Bloc Québécois Dissenting Report on the report by the Sub-Committee on the Study of Sport in Canada entitled Sport in Canada: Everybody's Business

Leadership, Partnership and Accountability

Summary

The Bloc Québécois opposes the Report by the Sub-Committee, mainly for the following reasons:

1. The Sub-Committee recommends that the federal government adopt special tax measures in order to support professional sports teams. Although the Sub-Committee has not been able to identify the cost of these recommendations, the Bloc considers that they could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and consistently opposes any special measures aimed at directly or indirectly subsidizing professional sport in Quebec and Canada.

2. The Sub-Committee recommends the creation of a Department of Sport and Youth. The Bloc opposes this recommendation because it constitutes an unacceptable encroachment into areas of provincial jurisdiction, and fears that the main objective of this department would be to increase federal government visibility at the expense of sports and youth.

3. Notwithstanding moderating provisions such as `'in collaboration with the provinces'' included in the text, the Sub-Committee makes recommendations that encroach on areas of provincial jurisdiction, thus failing to recognize the primacy of provincial authority over sports.

4. The Sub-Committee ignores the many difficulties facing both amateur and professional French-speaking athletes in Canada and fails to propose any real measures to remedy the situation.

5. Lastly, the Bloc Québécois cannot support the Sub-Committee's recommendation that Canada bid to host the 2010 World Cup of Soccer, thus invalidating its application to host the 2010 Olympic Games.

Above all, however, the Bloc Québécois opposes the Sub-Committee's Report because it cannot agree to having public funds squandered on a thousand and one initiatives, when there is full consensus in Quebec and the provinces of Canada that the federal government must repay $6.3 billion in provincial transfer payments for health, postsecondary education, and social assistance. The Bloc considers that the federal government must heed this consensus, reduce Employment Insurance (EI) premiums, and lower income taxes before committing funds to highly questionable initiatives. At a time when the entire population has had to deal with unprecedented budget cuts in crucial areas, the Bloc considers it financially and politically irresponsible that a parliamentary Sub-Committee should make recommendations about the cost of which it has no idea. This attitude is symptomatic of federal Liberal arrogance.

The Bloc Québécois does ask the federal government to adopt some of the recommendations contained in the Report, particularly those aimed at enhancing amateur sport and achieving greater fairness for women, persons with disabilities, and Aboriginal people.

1. The Bloc Québécois opposes government support for professional sport.

Montreal is a great city. A great big city. We have to say it; we have to show it.The Expos are alive ... and playing baseball. The Olympic Stadium is a good stadium that millions of people have packed so they can cheer their team..
Hey, give the team back to the fans.

Dennis Martinez, quoted by Réjean Tremblay, La Presse, September 10, 1998, page S5.

In order to assist professional sports teams, the Sub-Committee recommends a Sport Pact with five strategies, of which the first two are most important.

The first strategy would be a two-year Canadian Professional Sport Stabilization Program, with two components.

The first component would allow small businesses to deduct from their taxable income 100% of the price of tickets, season tickets, and boxes.

The second component would allow sports teams to choose between the following two options:

• using a tax credit: a professional or semi-professional team could be eligible for a tax credit of $5 million, if its income did not exceed $80 million;

or

• applying the capital cost allowance in a single year to the costs of building and improving sports facilities, and having the right to transfer this deduction to a related or unrelated party.

Eligibility for the Program would depend on criteria including the following:

• the team would have to demonstrate its long-term viability as a franchise in its home city;
• the team would have to provide employee training in sport marketing, administration, broadcasting and merchandising;
• the team would have to demonstrate that it participated financially in the life of the local community and promoted the values of fairness and ethics in amateur sport, for example, by having professional players volunteer their time to give practical lessons to help young persons develop their skills; and
• the team would have to endeavour to promote better control of players' salaries.

The second recommendation of the Sport Pact proposed by the Sub-Committee would be to ask the Minister of Finance to negotiate a Canada-United States Protocol of Income Tax Harmonization for Sport Professionals. The purpose of the Protocol would be to eliminate the ``duty day'' concept now used by Revenue Canada, as well as the present discrepancy between taxation levels in Canada and the United States.

