1. INTRODUCTION
Page 4 of 37
During hearings of the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on the Study of Sport in Canada in 1998, members raised the issue of discrimination against French-speaking athletes, in terms both of services available to them in their first official language and their opportunities to be chosen to represent Canada as part of national sport teams. The committee’s final report (December 1998) does not deal with this issue, but rather focuses on financing amateur sport.
After the committee’s report was published, two members of Parliament wrote to the Commissioner and requested that this office examine the opportunities for athletes to develop to the highest levels of their sport in their preferred official language. One stated that Francophone athletes must overcome greater obstacles in pursuit of their athletic careers than Anglophones because of pervasive unilingualism within national sport organizations and the Canadian Olympic Association, among coaches and at national sport centres, as well as the lack of documentation in French. The second asked the Commissioner specifically to examine the situation at the national sport centres in Calgary and Winnipeg.
The sport associations that manage development programs for amateur athletes are non-government organizations and are not themselves subject to the Official Languages Act. However, the federal government provides funding to the associations under contribution agreements administered by Sport Canada, a branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Through these agreements the associations have made a commitment to provide services to athletes in both official languages.
The Commissioner’s Office therefore agreed to undertake a special study of official languages in the Canadian sport system, with particular emphasis on federal involvement and responsibility, and began work in September 1999.
