to increase physical activity rates among Canadians. We need to see this as a priority and a commitment to encourage healthy and active living among all Canadians.
As a former physical education teacher and prior to that, a participant in this sport as a player, I firmly believe that an active lifestyle allows me to enjoy so much of the living that I do. I encourage it within my own family and in those around me.
I am not someone that points directly to hockey as a sport to say that this should be the chosen avenue, but I believe that because we, as Canadians, see it as such a strong part of our culture, many people gravitate towards it. However, it should not be the only opportunity. To me, the opportunity to engage in physical activity in a variety of environments is paramount.
Hockey Canada believes in a positive hockey experience for all participants in a safe and sportsman-like environment. As a national governing body, we have many roles.
One role is to oversee the high performance programs that are geared towards men and women, and even in the teen years we have our male under-17 program, our national junior program and our female under-18 program.
We have a role on the international stage to support the evolution of the game in many countries around the world that participate. Some 64 nations are members of the International Ice Hockey Federation.
Hockey Canada also creates, delivers and, in some cases, exports some of the best development programs in the world of sport. This, in itself, is one of the great challenges in our game, and we probably have better market penetration of some of our programs in European countries than we do in Canada.
Dr. Pong made a reference to the information highway and we believe strongly in taking that same route because the resources and messages to support rural communities need to travel every channel available to us to ensure that we have market penetration on programs and resources to support communities.
Hockey Canada also provides a variety of other services to our membership, including the structure that allows for solid government but, more important, an insurance program that is probably second to none nationally in terms of a sport organization being able to provide its membership with security in the event of any injuries or challenges that result from their participation in the game. That program is at every level, not only in playing the game but in coaching, officiating and administering the game.
Hockey Canada works closely with provincial sport bodies as well to support national and regional events such as the Allan Cup at the senior level, the RBC Royal Bank Cup at the junior hockey level, and the TELUS Cup at the midget level.
Those events are important because it is the domestic events in Canada that find their way into small communities and those small communities rely heavily on the rural population to support the success of those events. I will share with you in a few minutes what that success looks like.
In regard to the passion of hockey I have jotted down a few points but, first, the birthplace of a sport. There is much debate in Canada on the birthplace of hockey. There are claims that it is Windsor, Nova Scotia, it could be Montreal, it could be Halifax, it could be Kingston, and we know that the controversy will go on and on. We may even solve it tonight.
Hockey is an integral part of Canadian culture. The great passion amongst a vast majority of Canadians, young and old, is for a sport that we can participate in as players, coaches, officials and administrators at all levels, but even beyond that as fans. I find that no matter where I go, when people see the pin on my lapel they want to talk about their favourite teams. I must be politically correct and suggest that my favourite team tonight is the Ottawa Senators.
The evolution of the hockey development system in Canada has been unique compared to most systems in North America. The vast majority of sporting systems in North America grew through the school system. The hockey system in Canada grew independent of the school system. There are pockets in the country where the school system is important, and I will touch on emerging partnerships in a couple of minutes that I believe will strengthen the opportunities for hockey in rural Canada.
Regarding the structure of Hockey Canada, it is important for the committee to understand that Hockey Canada is governed by a board. There are a group of eight officers on our board, which is made up of a chairman, five vice- chairs, a past chair and our president, Bob Nicholson. With that board also comes representation from all the provincial sport bodies. We call them branches but in Ontario, for example, there are three branches: Hockey Northern Ontario; Ottawa and District Hockey Association, and the Ontario Hockey Federation. The Ontario Hockey Federation is large so there are many member partners.
When we attend an annual general meeting for Hockey Canada, we see the diversity and richness of hockey's culture across Canada, which represents both rural and urban Canada. It is an exciting experience to talk with people about the game at the most common form. Even though there may be discussions about the differences between rural and urban Canada, at the root is a game about which everyone is passionate.
As a structure, Hockey Canada also has four offices. Today, I brought a colleague with me who works at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. He is what we call the Hockey Canada Regional Centre Office for Ontario. He probably comes closer to rural hockey in Canada than I ever will, but we have four offices of that nature and examples would be outreach opportunities in Northern Canada, offering Aboriginal programming throughout those northern communities, as well as offering inner city opportunities in some of the major cities across Canada. Hockey has been fortunate to have the support of Sport Canada through specific funding targeted at supporting youngsters who need access to the sport, who are either in rural communities or in intercity communities where the financial resources are limited and it is our job to identify those individuals and provide them with opportunities.