Since the Sub-Committee has not been able to identify the cost of these recommendations, it has asked the Department of Finance to assess the value of this gift to sports millionaires.

The Bloc Québécois opposes these two recommendations of the Sport Pact proposed by the Sub-Committee for obvious reasons of social justice.

The Bloc vigorously rejects the Sub-Committee's recommendation that would allow businesses to apply, in a single year, the capital cost allowance to all costs of building a sports facility. It also rejects the part of this recommendation that goes so far as to allow this deduction to be transferred to a third party.

Clearly, the Sub-Committee intends to make taxpayers pay for the construction of new stadiums and other sports facilities for professional teams. The Bloc Québécois considers this tax measure a veiled subsidy.

The Bloc also rejects the recommendation by the Sub-Committee that would allow small businesses to deduct from their taxable income 100% of the price of tickets to sports activities. Small businesses are already eligible for a 50% deduction for this type of expenditure, a deduction for which ordinary taxpayers are ineligible. Nor can the Bloc accept a tax measure that would benefit only one type of business. The Bloc also finds it hard to accept that the sports industry should benefit from a tax measure unavailable to other industries such as the culture industry: why would tickets to see the Montreal Expos be 100% deductible, but not tickets to hear a concert by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra?

The criteria developed by the Sub-Committee to assess teams' eligibility for the Canadian Professional Sport Stabilization Program are odd, to say the least. Some persons may find these criteria reassuring, since no sports team has been able to demonstrate that government support would enable it to remain in its home city. Other criteria, such as the one that teams should endeavour to promote better control of players' salaries or provide training for their employees, in the field of broadcasting have more to do with good intentions.

The Bloc also rejects the recommendation by the Sub-Committee that a professional or semi-professional team be allowed a maximum income tax credit of $5 million. The Sub-Committee that has dreamed up this recommendation has not identified either its cost or its impact on a team's decision about whether to remain in its home city.

In addition, the Bloc rejects the recommendation by the Sub-Committee that would ask the Minister of Finance to negotiate a Canada-United States Protocol of Income Tax Harmonization for Sport Professionals, to the lowest common denominator, of course. Again for reasons of social justice, the Bloc sees no reason to exempt the best-paid workers from the effort demanded of all taxpayers to contribute to public finances.

The Bloc considers these positions justified since no independent study has confirmed professional teams' economic impact on the economy, and no professional team has made a commitment to remaining in its home city if it obtains government support. The Bloc recognizes that the professional sports industry has financial problems, particularly because of salary increases and the exchange rate, to which it must itself find solutions.

The Bloc Québécois considers that professional sports teams are businesses, to be treated as such and assisted through existing programs to the extent that they are eligible for them. It is completely inappropriate to ask taxpayers to subsidize professional teams whose players' salaries have increased exponentially in recent years and, over the next four years, will likely double.

Furthermore, given the influence of the United States model on Canada's approach to sports, it would be good for Quebec and Canadian citizens to learn about developments in Europe. On November 27, 1997 at a conference on sport, competition, and recent developments and action by the European Commission, Commissioner Karel Van Miert stated:

[translation]

of the European Commission had conducted a survey among member states on public subsidization of professional sports. The preliminary results of the survey showed very low levels of assistance for professional sport. Some member states, such as Belgium, Austria, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden do not allow government assistance to professional clubs. France has passed legislation to phase out assistance to professional clubs by the year 2000. Ireland and Greece still provide marginal financing to professional clubs through levies on bets. Lastly, although Spain does not provide assistance at the national level, some of its regions assist local clubs.

2. The Bloc Québécois opposes the creation of a Department of Sport and Youth and the cascade of other organizations recommended by the Sub-Committee.

With respect to the establishment of a Department of Sport, the Sub-Committee recommends

that the government establish a separate department responsible for sport, in keeping with the significant role of sport in Canadian society. The mandate of this Department would include the development of high-performance athletes as well as sport for all and responsibility for mobilizing and coordinating all the resources involved in the Canadian sport sector.1

Canada used to have a Minister of State for Sport. This position was eliminated during the Honourable Kim Campbell's government reform in 1993, at which time responsibility for amateur sport was transferred to the Department of Canadian Heritage. The Liberal government endorsed the structure proposed by Ms Campbell when it came to power in 1993.

