Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 12 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, March 21, 2011
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 4:10 p.m. to monitor issues relating to human rights and, inter alia, to review the machinery of government dealing with Canada's international and national human rights obligations (topic: federal programs supporting sports and recreational activities for children and youth with disabilities).
Senator Nancy Ruth (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: This is the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights and we are reviewing the machinery of government dealing with Canada's international and national human rights obligations. In particular, we are looking at federal programs supporting sports and recreational activities for children and youth with disabilities.
This afternoon we will be hearing from Swimming Canada, Athletics Canada and the Canadian Blind Sports Association.
For the information of senators, we will go in camera and deal with the sexual exploitation report after we have finished with our presenters.
Mark Hahto, Chief Operating Officer, Swimming Canada: Thank you, and good afternoon.
I am the Chief Operating Officer of Swimming Canada, a position I have held for approximately four years. In my previous career, I worked at the provincial sports level in the province of British Columbia, and prior to that I was a career coach for 25 years. I have been lucky enough to work with a number of swimmers with disabilities in my coaching career. In the past seven years, in an administrative capacity, a large part of my role has been to deal with the intricacies, services and programs we offer to our athletes with a disability.
It is a pleasure to speak to you about para-swimming. We changed the name to ``para-swimming'' from ``swimmers with a disability'' a couple of years ago. Swimming Canada is passionate about the programs we offer our para- athletes. I speak with a lot of enthusiasm and pleasure, knowing exactly the types of individuals we deal with: the coaches, athletes, officials and volunteers who are so important to their success.
Swimming Canada's vision is Swimming to Win; Winning for Life! and it speaks to our belief that medals do matter. It is important for our culture of swimming in Canada that we obtain medals at the Paralympics, at the World Para- Athletics Championships, at the Olympic Games, and at the junior world level. Embedded in our strategic plan is that performance is very important and medals do matter.
We also believe that our vision of Swimming to Win: Winning for Life! speaks to the issue of personal excellence and to instilling core values in our young people, in our athletes, that they will carry with them throughout their lives. This vision is fully adopted and supported by all our stakeholders and members.
In 2009, we were proud to celebrate our centennial anniversary. We are now in our one hundred and second year, and no doubt, we will be around for another 100 years. We have had great able-bodied swimming icons — Alex Baumann, Ryan Cochrane and Mark Tewksbury, and some phenomenal para-athletes as well, names such as Michael Edgson, Benoit Huot, Liz Walker and Jessica Sloan. We have had great success. These people have been the dream builders for the many young swimmers who have come through our sport. They have instilled the potential and realization of some incredible achievements because of their own results.
Swimming Canada is a large organization with close to 40,000 swimmers under the age of 25 years. We have about 38,000 members, and I suspect we will top the 40,000 mark this year. We have 15,000-plus masters swimmers. A masters swimmer is someone older than 25 years of age; I think our oldest masters swimmer is about 100 years of age. We have a continuum of programs from the ``cradle to the grave.'' We have 3,000 professionally trained coaches, 30,000 volunteers, and 425 swim clubs across all provincial jurisdictions. We are very proud of the 400 athletes with disabilities that we have in our program.
Para-swimming grew out of several movements in the 1940s and 1950s, and it eventually dawned the modern age of the Paralympic movement. Swimming Canada was the first integrated national sports organization in Canada, something to which we adhere to this very day. Integration is how we deal with sport in Canada. Para-swimming and able-bodied swimming are integrated, as I will speak to later.
Our four pillars approach for swimmers with a disability are as follows: First, they have to be water safe, everything we do ensures the safety of all participants. Second, it is an athlete first philosophy. Every swimmer with a disability who enters our program is an athlete first. Each swimmer should be treated as any other swimmer first, then treated as a person, and lastly, as a person with a disability. When we have a para-swimmer come into our program, we view that person as we do anyone else, as an athlete. We believe in empowerment and autonomy. We believe in the values that we instil in them, and that the outcome will be a very much an improved lifestyle for our athletes.
One of the great things about our program, and something that we boast about, is that the opportunities we have for our swimmers with a disability are such that they can compete in an environment that is tailored to their needs. Many of our para-swimmers are involved in virtually every aspect and totally integrated within our able-bodied population. We also have certain segregated programs because of the limitations of the disabilities of some of the athletes.
We are very proud that in 2008, Swimming Canada hosted its first combined Olympic and Paralympic trials. This brought tremendous exposure to all our athletes and it is something we feel strongly about.
Swimming is documented as one of the three foundational sports. Mr. Sawicki's sport of skiing is second and gymnastics is third. This is documented in the Canadian Sport for Life documents, the Long-Term Athlete Development continuum. We are in the process of re-evaluating exactly what we are doing with our LTAD.
In April, we will be bringing together all the various aquatic stakeholders, the disability groups, with whom we have a great partnership, and all the provincial associations and various affiliates. We are looking at our LTAD model and if there is a better way to do business. We think the answer will likely be yes.
Through our partnerships with the provincial sections and their member clubs, Swimming Canada, offers a wide array of programs and opportunities for persons with a disability. Not all clubs in the country support a para- swimming program. If you were to ask me, I would say that about 10 per cent of our clubs offer a para-program. Of the 425 clubs, 40 clubs offer this program.