The membership in Canada is 552,000 registered players, male and female; 103,000 registered coaches; and 33,000 registered officials. This membership is all at the grassroots level. This slide shows that hockey is ingrained in the culture of our society. Twenty per cent of households in Canada are involved in some way in hockey — 4.5 million Canadians. When we look at the numbers on an annual basis at the grassroots level, approximately 1.5 million games are played in minor hockey across this country and there are 2 million practices. There are many people who are active in this sport.
Approximately 400,000 fans attended Hockey Canada events in 2006-07 at the regional, national and international level. Hockey Canada continues to offer events at the international level that set records for attendance. The International Ice Hockey Federation is more than happy to host, on an annual basis, some type of event in Canada, knowing that hockey is so embedded in our culture that there is success all over that event. Again, at the regional and national level, those events are held in small-town Canada and those events support rural communities.
In a sense, the consequence is that people have access to these events, and having access to these events and being motivated by these events encourages the youth of Canada to participate. Our challenge is to ensure we have both the resources and the facilities to support these youngsters if we are to promote active lifestyles.
With respect to facilities, arenas continue to be the hub of the community in rural Canada and we cannot afford to lose these community meeting places. There are challenges on many different levels for those facilities, but I will run through a couple of them. I know that the ministers' conference coming up soon will address this issue in terms of infrastructure around recreational facilities in Canada.
The cost to run facilities with respect to energy is higher in rural areas. Generally, energy costs decrease as the size of the community increases due in part to the greater efficiencies in these newer facilities. Therefore, it is more costly to run older facilities. The reality in Canada is that many of our facilities are somewhere in the age of 30 to 35 years old. The facilities that were built in the late 1960s had an expected lifespan of 32 years, so we are already beyond the lifespan of the facilities used in many of these communities today.
It is often the case that it is more feasible economically to close the facility than to look at a retrofit to ensure that the facility supports the community. Ultimately, closing the facility puts the rural disadvantaged in a position where they must travel greater distances to the fringes of urban centres to access facilities for programs and resources.
I am not saying there is an easy answer, but the reality is that we must look at facilities over the entire country and look at where our priorities need to be in terms of multi-purpose facilities that would address a number of needs, one being the opportunity for youngsters to participate in the great sport of hockey.
Canada's population continues to move to urban areas, putting strain on urban infrastructure and at the same time reducing the demand on rural infrastructure, which, to some degree, makes it a less attractive investment for the third party group that is looking at putting facilities into communities. Again, the ability of small-town, rural Canada to sustain corporate support is limited.
I have talked about facilities in Canada: the higher operational costs in rural Canada and rural facilities being 30 years or older, with life expectancy being 32 years. It is estimated there are 2,800 to 3,000 arenas in Canada, and approximately 86 per cent of these arenas are municipally owned. We know this because three years ago we set out to complete a research project in partnership with the Canadian Recreation Facilities Council, so we have surveyed all the facilities across Canada. An arena is a facility that may have a single ice surface, a dual ice surface or as many as six pads, but we view that as one facility.
The cost of arena renovations over the next 10 years is projected to be $3.5 billion for arenas between the age of 25 and 35 years old. Seventy-five per cent of arenas have antiquated heating systems, ventilation and refrigeration systems and, as a result, are costly to operate. New technologies are available to make them more efficient and less burdensome, but that is part of an infrastructure situation. Approximately 45 per cent of Canadian rinks, that is, about 1,350, are already beyond their life expectancy.
I will finish up with more details on facilites: 594 arenas, or 20 per cent, were built before 1960; 756 arenas, or 25 per cent, were built in the early 1970s, so 45 per cent of them are well beyond that life expectancy range of 32 years.
Right now, we are meeting with our branch partners across the country. We have a chart like this one on the screen. In red are arenas that were built more than 25 years ago and in green are arenas that are newer. You can see that 3 per cent of the arenas in Canada have been built between 2001 and the present date, so 97 per cent of all arenas pre-date 2000.
We have taken a cross-section province by province. As we present our facilities awareness strategy at the provincial level, this chart breaks it down to how that province compares with the national averages. They are all in a similar situation. Each province is reflected in these averages that we show nationally.