The Department of Canadian Heritage was set up to stimulate a feeling of identity and belonging among Canadians, based on bilingualism and multiculturalism. The new Department's mandate was to develop and deliver programs that support a well-defined sense of identity among Canadians. It was expected to become the key player in defining and promoting Canadian values.2

As for Sport Canada, the agency that manages amateur sport on behalf of the Department, we find in their action plan for 1996 the assertion that above and beyond individual participation, sport helps to strengthen Canadians' pride and sense of unity when their athletes play for Canada and act as their ambassadors in international competitions.3

The Bloc Québécois understands that sport is a means of cultural expression and that it has implications for national pride; the most recent demonstration of this characteristic of sport was certainly the French victory in the last World Cup of Soccer.

But the Bloc cannot accept that, in the current historical context, Canada should make use of sport to deny the culture of Quebec. Incidentally, who can forget the TVA network's initiative in presenting awards (Lys d'or) to Quebec athletes who, during the Games, matched or broke their previous performances.

Examples of the current minister of The Canadian Heritage Department's use of the Games to deny the culture of Quebec include the handing out of T-shirts in Canada's colours at the Quebec Games and the sending of hundreds of flags to the Olympic Games in Nagano. We now know that the Minister put pressure on the Canadian Olympic Association to postpone until after the Quebec election its announcement of the Canadian city that would be a candidate for the Olympic Winter Games in 2010.

Propaganda for propaganda, the Bloc does not think it would be useful to create a new departmental entity to do what Canadian Heritage is already doing.

In addition, the Bloc wishes to point out that sport is essentially an area of provincial jurisdiction, as can be seen from the significant involvement of provinces and municipalities in this sector.

The Bloc Québécois therefore rejects the idea of creating a federal department of sport whose mandate would be to ensure the visibility of the federal government, which the current Minister is managing to do without having a department dedicated to this purpose. Moreover, such a department would encroach on provincial areas of jurisdiction.

In addition, the Bloc Québécois opposes the creation of the host of agencies proposed by the Sub-Committee:

• a Prime Minister's Council for Sport and Fitness4;
• an annual National Sport Summit, to be chaired by the Prime Minister;
• a Sport Marketing Advisory Board, to promote sport sponsorship;5
• an independent agency responsible for promoting, monitoring and evaluating ethics in sport; and
• a mechanism to allow for more formal consultation and collaboration with stakeholders in the sport system.

The Bloc is convinced that it is not by setting up more and more agencies that we will improve the well-being of Quebeckers and Canadians through physical activity. The Bloc considers that, far from pursuing the goal of the population's improved well-being through physical activity, the Sub-Committee's real aim is increased visibility for the federal government. Finally, the Bloc considers that the Sub-Committee has proposed these structures without attempting to evaluate their cost, which is completely irresponsible.

3. The Bloc Québécois opposes the Sub-Committee's Report because it denies the provinces their leadership role in sport.

Nowhere in the Report does the Sub-Committee explicitly recognize that the provinces have the principal jurisdiction over sport. On the contrary.

The Sub-Committee is proposing the establishment of a department of sport with responsibility for mobilizing and coordinating all the resources involved in the Canadian sport sector. If these words mean anything, it is clear that the majority of Sub-Committee members see this federal department as primarily responsible for sport in Canada and that the department would be mandated to coordinate sports at the national level. Quebec cannot tolerate this unacceptable incursion into an area under its jurisdiction.

It is thus not astonishing that the Sub-Committee's Report has markedly underestimated the role of provinces and municipalities in the area of sport and physical activity in Quebec and Canada. According to Statistics Canada, overall public spending on sport and physical fitness is estimated at $1.1 billion. The federal government's $65 million contribution represents barely 5% of this total.