It is not that we do not have an interest in offering those types of opportunities, but there are reasons why we do not. First, we have a problem with pool space. Infrastructure is a very real issue in our sport. It is not only the number of swimming pools; it is the number of pools that are falling apart. They have been around for many years. There are a lot of pool closures across the country, and this is significant for us.
The other aspect with infrastructure is access. Sometimes the amount of pool access that our swim clubs have is very limited, and this prevents us from offering a para-swimming program that we might be able to do if we had a little more access. Also, there are prohibitive rental costs.
The second point is that at times we find a noticeable disconnect between our first points of contact and in transitioning some of the athletes that are involved in those first points of contact. Ms. Blaine and I have had this discussion a number of times. Transitioning athletes or persons with disabilities into the swim club model is something that we work on with our partners, but there is a bit of a disconnect and we need to reach some kind of resolution.
Teaching and coaching a person with a disability is sometimes a challenge. However, it is only a challenge because the people who are teaching and coaching perhaps have not been trained appropriately to understand the nuances of some of the disabilities. One of the issues we have addressed carefully in our sport is the absolute need for us to improve our coaching certification program and to put more resources into understanding some of those nuances.
Swimming Canada is fortunate because we derive about 65 per cent of our funds from the public. In terms of Sport Canada and Own the Podium, we could not do what we do without those two organizations. We feel blessed that we are a target Olympic and Paralympic sport in Canada, and I believe this has allowed us to achieve great results.
The para-swimming movement will continue to thrive in Canada for many years. It will increase its effectiveness through the strength of the partnerships we have with our various partners, such as Special Olympics Canada, the Canadian Paralympic Committee, the Canadian Blind Sports Association, and our learn-to-swim providers, such as the Red Cross, I Can Swim, Lifesaving Society of Canada, and the YMCA. By strengthening those partnerships and transitioning new members into Swimming Canada, those individuals will be afforded an opportunity.
It is critical that we articulate and find new partners. The Canadian Medical Association is one that comes to mind. Think how powerful it would be if a physician went to a young person with a disability and said, ``You need to get involved in sport.'' I do not know if that is happening right now, but I would suggest that is one of the things we can all do a bit better together.
A number of issues prevent us from realizing the highest level possible. The current situation in sport and recreation is somewhat fragmented. There are many layers that often duplicate one another. By reducing some of the multi- layered approach, we will address some of the inefficiencies and gaps and we will maximize awareness and education.
We need to address the systemic strategy on how to educate the public. Without a coordinated effort, I do not believe we will increase the numbers substantially. I would argue that of the 400 members in Swimming Canada, the vast majority are only there because their caregiver or parent cared enough to put them in, but the awareness was not out there with the teachers, the swimming lesson providers, or perhaps the medical profession.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the Canadian Paralympic Committee. They seem to have turned over a new leaf in the last while and understand that they have a tremendous role in providing leadership and in addressing some of the needs I have just discussed.
Swimming is an ideal activity for a person with a disability. Water based activity provides a person with a disability with the ability to move his or her body completely differently than on land. It allows those with wheelchairs, crutches and with other assists to shed those encumbrances and move. With the water supporting them, they can walk and move their limbs. It is staggering what they can do in the water. Swimming improves their lifestyle immensely. It improves their fitness and better allows them to move their bodies and, with that, they get an incredible sense of well-being and accomplishment. It also opens up many other sporting opportunities with Swimming Canada and other great organizations such as Special Olympics and Athletics Canada.
Those are my brief comments. I will now entertain your questions.
Ozzie Sawicki, Para-Athletics Head Coach, Athletics Canada: First, thank you for welcoming us this afternoon. I come from a sciences-geology background that obviously led to sport. My decision to enter sport was in alpine skiing. I coached in alpine for over 20 years and was head coach of the national team program for four years. A year and a half ago, I was recruited by Athletics Canada to restructure the program within the Para-Athletics program.
I will not speak to the able-bodied component but focus more in terms of looking at the systemic piece that the para- sport component has benefit of and needs growth in to improve. We have looked at how the Para-Athletics program has reached into a variety of areas from health care, in terms of the rehabilitation community, and into the area of education.
One of the component parts that I have seen in athletics and in a number of my colleague's sports is that we are becoming a relatively old group of athletes. For as much as this committee speaks to individuals less than 25 years of age a lot of our senior athletes are older than I am, as their head coach. That concerns me at times. A focus has been to reach the younger community of kids that we would like to bring into not only competitive sport but also recreational sport and therapeutic sport to get people involved for the sake of being active for life.
Children with disabilities have the same issues as children in the able-bodied community; they are becoming more obese and less active. The same things are happening and reflected in the disability side of things. How do we engage those kids and get more information out to them? Part of it is driving the point of not focusing on an individual with a disability but focusing on the general awareness of what athletics can offer as an ability to be active for life.
The beauty of athletics is that it introduces the simple forms of run, jump, throw and, in the case of para-sport, wheel. We look at the basic idea: Can you throw an object? How far can you throw it? Can you throw it further than someone else can? Where do you introduce the competitive aspects? Where do you introduce the fun and the ability to be active for the enjoyment of sport? There is also the run aspect of it. That is, individuals in wheelchairs being able to be on a track and accessing the ability to have fun, going fast, in a 1,500-metre race, is no different from any other individual.