Our strategic plan around facilities needs to be implemented to collect and analyze data, to gain a clearer picture of all these issues, and to create long-term plans that address and resolve both the aging infrastructure and the shortfall of arenas in Canada. We need to develop an effective communications strategy that ensures we engage both government and the public and private sectors to support this mission.
We also need to complete pilot projects to demonstrate that arenas can be cost effective and erected in a timely manner. In smaller communities, we are even looking at facilities that may cost only $800,000 to $1 million that would be more of a covered outdoor facility, something appropriate for players to use in those rural settings. It seems we have gotten away from the outdoor arenas of days gone by like I played in when I grew up in Calgary, but we still have the ability, through the wonders of our climate, to take advantage of natural ice in the winter.
Issues at the grass roots level include a shrinking volunteer population, increasing costs of participating in the game or increasing costs of facilities and managing those facilities, and rules and regulations. As the population in rural Canada decreases, there are challenges for those communities to put teams together. At one time, Timmins had a team and Schumaker had a team, and now all the communities in that rural setting form one team at each age level. The challenge becomes how to break down barriers around regulations to allow players to cross boundaries and play together on the same team.
I have been in situations in southern Alberta where we meet with some of the rural minor hockey communities and they say, ``We would like to be able to travel from one community to another with a core of eight players and be able to draw on three or four players from the community we are travelling to in order to play against the team in that community.'' The reality is that we could have a team travel two hours and have a game cancelled because they do not have enough players to compete. In the winter condition the teams are travelling under, it is paramount that we figure out ways to make sure kids have the opportunity to play.
Regarding future directions at Hockey Canada, this past year, we have conducted a project called Grassroots Summits. We have asked all our branches to work back through their membership, and non-members who are thinking about joining the game of hockey, and ask people what needs to happen with the game as we move into the 21st century and what opportunities need to be made available to the youngsters that play this game. We are looking at facilities and strategies.
Regarding international events, we are excited at the opportunity at the Hockey Canada level to bring international events to Canada because the success of those events allows us to generate dollars that allow us then to fund programming in the communities that we so desperately need to serve.
Last, I can speak of our partnerships at the National Hockey League level, at the Canadian Hockey League level, at the Canadian recreational facility level, but we also have great opportunities through the school system. In southern Ontario, the community of Norwood just outside of Peterborough saw a lot of their rural students migrating into Peterborough for high school courses. When Norwood took the Hockey Canada skills academy program into their building, many kids who had gone to Peterborough the year before came back to their school setting for one thing — the opportunity to play hockey, and they played hockey within the school day. The course was curriculum-based. It was not teams. It was an opportunity to play hockey as part of their curriculum and to obtain credit for it. We found that many rural communities in Canada are engaging this project and taking it under their wing as an opportunity to support their students, keep them at home and keep them in the rural setting for educational purposes as well. The partnerships become key, and we are excited about that opportunity.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
The Chairman: I know everyone will want to ask you a question. If I may ask about the last comment you made about partnerships and who you worked with, I was wondering what, if any, partnerships you have spreading from our Paralympic hockey team. I have the privilege of being an honorary life member of that terrific team that walked off with the gold in Torino, and they are fantastic. That area has an effect on the player, many of whom have been playing since they were young. Does your organization reach out in communities to try to encourage and support that part of this great sport?
Mr. Carson: Yes, we do. On a positive note, we have had tremendous success with our sledge hockey program and our Paralympians. They are tremendous athletes, first and foremost, and tremendous ambassadors for the sport of hockey. We have had the opportunity through generous funding through Sport Canada to hire a coordinator who oversees that program. His job is to ensure that the team travels and that the program itself receives exposure, not only in the urban centres of Canada but also in the rural centres. There is a document through Sport Canada, a long term athlete development document, and there is also a specific document for disabled athletes called No Accidental Champions. Hockey Canada right now is working on sport-specific documents for three areas: male development, female development and disabled athlete development.
In a sense, our focus is on the developmental needs of athletes in all three of those categories. Our opportunity to serve the disabled community through the sledge hockey program has been tremendous. The recruiting process for disabled sports is an interesting one. We believe that our athletes demonstrate through not only their competitive spirit but their desire to pursue normal lives that a lot of youngsters with disabilities have great role models and great opportunities in sport.