Furthermore, the Bloc Québécois opposes the Sub-Committee's Report because it contains all too many recommendations that flout provincial jurisdiction:

• the introduction of a system of athletic scholarships at colleges and universities;
• the introduction of a Millennium Sport Bond to generate funding for amateur sport;
• a program of sports facility infrastructures6;
• recommendations directly affecting the school system;
• recommendations on training coaches and carrying out studies on local employment markets for such coaches; and
• the following recommendation: that the government create a program designed to educate youngsters about safety in sport. This recommendation duplicates what is already being done in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada.

4. The Bloc Québécois opposes the Report because it does not deal with the discrimination experienced by Francophones.

Year after year, horror stories are made public about the treatment encountered by Francophones in the wonderful world of sport, whether amateur or professional.

In its presentation to the Sub-Committee on the Study of Sport, Sports-Québec stated: "[translation] Rare indeed are the national associations that provide accurate service in French, whether in their documentation or their program delivery. The development of national training centres in cities that offer few or no services in French also constitutes a demotivating factor for many Francophone stakeholders, who must either confront exile and the corresponding language difficulties or develop similar services at home at their own expense."

It is interesting to note that the situation has scarcely changed since Sports-Québec made the following statement eight years ago to the Bélanger-Campeau Commission: "[translation] Unilingual Francophone athletes have an additional obstacle to overcome during Canadian selection processes because they cannot communicate fully in their mother tongue with coaches and the officials responsible for selection. In addition, unilingual Francophone athletes have less chance of being supported in their development toward high performance in the Canadian system because the majority of professionals and volunteers responsible for selecting and training athletes tend to be unilingual Anglophones."

On February 9, 1998, in the daily newspaper La Presse, Gilles Blanchard wrote that the Canadian Olympic Association operates in English: ``[translation] Nine of the ten provincial representatives are English-speaking; Quebec's presidents thus always speak English at the national level. After 30 years, there are scarcely any more Francophones than there used to be running national federations. But these national federations hold a majority of the seats on the Canadian Olympic Association. Internally, the COA operates in English."

The unilingualism of the Canadian Olympic Association has a distorting effect on the universe of sport in Canada. It is the COA that recognizes the national federations represented at the Olympics. It also has a right of oversight, even a right of veto, on the choice of coaches, and it finances the national federations.

Recently the Bloc Québécois approached Synchro Canada, the organization in charge of synchronized swimming in Canada, to ask it to review its decision to choose Toronto as the place where athletes will train for the next Olympic Summer Games. Toronto still had no centre of excellence and the decision meant two years of exile for the eight young Francophones women from Quebec, who could just as easily have been trained in the Montreal region where the best facilities and coaches in Canada are available to them as well as an opportunity to continue their education in their own language.

This systemic discrimination is clearly described in a document sent to the Bloc Québécois on February 23, 1998, by Mr. François Trudeau, professor of kinesiology at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières: ``[translation] Most of Quebec's athletes are required to expatriate themselves to national training centres which in most cases are outside Quebec (...) Moreover, the coaches and training programs all too often operate in English only, naturally enough. It appears that Canadian sport programs, by serving the interests of the majority, are potentially a mechanism for exclusion and assimilation. Certainly there are exceptions, but we must not lose sight of the forest for the trees."

The situation is scarcely different when it comes to professional sport. Mr. Marc Lavoie, in a book entitled Désavantage numérique, has documented systemic discrimination against Francophones in the National Hockey League: ``[translation] Data on the NHL draft clearly show that the future performance of Francophone juniors is systematically underestimated by scouts from the NHL's central office. Other facts show that Francophones in the NHL and the QMJHL are the victims of a great many prejudices."7

It has often been assumed that Francophone teams such as the Montreal Canadiens and the Quebec Nordiques practised inverse systemic discrimination. This is false, according to Mr. Lavoie:

``[translation] We must conclude that administrators with the Montreal Canadians and Quebec Nordiques succumb to pressure exercised by their peers and by the central scouting office. They also, on average, underestimate the performance of Francophone players, although to a lesser extent than do teams in English Canada and the United States. It can be said, as was suggested to me by political scientist Stéphane Dion before he became a federal Cabinet Minister, that the Francophone managers of the Nordiques and the Canadiens ``are affected by the anti-French prejudices of their work environment."8

It is interesting to note in passing that Canada's national anthem is played in only one of the two official languages in almost every sports centre outside Quebec that has a professional team. This is a symbol, but a symbol that reflects reality: Canada is unilingual and Quebec is bilingual.