We are trying to look at how we can reach the awareness of what the sport has to offer. A week and half ago, we completed a Para-Athletics development summit. A big focus of that summit involved the potential partners that we have available to us so that we are not acting in a silo or in isolation of our decisions. We focused on involving the para or disabilities provincial organizations, our branch organizations in athletics, et cetera. It is important that we establish the roles of the various partners in athletics and we do not act independent of what they are trying to do.
As Mr. Hahto mentioned, we must work to correct the duplication in our system. In doing so, we create partnerships that can take advantage of data and information that is available in the areas that we have never really delved into before. One of those areas is the education system. We lack the ability to look for kids with physical disabilities, from kindergarten to grade 12. We are good at finding children in the rehabilitation community younger than age six and we are good at tracking kids that are 17 years and over. However, in that education piece, we have rarely had the ability to track the location of those individuals. By extension, while looking at the education piece, how can we create curriculum awareness in education that does not add to a teacher's load but becomes part and parcel with the existing curriculum? That may not necessarily be in sport. It may be in science, in social studies or in mathematics. There is no reason that kids cannot look to sport science as an area of sports for which they can aim. They can look at the areas of mathematics and physics of sport.
We must be careful not to target only the sport area but become more holistic in how we approach the idea of sport and how it fits into the curriculum at the education level. I realize that curriculum is a provincial entity and it takes legwork to go province by province to delve into that information. As a key partner, the Canadian Paralympic Committee has started to make inroads in terms of acquiring such data. You start looking beyond disability and looking at how to engage ethnic groups and various population sectors and assess the demographics of a given location. We may find that certain municipalities have an age bulge in the youth between 14 and 16 years and another age bulge of adults between 45 and 55 years of age. You can create mentorship opportunities for that older age group to mentor the younger kids coming up.
From an athletics point of view, we cannot consider recruiting individuals into our sport unless we have places to send them and have the leadership and technical knowledge to direct them — that is, until we commit to coach education, the recruitment of coaching and the placement of coaching at the club level. That is the point at which we can place individuals of various ages into the club environments and the coach-driven environments.
How do we create the event opportunities? It is great to get kids involved in a sport and then tell them, ``We are happy you are involved with athletics but we have nowhere to send you to go to a running event.'' We need to show the kids that they have opportunities to go to an athletic event in their municipalities, in their province and nationally and that they can be involved at all levels of the sport, whether at a recreational level, an entry level or a high performance level. We need to create that coach education leadership and the event piece and then the recruitment will have a chance to be far more successful.
At this point, I will leave my piece on athletics as very much a holistic talk about how we are looking at getting people involved in the sport and less about the disability component. That is, more to the awareness of the general population about sport for disabilities. It is not a matter of trying to get the parent of an individual with a disability convinced about what we can offer; it is getting the typical Canadian aware of the fact that we offer sport for every individual, whether able bodied or disabled.
Jane Blaine, Executive Director, Canadian Blind Sports Association: Thank you for allowing me to present today.
I have been involved in disability sport and physical activity for over 30 years. My educational background is in early motor learning and kinesiology. In 1986, I attended the Jasper talks that Dr. Steadward mentioned in his presentation. I was a member of the Minister of State's (Sport) Work Group on Sport for Persons with a Disability. The group published its report in 2004. If you have not looked at that document, you may find it interesting.
I am a volunteer for SportAbility/Cerebral Palsy Sports of BC, the International Blind Sports Federation and IPC swimming. At the 2010 Paralympics in Vancouver and the 2010 IPC Swimming World Championships in Eindhoven, I had the pleasure of watching athletes compete, set records and win gold medals. I have known some of those athletes since they were infants or in elementary school. I also had the pleasure of seeing other persons with a disability that I worked with participate in Canadian Sport for Life and live that experience with their families.
For over 20 years, I have been the Executive Director of the British Columbia Blind Sports and Recreation Association. Since 2004, I have been the CEO of the Canadian Blind Sports Association through a partnership agreement between the two organizations.
I am pleased to be present to you on behalf of the Canadian Blind Sports Association today. Our vision is that Canadians who are blind will lead the world in goalball and will enjoy full inclusion in all aspects of Canadian Sport for Life. Goalball is a sport designed specifically for athletes who are blind. Our mission is that we govern goalball in Canada and that we act as an expert in blindness, advocating within the sports system for Canadians who are blind or visually impaired.
You will note that there are two pieces in both our vision mission and our strategic plan. The first piece is advancing goalball and the second is advancing blind sport. The first piece is well funded through Own the Podium and Sport Canada; the second is funded minimally and sometimes not at all. I hope some of my comments will indicate to you why the Canadian blind sports system believes that this should not be case.
Our member provincial sport organizations are very diverse. Many lack the resources to provide appropriate opportunities. They receive varied funding and have diverse development that sometimes hinges on the existence or non-existence of schools for the blind in Canada. For your information, there is only one school for the blind in Canada, in Ontario.