The Chairman: This opportunity is now being extended, as you may have seen on television as early as last evening. A new relationship is being formed with the Department of National Defence to use this kind of recreation as an effort to help people who have come back from Afghanistan with difficulties, or wherever. Already, athletes are helping themselves with this program. It is starting off with a bang and it is good.
Mr. Carson: Hockey Canada took over the responsibility of overseeing sledge hockey three years ago. Ultimately, our goal was to ensure success at the Olympic level, to ensure that that team has exactly the same resources as our men's and women's teams when they travel to the Olympics, but also to ensure that the athletes have the opportunity to promote the sport at the grassroots level. It is encouraging to see that the federal government is looking at the program as a means of therapeutic integration. It is important.
Senator Mahovlich: Thank you, Mr. Carson, for coming before us. Crosby, Lemieux and Gretzky — you can go on and on, but the best players came from rural Canada.
Mr. Carson: I might suggest they came from rural Saskatchewan and Ontario.
Senator Mahovlich: Gordie Howe came from rural Saskatchewan. All the great hockey players came from rural Canada. I have some scars to prove it. Is there a reason for that? A doctor will tell you: Take care of your child at a young age, because those are the most important times. It is the same with hockey players. Wayne Gretzky had the rink when he was 4 years old in the back yard. This is important. Our government must realize that it is important for rural Canada to have their rinks in good shape for the young people in rural communities.
Mr. Carson: I have been encouraged in my travels by some of the facilities I have been in. Three weeks ago I had the opportunity to work at a female tournament, the Alberta Challenge, which is an under-15 female program for their elite players. It was in Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan. The facility in Lloydminster is beautiful. It is a tremendous facility. More important, my drive from Calgary to Lloydminster was not on the Queen Elizabeth II Highway to Edmonton and east. I drove through all the small communities of Alberta: Ponoka, Wetaskiwin and so on.
I grew up in Calgary, played on a fairly good team in Pee Wee and played very good hockey in Bantam and Midget, but I did not like going to rural Canada to play hockey. They were tough games. For the most part, in youngsters today I see a wider range of ability level from the top player to the bottom player in the rural community, but the top player is the best player on the ice.
In the urban community, there is a more homogeneous group of players, but they are somewhere between that top and bottom player. The outcomes are always interesting, but if I look at Junior B hockey in Calgary, the better teams are in Cochrane, Airdrie, Canmore and the small communities on the outskirts of Calgary. They have the players that embody the toughness and perseverance of the challenging lifestyles in rural Canada.
Senator Mahovlich: Is the coaching good? Is it mostly volunteer?
Mr. Carson: It is all volunteer. Our challenge is to ensure that the resources we have to support coaches in the delivery of their programs enter every nook and cranny in Canada. When we think that we are doing a good job putting a good coaching education program together, it is not fair for the rural coach who must travel two and a half hours to an urban centre to take the course. What are some of the strategies to support that coach in obtaining the information coaches need to support their players? Going to their community is more important.
Senator Mahovlich: I live in the city now and often I go to see my neighbours' children play. That coach is making a huge salary and it costs the parents a fortune for a young boy to play these days in the city of Toronto. Hockey is so well organized. They have uniforms. You would think they are an NHL team and they are 10 years old. Do you find this is happening in larger areas?
Mr. Carson: It is happening in Southern Ontario. I would say that for the most part that is not the norm across Canada, although at the elite levels, at the Bantam Triple A and Midget Triple A level, with players from 14 to 17 years of age and future opportunities starting to unfold, parents are demanding a higher degree of specialization from their coaches and for opportunities for their youngsters. That becomes one of the challenges of the sport, maintaining a level of affordability for all kids. Good players in our sport do not have access to the game at that level because of the financial resources required from their families.
The choices that families make to allow their youngsters to participate at that level probably see them forego a new car, a nice vacation and maybe even a nice house. Families put a lot on the line to make that happen for their youngsters but it does not happen in every community in Canada.
Senator Mahovlich: You mentioned that arenas are getting old. MacIntyre Arena where Earl Young and I grew up was built in 1938, the same year we were born. That arena is the same today. They have painted the boards, fixed the roof and they have maintained that, just like the highway to Timmins. There is not a pothole out there. It is taken care of. They must maintain arenas. In rural Canada, if a building is gone in 30 years, that means the town has not maintained it and it will cost more to build. As soon as they build their arena, they must maintain it.