To correct this systemic discrimination, the Sub-Committee is proposing that the government of Canada ensure the development and delivery of services and programs in both official languages.

As a crowning irony, the Sub-Committee notes that this measure would cost nothing. The Bloc Québécois considers that on this point the Sub-Committee is right: pious wishes never do cost much.

5. The Bloc Québécois opposes the suggestion that Canada bid for the World Cup of Soccer

The Sub-Committee on Sport is proposing that Canada submit a bid to host the World Cup in 2010 if it has the 9 covered stadiums with natural turf and seating capacities of 50,000 or more required for the Cup. At the present time, Canada has only two stadiums that meet the IFAF criteria.

The Bloc Québécois rejects this recommendation for two reasons: first, because Canada must make choices and cannot apply to host both the 2010 Olympic Winter Games and the 2010 World Cup, but also because Canada does not at this time have the infrastructures required by the IFAF. It seems to us irresponsible to recommend that over the next decade Canada push the number of its natural turf stadiums with seating capacities of 50,000 or more from 2 to 9. The Sub-Committee did not produce any study that would enable it to evaluate the cost of building these stadiums or of maintaining them once built.

Conclusion

The Bloc Québécois reiterates that sport is essentially an area of provincial jurisdiction, which the federal government has invaded through its spending power.

As regards professional sport, the Sub-Committee's Report does not present a full picture of the information obtained by the Sub-Committee on the issue of government support for professional sport. While it portrays fairly accurately the problems being experienced by professional sports in the North American context, the Report is silent on the money paid out so far by various governments to sustain professional sport: there is, for example, the $60 million invested by Quebec in the Montreal Expos, and the loss of more than $320 million paid by the taxpayers of Ontario when Skydome was sold to the private sector (which still has its hand out today!).

It is ironic, to say the least, that professional teams that are losing money because of their players' greed and their owners' inability to rein in that greed are today turning to the public purse - they never proposed sharing their profits with the public in the days when they still made any. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that players on professional teams are entitled to forward income averaging for tax purposes, a privilege that is denied to other workers, such as artists. On the other hand, the NHL Players' Association is sitting on $80 million that it has accumulated from profits on selling promotional items. These profits are not taxable under a provision in the Income Tax Act that exempts unions.

Subsidizing professional sport today, either directly or indirectly, would be equivalent to feeding a monster whose appetite will always and only increase.

The Bloc Québécois considers that the report produced by the Sub-Committee on Sport is irresponsible because it makes recommendations in support of professional sport that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and because it calls for a proliferation of structures that would not only encroach on provincial jurisdiction but would also have increasing the visibility of the federal government as their basic purpose.

The Bloc Québécois does support the recommendations designed to provide increased financial assistance to athletes and their federations. The Bloc Québécois also supports the spirit of the recommendations designed to ensure that women, persons with disabilities and Aboriginal people find a larger place for themselves in sport.

Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man enjoy special status at the Commonwealth Games; Puerto Rico has special status at the Olympic Games. The Bloc Québécois calls on the Canadian government to give Quebec the status of an independent entity at major international competitions such as the Francophones Games, the Commonwealth Games, the Pan-American Games and international competitions in hockey, soccer and other sports.

2 Le Nouveau Visage du gouvernement: Guide de la nouvelle structure du gouvernement fédéral, 1994, p.14.

3 Strategic Research Committee, "Croissance, développement humain, cohésion social", October 4, 1996, p.341.

4 The 1961 Act provided for such a thing, but it became irrelevant when the Public Service was given a mandate to look after amateur sport.

5 Such a structure existed under the Conservative government, but was never active.

6 The Sub-Committee proposes that the federal government invest a maximum of $100 million in this initiative. If federal priorities do not correspond to Quebec priorities, will the Quebec government be entitled to opt out with full compensation?

7 Marc Lavoie, Désavantage numérique, Les francophones dans la LNH, Vents d'ouest, Hull, 1998, p.136.

8 Idem, pp.110-111.