Our provincial sport organizations got together at the LTAD conference last year in Ottawa through some LTAD funding. Three things came out of that conference. They said we should push the need for an LTAD or Canadian Sport for Life model specifically for athletes who are blind or visually impaired. There are significant concerns that much funding is going into the development of resources on the inclusion of athletes with a disability and that there is little, none or very incorrect information with regard to athletes who are blind.
We also believe that there should be funding for the expertise in blindness piece that the Canadian Blind Sports Association does.
I thank this committee for its interest in our thoughts on Article 30.5 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and in particular children and youth under 25 years. I have used the format outline of Article 30.5 for my comments, which also apply under the Canadian Human Rights Act, provincial human rights codes and the Canadian Sport Policy.
Our Canadian Sport Policy has four pillars. The fourth pillar, enhanced interaction, is crumbling. Mark Hahto mentioned the importance of partnerships. The fourth pillar is unfunded for the most part. However, it could be stabilized if there were more interaction with the National Sport Organizations, this would allow us to meld our expertise in blindness and their expertise in the various sports.
In terms of encouraging and promoting participation of Canadians who are blind, let me tell you what we consider in terms of Canadians who are blind. First, vision impairment or blindness is a sensory impairment, not a physical impairment. We serve families, individuals who are blind, visually impaired, deaf-blind, and individuals who have cortical visual impairment. Some of these individuals have additional disabilities as well. It is estimated that there are 19,700 children and youth in Canada with visual impairment. Some of those individuals will have an additional disability, and some of those lines are beyond the lines considered to be within the Paralympic movement. However, that figure represents all Canadians whose ability to participate in physical activity is limited by their vision.
In terms of demographics, we know that the number of individuals with genetic conditions leading to blindness is stable. There has been some improvement in the conditions that manifest themselves in the late teens and early adulthood. We also know there is a significant increase in the number of children with cortical visual impairment.
You will note that the numbers are small in the education system. Many systems indicate that this is a low-incidence and high-need population. If you consider a baby in the cradle making initial moments, often it is to reach for a mobile. If that baby does not see the mobile, then his or her motor development is delayed. Vision provides stimulation and motivation to move. Without that stimulation, the child is not motivated to move.
The other senses do not provide the big picture. Vision is the sense that integrates all of the other senses. There is a significant difference in concept development among children who are blind or visually impaired than concept development with children who are typically sighted.
At the 2011 Josephine L. Taylor Leadership Institute Conference on blindness and vision impairment in the U.S. last week, the Americans presented their national agenda and expanded core curriculum. It contains nine additional areas in which children who are blind or visually impaired should receive education. One of those areas is recreation and leisure, but many of us at the conference determined that the other eight areas were also impacted by recreation and leisure. Dr. Lauren Lieberman presented and encouraged the promotion of early intervention programs. She noted the very low physical fitness level of individuals who are blind. It was noted that it takes an individual or child who is blind up to eight tries to gain the same level of understanding as a child who is sighted would have by seeing something once.
Physical literacy in children who are blind and in typically sighted children means being able to have conversations about sport and being able to talk about the hockey game, the swim meet or the track meet. The coalition of blind and deaf rights holders of Canada and other print-restricted populations are engaging the library services of Canada, as well as library services in provinces and communities, to ensure that there is equitable access by Canadians who are print restricted to these stories, including stories and literature about sport and physical activity.
With blindness and vision impairment being a low incidence disability, numbers are often used for criteria for funding, and there is no acknowledgement of the low incidence high need nature of blindness and vision impairment in terms of some of the funding formulas.
Turning to promotion, both of my colleagues mentioned helping Canadians become aware of opportunities in para sport. Information access and modern advertizing is not conducive, with the quickly flashing images that you see, to getting information to people who are blind or visually impaired or deaf-blind.
Many websites — those of national sport organizations, nutrition, health, fitness activity and federal sites, such as Sport Canada's — are not fully accessible to Canadians who are blind or print restricted. There was a recent court challenge by a woman named Donna Jodhan in this area.
When we work with parents, we need to encourage them and help them understand that their child will have a positive, nurturing opportunity for skill development with someone who is appropriately trained to work with their child.
With regard to persons with a disability having an opportunity to participate, there is currently no long-term athlete development or Canadian sport for life model in blindness and vision impairment, although there is one just about done in goalball.
In order to organize, develop and facilitate participation in disability sport and recreation activities, we need to ensure that there is an understanding that disability is not generic. Deafness and blindness are sensory disabilities and intellectual disabilities, so models that work for individuals who are physically disabled will not work necessarily for individuals who have a sensory disability or an intellectual disability.
In terms of appropriate instruction and training resources, there is a significant lack of coaching and instruction resources that is fully conversant in blindness, vision impairment and deaf blindness. When we speak to community instructors or graduating physical education teachers, we would say they should learn about common disabilities and find out about attention difficulties and learning and intellectual disabilities. If you have a child who is blind in your class, please phone us. It will be significantly different if they have never seen versus if they lost their vision a year ago. It may be different if they have gradually lost their vision or were thought to have very poor motor skills and therefore do not like physical activities just because they had no concept that they were not able to see as well as everyone else.