Mr. Carson: There is no question. We must consider the life expectancy of a facility if we were to leave it alone. On the other hand, if we have a care and maintenance program, like everyone should have with their vehicle, it should last a long time.
The Cominco Arena in Trail is the same one where the Smoke Eaters played in the 1950s and 1960 before they went to the world championships. That facility is tremendous. I saw them put in a Jumbotron last year. It is not the kind in the NHL arenas, but still it is a Jumbotron for their Junior A team. It is an immaculate facility and the community takes great pride in the facility. Can these facilities last 60 or 70 years: no question.
Senator Mahovlich: The arena in Edmonton is outdated and it is only 30 years old. They are looking for a new rink in Edmonton. They need boxes, I am sure, and times have changed.
Mr. Carson: At the professional level, their requirements are a lot different than the community rinks we need.
Senator Mahovlich: We visited a girls' school hockey program in Warner, near Lethbridge. You mentioned you were at a tournament the other day. Were they there?
Mr. Carson: No.
Senator Mahovlich: The skills of these girls are so good, the girls are not allowed to play against other high school teams now.
Mr. Carson: They are good. They are similar to St. Michael's and Notre Dame. I spoke earlier about the need to revisit rules and regulations. How do we ensure that rural communities that have an opportunity to build programs are not seen as groups that are trying to undermine rules and regulations within a sport organization?
I talked about school partnerships and the skills academy program. Warner has a skills academy program as well. They work closely with Hockey Canada. Their teacher is now moving back to Halifax but they have a new head of hockey there, coming out of Lethbridge, who worked with the Hurricanes. We are thrilled with our relationship. I think the Warner Academy will continue to pursue their opportunity to play hockey within the structure.
The Chairman: I have one comment. One reason that happened has to do with why we are holding these meetings. Because of all the things that happened in the agriculture community and all the things that troubled people in that area, their town was starting to decline. They had the courage, determination and innovation to ask: What does nobody else have that we may be able to have? They came up with that school. We all visited it. Senator Mahovlich was a big hit. When we study a subject such as rural poverty, it is the kind of thing that strikes us, even though we are starting from a slow pace, that there is hope for and a chance for success. We found it in Warner, Alberta.
Mr. Carson: The example I gave you in Norwood, Ontario, outside of Peterborough, is exactly the same. The encouraging story behind Norwood is that the project was initiated by a Grade 12 student. She was the leader behind investigating the opportunity for her school to bring that program into her school. The Warner example is good. They are able to breathe life back into the community through the sport of hockey, and that is an amazing statement.
Senator Mahovlich: In 1972, we had a great series with the Russians. They were our main competitors at that time. Has their program changed from when they were a communist country to what they are today? Do they have newer rinks? Are they building rinks or do they have the same old rinks and are they going through the same program that they had when we played them?
Mr. Carson: It is difficult for me to dig into the infrastructure of the Russian system. In general, I would say their system is still similar. The Eastern European countries do not have as broad a base as the Western countries do in terms of participants in the sport. By that I mean, we can look at our pyramid as being flat, a large bottom that percolates to the top of our game. In the Eastern European countries, the numbers are smaller at the base and drop off only slightly as players become older. It is expensive. A tremendous expectation is on players to perform. In many cases, it is state supported.
Senator Mahovlich: Are the facilities as good?
Mr. Carson: The facilities are a challenge.
Senator Mahovlich: The Luzhniki arena, where Paul Henderson scored his winning goal, is closed.
Mr. Carson: This year, John Gardner and Rick Vaive took a team to Russia to participate in a tournament. That was part of Vladimir Tretiak's strategy around revitalizing youth hockey in Russia. As part of the back end of that exchange, we will now look for opportunities for Russian youth teams to travel to Canada to participate in international tournaments this coming year.
There is an opportunity for Canada to play a leadership role on the world stage in terms of developing nations and the sport, but we need to focus on our backyard as well. As much as it is important to develop internationally the male and the female game, it is as important to maintain a safe place for our youngsters to play the game at the recreational level.
Senator Peterson: Your passion for hockey and your involvement is evident. What is Hockey Canada doing to promote hockey for those with low incomes, at the bottom end of the socio-economic strata?
I am from Regina and I am involved with a society called Ranch Ehrlo Society that deals with challenged children. They have a sister organization called Ehrlo Community Services. They have had a program for the last five years called Dress-a-Champion, where they totally outfit 200 youth and organize hockey games throughout the year. The only requirement is that they give back the equipment at the end of the year. All that equipment is donated by the National Hockey League Players' Association. Are you involved with that program or do you do things like that?
Mr. Carson: Yes, we do. I can go one step further. Last year, the National Hockey League increased its support of programs of that nature and provided Hockey Canada with a significant grant not only to penetrate the marketplace with programs of that nature but to leave the equipment in place and to provide financial support for youngsters to register in hockey the next year.
There are three critical areas that youngsters need addressed. One is the equipment. That is the expensive part of starting into the game. Second is the registration and maintenance of those fees over the course of the year. Third is transportation.
In some inner city settings, we provide youngsters with access to financial support for cabs and buses to go from home to the facility. We are in the process now of piloting a program in Toronto. We will have another one in Victoria in the not-to-distant future. We want to look at whether we have the right tweaks to the program to ensure that youngsters not only have access to the equipment and, ultimately, the financial resources to support them the next year, but then to follow along to ensure we are doing the right things to start them and then to maintain them.
One challenge is to increase the number of youngsters in the game if they are already challenged on the facility side and we cannot bring kids into the minor hockey association. We need to address a multi-level problem set and ensure there are opportunities for youngsters to enter the game, and that all the resources needed to support them are available.
Our job in the case of Saskatchewan is to ensure that we work with the branch, which is the Saskatchewan Hockey Association. Hockey Canada does not walk into anyone's backyard. We make sure the approach is collaborative and that we address those opportunities through branch support.
Senator Peterson: You talked about facilities, and the cost of $800,000 to $1 million to rebuild or fix an arena. In many small communities, that is the cost of a sewage lagoon or water treatment plant, which is probably higher on their priority list than an arena. In many towns, the arenas are okay. The problem is that they cannot afford to put the ice in and maintain it over the winter season, because of the price of gas. Maybe you could focus on that problem or help us focus on it. It is a lesser cost.
Mr. Carson: The example I gave you of $800,000 to $1 million was for, to coin a phrase, an arena in a box, an opportunity to put a facility in a community, taking advantage of natural ice. This is not to suggest that is all it would cost to upgrade a facility in disrepair.
I appreciate the challenges that small communities and provincial and federal governments must balance to set priorities. The bigger picture on facilities is expressed in a quote from Andrew Pipe from the University of Ottawa Heart Institute:
It is essential that we address the shortcomings of our present sport, physical activity and recreation infrastructure if we are to have any hope of addressing the tsunami of health issues which will wash over our society unless we become more active.
Ultimately, we must decide if this is a strong enough plea to support the active lifestyle to encourage more active and fit Canadians. What part does that facility play in addressing the needs of the health system?
Senator Peterson: Down the road, the cost would be more than building a few arenas.
Mr. Carson: Very much so.
Senator Gustafson: I was a little disappointed that you did not mention the Memorial Cup, which was won two nights ago in Vancouver, by Medicine Hat. It was a good game, too. It was tied up to the last minute.
Mr. Carson: In fairness, Senator Gustafson, that property belongs to the Central Hockey League, CHL, and I did not want to take credit for it. They do a good job on that event. I think that was a great illustration of hockey in our country at its top amateur level.
Senator Gustafson: Interesting, too, are the boys, who had ties with Macoun, Saskatchewan. They were photographed when they received their cup. They were not players, but were standing by because they are part of the organization.
Hockey is becoming a big money game for the top players. Senator Mahovlich can tell you that when he played hockey in 1972, he did not receive the millions of dollars players receive today. There are a selective few. You mentioned the leagues are drawing players from Europe, Russia, Sweden, Norway and all over the place. The drawing card is money, and partly playing the game.
I know the general public has some questions about that. The other issue is that exceptional kids will make it. They must be really exceptional to get into that league. Many other kids push to enter that league, but they lose their education. They pay for it the rest of their lives.
My question is: What could or should be done? Should we place more emphasis on university hockey? I would like to hear your comments on that.