In the sport system, when you are trying to teach someone who cannot see, it is very difficult to do that without touching the person or without having the person touch you. Canadian Blind Sports has developed policy around this to ensure safety and protection from harassment and to ensure that we empower individuals who are blind in terms of acquisition of motor skills and protect them in the area of harassment.
I was pleased to hear my colleagues mention our partnerships. They know more about swimming and athletics than I do, and Canadian Blind Sports knows more about blindness and vision impairment, so it is a very important partnership for all of us, as we share a similar goal.
Turning to access to sporting, recreational and tourism, or outdoor recreation venues, information access is different for individuals who are blind. Paying for services through point of sale devices is different. Those devices are not accessible. The blind community continues to advocate on this area. Physical access on ramps is different than appropriate high colour contrast signage and Braille signage. Access to trained, sighted guides, both on and off the field of play, is increasingly important. There is a best practice funded in part by the federal government through bilateral funding in a resource that British Columbia has developed.
In terms of high performance level, understanding of blindness and vision impairment in terms of doping control, coaching techniques, the psychology of working with a sighted guide indicates that maybe some integrated sport systems or integrated support teams in the sport system, should include an expert in blindness and vision impairment. Accessible trails are not necessarily accessible for those who are blind or visually impaired.
In terms of the education system, we have made many connections in the blindness community. We have a best practice in British Columbia where a specialist who works in blind sports sees each child who is blind in kindergarten to grade 12 a minimum of four times a year. That specialist also works with 40 per cent of the kids at an individualized education program for physical education, and that specialist works to help develop those. We have strong partnerships with the Canadian Vision Teachers' Association, with the Canadian Ophthalmological Society and the optometrists.
Through working in the education system for a number of years in British Columbia, we know that children enter kindergarten with a lag in motor development. Through bilateral funding, British Columbia Blind Sports and Recreation was able to create an early intervention guide and program, which has been emailed to you in both official languages. Also mailed to you is a copy of a 20-minute DVD, which includes a number of parents speaking about the importance of physical activity and development of physical literacy for their children. If a child has never seen another child jump, how do you teach that child to jump? That picture is worth a thousand words.
Involvement in physical activity is highly specialized and different for every individual who is blind, visually impaired, deaf blind, has an additional disability or may have a cortical visual impairment. There is a significant gap in the long-term athlete development system. Many national sport organizations want to know where our future athletes are coming from. They are coming from early intervention and school programs.
We believe Canadian Blind Sports has a significant contribution to make to Canadian sport for life, for Canadians who are blind, deaf-blind, visually impaired, have cortical visual impairment and may have additional disabilities. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present to you.
This coming weekend, I leave for the International Blind Sports Games, which is today's athletes, but Friday and Saturday we spend at an early intervention camp with nine families who have children under the age of five who just found out that their children have a visual impairment, and we are going to play. Canadian Blind Sports looks forward to continued improvements in the Canadian sports system at all levels to help us achieve our vision that Canadians who are blind will both lead the world in goal ball and enjoy full inclusion in all aspects of Canadian Sport for Life.
Senator Jaffer: I thank all three of you for your presentations. I have learned a great deal. Mr. Hahto, I would like you to expand on your comment that Swimming Canada has become the first integrated national sports organization since 1993. Are there any other integrated national organizations? What steps were taken to make Swimming Canada integrated and not be a segregated organization?
Mr. Hahto: Yes, a number of national sports organizations followed our lead, and Athletics Canada is probably the best example of one that has mimicked our system and we mimicked theirs.
We got there with the help of passionate people who believed that para-sports should be integrated into able-bodied sport. Without those initial leaders who had the vision to have athletes with a disability fully engaged in everything we do, it would not have happened.
Interestingly enough, many of those individuals are still with us today and still lead the charge in para-sport. Part of what we have to do is look at those succession plans to ensure we have those enthusiastic and passionate people involved in our sport.
Senator Jaffer: Of course one needs people with passion to do this. They had the vision. Who provided the resources? Is there a continuing growth of resources, and how are you helping other groups to become integrated?
Mr. Hahto: As far as our initial steps, I do not believe there are any special resources. One of our first steps was to come up with an agreement with Special Olympics Canada, going back to 1992, I believe. It was just a strategic decision by both organizations that we needed to work together.
We have been very successful internationally, and some of the medals parlayed into some directed funding. The funding, however, is directed toward high-performance programs. The funding we get in building capacity and recruiting new athletes into our system is limited and must be within the strategic decisions we make as a full organization for our 100,000 members, not just for the para side of our organization.
Mr. Sawicki: A number of the sports integrated because of decisions at the Sport Canada level in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I think the rationale around why we were operating two separate administrative entities when they could operate under one umbrella, as a national sport organization, drove some of the process.
I agree with Mr. Hahto that a number of these sports had champions that helped facilitate the merge with the able- bodied component. It was often a person who was traditionally involved in the para side or disability component that drove the building of the bridge between the able-bodied and disabled component.
The difference I often see is that the champions who drove this movement came from a volunteer background, not necessarily a subsidized background. There has been a different funding consideration in the disability sport realm from the early stages. The expectation was that you were, more often than not, a volunteer coach or, more often than not, running a volunteer program, versus a club level in the able-bodied stream that was a paid coach, in a paid club scenario. Those are some of the things that have been evolving over time.