Mr. Carson: I have a few comments. The first comment will be where my passion lies, which is grassroots hockey. I do not have anything to do with our national teams. I do not have anything to do with our junior teams. I work with a group of committed staff people who are all about grassroots hockey: going into the communities to work with youngsters who are not the exceptional athletes. I have had the good fortune to coach at the university level. I spent nine years coaching hockey at the University of British Columbia. I even played at that level. I have a bit of a passion for it, but I have the ability to separate myself from that hockey and say that our goal is to create as many positive experiences as possible in this game and use the game as the vehicle for developing life skills.
The biggest challenge is recognizing what the professional game does for us, and recognizing that the attention the National Hockey League receives and the attention the world championships receive is important to the profile and the financial stability of the game. That attention is what generates a lot of the revenue that drives my opportunity to develop programs for youth. I must be careful as I balance those two, but I must also recognize that I can still put all my passion and energy into grassroots hockey without compromise.
I will now address your question about university hockey. One challenge in the Canadian system is that we must have youngsters who believe in the opportunities in Canada. We recently developed a book called The Canadian Development Model. We handed it out three weeks ago at our annual general meeting. In this book, we try to provide parents with information about the opportunities hockey provides. Having said that, I was a coach at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport, CIS, level for nine years, and I have a good friend who coaches the Huskies in Saskatoon. I believe strongly in the Canadian system and in the opportunities for youngsters, post-junior hockey. I feel it is important that the Western Hockey League, the Ontario Hockey League and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League continue to evolve their scholarship programs for the players that fall just below the radar for the National Hockey League and for opportunities to earn a living in hockey, so they have the resources to go to school. My job is to ensure they are in the best possible position to take advantage of those opportunities when hockey does not present itself at the end of the road.
For me personally, playing junior hockey and looking to my left and right, I played in the days of the New Westminster Bruins. I had some good line mates. I thought those guys were going somewhere and I was not. They had to make sure that their path was chosen and supported, and I had to make that sure mine was. That is part of what this book is about, namely, saying to parents: These are the things that we have to pay attention to, because they are all part of the bigger picture.
Senator Gustafson: It seems to me that the Americans have had more emphasis on university or college hockey. We have had Father Murray and Notre Dame in Saskachewan, and places like that, but there did not seem to be the emphasis that Americans put on it. The Americans will pull a lot of our boys by giving them special treatment, and so on.
Mr. Carson: I can say today that we are ensuring those opportunities are available for youngsters to play in Canada with programs that are put in place by the Canadian Hockey League and the opportunities through many of the funders, the supporters that we have in hockey.
We recently announced a scholarship program for officials. The first big winner was from Saskatoon, a youngster by the name of Reagan Vetter. He is 30 years old, but he is refereeing in the Western Hockey League. He is graduating from the University of Saskatchewan. He received a scholarship that was supported by Project 75, the ownership group of the Calgary Flames. We are now in a position to start providing scholarships to officials in the men's and women's games. Those kinds of innovations give youngsters the opportunity to pursue both education and hockey at the highest level possible without compromise.
I agree with you. At a time when I played junior hockey, I thought an opportunity for an education paid for in the U.S. was a great way to go. As it turned out, I was close to home. I had an opportunity to play in an environment where Father Bauer was — not that he had a lot of influence on the team when I was a youngster at university, but he was at the theology college at UBC. It was a great environment to be in. Funds were available to players like me to pursue an education and play hockey at the Canadian university level. Hockey today at the Canadian university level deserves a lot more attention than it receives.
Senator Gustafson: One thing that produced the Frank Mahovlichs, Gordie Howes and Bobby Hulls — Bobby Hull came from near my home town — was that at the rural level they could have more ice time. They could skate all night if they wanted to, but the kid in town fought for ice time at the one or two rinks they had. There was not the same opportunity. You say that is changing. When I was first elected in 1979, we had grants for hockey rinks and that kind of thing. I think that was a good program. The time then came when they could not afford the electrical costs to keep some of them running. Probably what we should do in rural Canada today is pick a centre and have four or five centres play into that and have a better rink. The old system worked, but governments gave grants of electricity — at least, SaskPower did — but they cut that off and communities cannot afford to pay for the electrical power to keep the plant running.
Mr. Carson: I have heard lots of stories of youngsters who had keys to the rink in rural Canada. They were allowed to skate in the morning before school.
There is no question that access to facilities is important. In the urban centres, it is not only limited access but options. It is all the other things that kids have available to them.