Especially in the last five to 10 years, we are seeing some of the growing pains that have come together, and some of the positives coming out of that are the ability to manage, at a high-performance level, the distribution of wealth amongst the para and able-bodied programs. Where we are lacking is that the development system has not caught up to that at this point. It has been an afterthought for quite a few years.
Senator Jaffer: What needs to happen for that development system to catch up?
Mr. Sawicki: We speak to the need for development and the rationale behind the Active for Life component, but we do not necessarily put credence behind it in terms of similar support for what we do in high performance. I agree with Mr. Hahto's comment that there is value in medals. We have tried to put the cart before the horse, to some degree, in the disability context in that we have taken Paralympic sport and put it on a pedestal. We look to athletes like Lauren Woolstencroft and Chantal Petitclerc as role models, but we do not necessarily support the program infrastructure at the level to get younger individuals involved. This is not necessarily just in the disability component. We must focus on creating the coach education programming in para-sport, or creating the parallels in that stream.
Part of the issue is that it is a provincial responsibility, to some degree, and not a federal responsibility. How do we bridge the gap with those provincial responsibilities and put some onus on the structure of programming? In British Columbia and Ontario we are seeing a move toward the provinces expecting sports to be the lead component, and the disability PSOs to follow within the sport area, but we are lacking are guidelines attached to that. Without a structure or some form of guideline, it is difficult for an operational system to evolve out of that.
Senator Jaffer: The reason we are studying this issue has a lot to do with Senator Kochhar's passion for this subject. When you say someone has a passion, he does, and he has led the way for us to study this matter.
However, to go back to what Ms. Blaine said about nurturing children to learn the sport, I am interested in medals, obviously, but we are looking at all children reaping the benefits. I like your analogy of the bridge. How do we build a bridge? What recommendations do we need to make to help that child who may not necessarily become a top Canadian athlete but still wants to play the sport? How do we reach that child and what recommendation should we make in our report?
Mr. Sawicki: I think one of the key areas where we really need to engage is the education system by building information into existing curricula. Not adding to that curricula, but taking hold of the opportunity that is already there and finding how the disability element fits. Then it becomes a generic part of the education system. In that way, we will build a systemic awareness piece.
In this way, it will not be whether you have a champion like Senator Kochhar, Mr. Hahto or Ms. Blaine; it becomes something on the table for everybody, whether there is someone who says they could coach those kids or could take a group of kids and get them out to a recreational activity. Personally, I do not care if kids become high-performance, elite athletes. I want to see as many kids as possible get involved in physical activity. The fallout is that medalists will evolve out of that activity.
The other piece that must happen, and a positive thing I see happening now, is we are getting better at sharing the idea that an individual who may not be well suited to athletics may be a good goalball athlete. I would be willing to pass them on to goalball or swimming. We are becoming more cognizant of sharing a small pool of athletes among a growing number of disability-based sports.
Ms. Blaine: Going back to your question about inclusion, the federal government funding for sport at the national level is directed at the sighted, able-bodied sport organizations. As Mr. Sawicki said, that happened in the late 1990s, early 2000s.
In many cases, one of the things that were not transferred when that happened was the expertise about the disability. In blind sports we certainly did not do a very good job of that in that the other disabilities had a classification model. In the Paralympic movement, it was locomotor disabilities in addition to blindness, and they had classifiers who helped to transfer the knowledge about the disability to coaches and people in the system. As our classification system is different, that transfer of knowledge did not happen.
I would say in blindness and vision impairment — I cannot speak about the other disabilities — the important thing in the inclusion model is that there exists that blindness expertise in a consultative role. The education system is a good model for that where, in that many education systems, you have the generic classroom teacher who teaches the child who is blind, but that child also has a vision teacher who helps the classroom teacher understand the things about their vision impairment that will impact their learning.
Senator Kochhar: Thank you, witnesses, for your excellent presentations.
Today is the first anniversary of the incredible performance of our Paralympic athletes in Vancouver. People all across Canada were very proud of what they achieved.
I believe that the present government has done more for sports, for both physically disabled and able-bodied athletes, than any other government in our history. However, sports and education go together, and education is under provincial jurisdiction.
What can be done to make the provincial governments and the federal government realize that they must work together to help Canadians from coast to coast and not worry so much about jurisdictions? Perhaps they need to amend their ways in order to cooperate better.
Mr. Hahto: On the Paralympian issue, we need a cultural shift to understand that the more kids are involved in sport, the less strain there will be on our society because of their full lives.
It will be much easier to achieve that if we are all pulling in one direction. Under the current model, we all pull separately. There must be one specific body with that as its primary mandate. Until we get to that stage, I am not sure that we will get a significant cultural shift to build a bridge between sports, education and awareness. I suggest that is the best way to tackle that problem.
Mr. Sawicki: I have given quite a bit of consideration to the marketability of athletes within sports and the marketability of sports. The leadership of the sport and disability community at the national level could help to bridge into the provincial level and get it more on board to create marketable opportunities.
The weakness I see in Athletics Canada is that we do not look at our para program as a marketable product in the same way as do with our able-bodied programs. We should put more emphasis on the marketability of the para piece as a whole. I agree with Mr. Hahto that we should support a Canadian Paralympic committee and partner with it to grow the marketability of the sport. That comes back to awareness and so on.