From a sporting perspective, we must go back to the fact that an active lifestyle leads to a healthy lifestyle. We must pull youngsters away from the idea that a sedentary lifestyle is acceptable. There are bigger issues than the game. I hope, in some small way, this perspective shows how those facilities and community centres play such a vital role.
I talk about the Lloydminster facility because it is a community centre. It has two ice rinks, two multi-purpose pads — anything from lacrosse and basketball to badminton — a running track upstairs, a workout facility connected to a hotel, which makes it a great tournament centre, and a restaurant. It has all the amenities they require, and that would fall in line with the type of regional facility that you talked about. It is a great idea.
Senator Chaput: I want to come back to the low-income families. Some are in rural areas but also some are in the urban areas. I believe that we cannot ask more of those volunteers, those parents. As you know, they coach, they work in the canteen, they fundraise and they sell souvenirs — they provide all that volunteer work to enable all children to be part of a team. They put their money into some kind of a pot and then the registration is lower and everyone can play. I have seen that happen in many towns in Manitoba.
What do you think the federal government could do to help, or is there anything the federal government should or could do to help those families? By the way, I like the link between sports and healthy living. I think much more emphasis should be put on that, but what do you think the federal government could do to help?
Mr. Carson: Last year, I spoke to the commission that travelled across Canada to investigate the child tax credit for sport participation. I think that step is a great one, where families have the ability to access a tax credit for registering their youngsters in sport. It is a start.
Again, I am passionate about hockey but I am as passionate about sport. I want to see youngsters participating in sport. If they choose hockey, I am excited because I know what that environment provides for them.
The federal government looks at initiatives such as a child tax credit. The federal and provincial governments need to look at ways of bringing the cost of public facilities down. If they run a facility where they must charge $300 an hour for ice time, as opposed to small community facilities that might charge only $55 an hour, those costs are borne by the participants. The cost of registration and maintaining a team over the year goes up drastically.
Is it the entrepreneur trying to make a lot of money or trying to ensure some degree of profitability? Whichever it is, it is well within their right as a private business person building a facility; but when the facility is public, our responsibility is to ensure that we receive the best value for our dollar, and then pass that on to our constituents. We need to ensure that the facilities are well maintained and upgraded so that the cost efficiency to operate them allows for reasonable rates.
I believe that if we have the opportunity to travel through the country, taking advantage of grants through organizations such as the National Hockey League, the Canadian Hockey League and other major funding partners — we could look at some of the major sponsors in our game, such as Chevrolet and the Royal Bank — they provide the resources to allow us to deliver these programs at a reasonable price. We have gone into rural communities where even though it was a rural community that was challenged in terms of funding, they still want to charge the youngsters to participate. Even if it is a nominal fee, they want perceived value in the experience.
I travelled to Whitehorse a few years ago. We participated in a two-day skills camp in an outdoor rink in a community about 25 miles outside of Whitehorse. Youngsters travelled overnight, 800 kilometres, to attend that event. They did not stay overnight and did not stay that night. Their parents took turns driving through the night for them to participate in the event.
The community gathered around. This was an opportunity their youngsters had. Meals were served in the community centre. The facility was an outdoor rink, natural ice: It was probably one of the colder experiences I had. When the Zamboni flooded the ice, the water was not wet as the Zamboni did its pass. The coaches only stayed out on the ice in three-minute shifts.
That is how drawn people are to the sport. Our job is to ensure that we make it affordable. No matter what experience we give youngsters, whether it is to participate on the team over the course of the season and help offset some of those costs, or to give them small hits of opportunity — experiences in the game over a course of a weekend, several weekends over the course of the year or several years over the course of their youth — then must do it.
The Chairman: Colleagues, this has been a wonderful discussion and a great way to end this part of our meeting. We do want to thank you for coming, Mr. Carson. It is a coincidence that we happen to be at a height of excitement over what is going on. One always thinks back to one's hometown. When I look at Chris Phillips, who was with the Lethbridge Hurricanes before he came to the Senators, I feel that sense of community, even at my age.
It is terrific to understand what you are doing. We often wonder around this table how much a lot of the things we discuss go down to the grassroots where they are needed. All the best to you and your colleagues in what you do — fight on.
Mr. Carson: Thank you, Madam Chairman, for this tremendous opportunity, and thank you senators.
The Chairman: Thank you senators as well; you were great tonight.
The committee adjourned.