You almost need a hammer to drive the process. We need to stipulate the guidelines and the process and, as a collective of national sport organizations, the guidelines in which the provinces must act with us. If they act with us, they will benefit through funding opportunities, support through clinics at a development level, support through long- term development initiatives, et cetera. If they do not want to fit within the guidelines, they may not benefit from that model.
We need a bit of tough love in creating a relationship. On the other hand, we must show that there is a marketable benefit to being part of the initiative.
The provincial bodies ask what is in it to make it worthwhile for them to become part of it and enhance the path I am talking about.
Senator Kochhar: You have not answered how the provincial governments and federal government can work together to pull the wagon in the same direction.
Mr. Sawicki: The answer is guidelines. We need a committee-level initiative to create guidelines for a coordinated sport effort.
Senator Kochhar: Who would create those guidelines? Each organization is very territorial. They do not want to give up anything to weaken their power, and in that way they do not help each other. How do we find a leader who can unite all the organizations and make a consolidated approach to get things done?
Mr. Sawicki: We would need an unbiased third party without vested political interest on either the federal or the provincial side, but with a stake in the pathway that needs to be established.
For leadership I look at individuals such as Bob Steadward and Pat Jarvis. A number of people have many years of experience in the para realm and many might not be working in the right role. We could be utilizing them as the conduit between federal and provincial interests. In that way, we would not be creating a territorial entity but rather a strategy that benefits both the provincial and federal interests.
You must look closely at the current leaders who have much experience and the skills to put together a quality business plan, not only the skills to put together a sports plan. They must be able to rationalize the marketability and the administrative reality. They have to put together a costing model that a provincial sport ministry, a provincial education ministry and a provincial health care ministry can look at and see that it makes sense for them. The model must fit into the federal mandate of the Canadian sport policy and the pieces that the federal government has already built around sports.
Does that make sense?
Senator Kochhar: Yes, it does.
What can we do to make our provincial education systems realize that input at the bottom level in sports and physical activity will pay very high dividends for the health care system? Is there a body that can initiate that? We have only 10 per cent as many physically disabled athletes as we have able-bodied athletes, and only 3 per cent of that 10 per cent take part in activities, compared to 37 per cent of able-bodied athletes.
How can you people tell the provincial governments how to integrate these policies toward education and health?
Mr. Sawicki: I will give you an example that is happening in real time. I was on the Canadian Paralympic Committee board for eight years. I stepped down from the board so that I could work on a project through CPC to access data from provincial education ministries. We looked at the education piece. We met with the education ministry in British Columbia and asked for certain data on individuals with disabilities. We knew that children are coded in various ways in each province, and that traditionally, coding information has not been accessible. If the Canadian Paralympic Committee had access to the coded data around individuals with disabilities from kindergarten to grade 12, that information could be utilized as a strategic planning tool for sports in deciding where to put facilities, coaching resources, et cetera.
We did not expect to make any headway and within a week, the province said they would be glad to give us that data and that no one had ever asked for it before. Right off the bat I am seeing that no one has really taken the time to ask for the strategic information that is available. We have talked a lot about it, looked for people who can take the lead on it and we have just never gone ahead and done it.
The people we are working with in British Columbia spoke to people in Ontario who asked us to call them. We talked to the people in Ontario and they said they would love to do this. Now we are finding the provinces are saying that this is a neat idea so we have bridged that gap.
In Alberta, we talked to one school board and told them about all of the opportunities for individuals with disabilities at a national sport level, all the way down to the community club level. The school board suggested we talk to all the special needs teachers within our school board. A second school board found out about it so now we have met with the special needs teachers for both school boards and that has started to roll into where now the province has requested that we do presentations to all of the special needs teachers and all of the physical education teachers. We have been presenting at a series of clinics. The emphasis is not really on Paralympic sport but on sport for individuals with disabilities such as physical impairments, sensory impairments or intellectual disabilities. We are more interested in getting as many teachers in various aspects engaged in knowing there is something available for kids.
I come in as a guest presenter or we get an athlete to come in as a guest presenter, and we say that these individuals can go into swimming, athletics, archery, goalball or boccia. We are saying there are a broad variety of things available to them in sport and recreation, and we are finding that the teachers had no awareness of that. They realized there was this podium Paralympic sport that they saw once every two to four years on television, but they had no idea that there were clubs that offered recreational sport. They had no idea that there were provincial programs offering such programs.
Those are the pieces that are starting to happen and it is more a matter of finding people who can take on those roles. The one individual who has created that role in British Columbia and Alberta is an individual who took on a role as the Changing Minds, Changing Lives coordinator for Alberta. She happens to be a former teacher and a former curricula writer and that got her in the door into that educational realm.
Are we looking for the people? Are we looking for people who have that health care background and have a strong leadership role in that health care area that are interested in sport? Do we have teachers who have curricula knowledge who are interested in sport? Those are the people we need to engage amongst the federal and provincial community to remove that territorialism, because then territorialism becomes irrelevant. It becomes about the kids. It is about the kids having the ability to be part of something. Whether it is the province that does it or the federal government that does it becomes secondary at that point. I realize that sounds nice in a lot of ways, but there still has to be funding and support behind that.
If you can show the rationale of the reach, then you can find rationale behind funding that reach, rather than find the funding and then trying to find the reach.
Senator Kochhar: Every problem has a solution. This is not a single problem that you cannot solve, yet there are problems that we were not solving. Each province has a provincial organization equal to the Canadian Paralympic Committee. They are called Paralympic Ontario, Paralympic B.C. and Paralympic Alberta. Nationally the federal government is looking after them pretty nicely, but what is happening to the provincial organization is very pathetic. In Ontario, the whole organization gets $134,000 a year. For that amount you cannot even rent an office or hire one person to run the organization. How do you solve those kinds of inequities between federal and provincial jurisdictions?
Mr. Sawicki: You are asking me a tough question.
Ms. Blaine: I can make a comment. All of the provinces and territories signed off on the Canadian Sport Policy. The bilateral funding is a tremendous initiative where it is partly funded by the province and partly funded by the federal government and there have been a number of initiatives in the disability area. We need to take the next step and move those across the country.
I am not sure that any of us in the disability sport world are territorial. We want to ensure that the opportunities are there. There is plenty of work to do in our organization so if someone is doing a good job of it we do not want to be territorial for sure.
Just to correct you, there are not Paralympic organizations in every province. There are in many provinces. Again, it is fairly diverse so that model is not one that exists, nor is it one that every province wants to have exist. It works very well in some cases but we need to look at each of the provinces individually.
Senator Hubley: In most of the sports for able-bodied youth, there is a definite youth program. That youth program also has achievement benchmarks that young children feeding into their natural competitive natures enjoy reaching a certain level and then getting a small reward for that achievement. I am thinking of swimming where they go through many levels of badges and medals and so on to whatever height they would like to achieve in swimming. The same thing goes in hockey.
I wonder for the para-sports person, do you have such bench levels for your activities? It may be something that perhaps would not pertain so much to you as it might be to the vision or hearing impaired athletes. Would that be something that you have? Is it something you think would be advantageous to young people getting involved?
Mr. Sawicki: Part of the way I look at this is that there is a congenital component where we have many children who follow a similar chronological pathway to some degree and we try to emulate some of the standards in what you are talking about, in various sports activities. Similar abilities are reached so that you get recognition for that ability.
For a newly acquired disability especially, you may have a 25-year-old who is entering a sport at essentially what is the 10-year-old level of the sport. There we really talk about the age of experience and you are trying to provide the age of experience parallel for that individual, so how are we recognizing those individuals. It is still a standard of you have accomplished the ability to do this level of the sport and you are recognized for it.
What we do not necessarily do in the para side is we do not necessarily have the badge that says you have reached this, whereas in the able-bodied side we may have that.
A quick thought is the idea of creating a club mark type structure to where if you are a club that offers high performance sport for both able-bodied and disabled you are a gold level club mark sport. If you offer development level programs but it has to include both the disability and the able-bodied component, then you are recognized as a silver level club. It is not intended to differentiate the quality of club; it is intended for parents who are shopping for opportunities to put their kids into a program that I know that a gold mark club, a silver mark club, or a bronze mark club tells me there is a disability component available within this club. That is a potential solution. That would create something that could be shared between a provincial and a federal foundation. There could be a badge created that would allow a club to advertise itself as supporting the disability component.
Ms. Blaine: In my presentation, I indicated a need for a long-term athlete development model in blindness. That is exactly what that model would do. We know that growth development and acquisition of motor skills is significantly different for children who are blind. That model does not exist and we desperately need it.
Mr. Hahto: In our sport, we have quite a comprehensive standards program aimed at swimmers with a disability through records and provincial and national teams.
I echo what Mr. Sawicki just said. In our sport, we also have a club excellence program. Part of the reason is to shape the behaviours of clubs, and that includes the ins and outs of offering programs for swimmers with disabilities because many times there is a bit of fear about how to do that. The knowledge and the awareness just does not exist. Our club excellence program tries to alleviate some of the fears and point out some best practices.
The Chair: You talked about integration and race. I would like to hear from all three of you on what percentage of girls participate in your organization. Second, approximately what percentage is non-Caucasian?
Mr. Hahto: Our sport is roughly 55 per cent female and 45 per cent male. There is no difference between able-bodied and para swimmers. Caucasians make up approximately 90 per cent of participants in our sport.
Mr. Sawicki: In the para element of our sport, about 20 per cent to 25 per cent are female. Non-Caucasian participation is probably the fastest growing area for us. We currently have about 80 per cent Caucasian, but that is transitioning quickly now. Our up and coming group of athletes is probably 40 per cent non-Caucasian at this point.
Ms. Blaine: The participation level of males and females is similar. We know from research that there is less of a discrepancy between blind males and blind females than there is between the sighted population. Unfortunately, both the blind populations have very low fitness levels.
I do not have an exact number for non-Caucasian participation, but I could get that for you. We do know that the incidence of blindness and vision impairment increases with some specific populations, including the native population.
The Chair: Thank you all. You have stretched our minds and made us concerned about issues about which you are concerned.
Good luck to all of you.
(The committee adjourned.)