Stop Talking about Medals: How to get Sport and Recreation on the Political Agenda

Canada’s 45th general election has come and gone. An election is a perfect time to talk about issues, like the issues we are facing in sport and how sport can tackle broader societal challenges. In our previous article and podcast during the election, titled Canada’s 2025 Federal Election Primer, we explored the five major political parties’ promises related to sport, physical activity, recreation and active environments. 

TLDR: very little related to sport, physical activity, recreation and active environments.

With a minority parliament we may be back at the polls sooner rather than later, that means that we have just a short amount of time to get sport on the agenda and make the case to political parties and to Canadians that sport is an important tool and worth investment.

The question on everyone’s mind in the sport sector is how do we get decision makers, politicians, policy makers and Canadians to care about sport and the challenges facing this sector?

According to surveys, the top 10 issues in the 2025 election in order of importance were: cost of living, US/tariffs, health care, economy, housing affordability, environment/climate change, the deficit/government spending, taxes, income inequality/poverty, and immigration/refugees. Many of these issues are interrelated (such as deficit/government spending and taxes).

I don’t think that you could ever find a poll that has “sport” as a single issue on the top of Canadian’s minds. But that does not mean that sport is not implicated in the top ten issues facing Canadians. Sport is affected by many of the top ten issues facing Canadians, it can also be used as a tool for addressing some of the top ten issues facing Canadians.

In this article we will take a look at how sport interacts with the top issues facing Canadians. I believe that only by connecting sport to these issues and showing how sport can act as a solution to our social, economic and environmental issues can we hope to get sport on the political agenda. Sport needs to be shown that it can be a solution to the problems at hand.

Cost of living

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is not a cost of living index, but is often used to approximate cost of living changes. That being said, the CPI represents the changes in prices as experienced by Canadian consumers and is used to monitor inflation. It measures price changes over time by tracking the cost of eight goods and services: food; shelter; household operations, furnishings and equipment; clothing and footwear; transportation; health and personal care; recreation, education and reading; and alcoholic beverages, tobacco products and recreational cannabis.

We know that the cost of sport programming is a barrier for participation. KidSport Canada, says that programme costs keep 1 in 3 Canadian kids out of organised sport. Local chapters, like KidSport Calgary report a 45% increase in demand for aid in 2023 compared to 2022. The CPI reported an increase of 14.7% in prices for the use of recreational facilities and services from 2019 to 2023. Sport and recreation, just like everything else, is getting more expensive.

Political parties need to be addressing the cost of sport and recreation in their cost of living promises. This can directly be addressed through increased funding towards sport organisations that allow them to reduce membership fees for competitive sports, tax credits for gym memberships, or increasing recreation programs offered by municipalities (which are lower than recreation programmes offered privately), or other innovative programmes.

US/Tariffs 

Elbows up. That’s what they say. I think it is telling that in the face of annexation to become the 51st state of the United States of America, we have adopted a sports reference to reflect the national mood of unity and patriotism. While sport cannot stop the tariffs or mend the feelings of discontent with the US, it can play a role in building national unity and patriotism in Canada. 

Canada is the second largest country on earth and is often divided along regional lines: east vs central vs west vs north, Atlantic, Pacific, the Maritimes, the Prairies, Quebecois, the list goes on. All these dynamics and regional identities make it difficult to pinpoint one single Canadian identity, and one common thing to agree upon. 

Luckily we have the Canada Games to bring us all together. The Canada Games were initiated for Canada’s centennial year celebrations in 1967 with the slogan “Unity through Sport”. 

Why are the Canada Games so powerful? Well, firstly the Games act as a celebration of Canadian culture. It brings together youth from all across the country, sharing values and culture from their home province or territory with others that they meet. The Games are a cultural exchange in this sense and should be seen as an opportunity for creating stronger social ties and cross-country understanding. 

I often hear people say “why should I travel in Canada when I can travel to another country for the same price”. I think that this thought is misguided, we live in a very beautiful country with much to offer, but here we are. The Canada Games in a sense offer an opportunity for young people to travel to a different province or territory that they may never get the chance to travel to again, we build a stronger sense of unity when we see how others live. Suddenly the people on the other side of the country are no longer invisible people, but people sitting right across from you.

There is a small element here for international competition to play in building national pride. As we saw during the 2025 Four Nations Face Off, Canadians were drowning out the American national anthem with boos, and when team Canada triumphed over team USA, I think every Canadian celebrated. I often think back to the feeling of national pride Canada had hosting the 2010 Olympic Games. Every household has at least one pair of red mittens kicking around somewhere. I think that the red mittens have lasted a long time and when people see them, we still feel a sense of national pride, but I wonder about the long term effects of winning medals at international sport events on contributing to national pride and unity.

Healthcare

There is a global physical inactivity pandemic. In 2022, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that more than 80% of adolescents and 27% of adults do not meet the recommended levels of physical activity. Canada is not immune to this pandemic. In Canada, the adult population that meets the recommended physical activity recommendation is 49.2%.

This has enormous consequences for our individual health, and the costs to our health care system. A study found that physical inactivity accounts for $3.9 billion CAD of annual health care expenditures. And that a 10% increase of physical activity across the population, could reduce the health care spending by about $629 million CAD a year, including costs related to seven chronic conditions which could be reduced by 16% (from $3.5 billion to $2.9 billion CAD), and costs relating to depression could be reduced by 17.3% (from $409 million to $338 million CAD). 

When we as individual citizens do not live active lifestyles, we have a direct role in causing increased pressures on our healthcare system. While many of the issues related to healthcare are that Canadians do not have family doctors, or emergency room wait lines are too long, we can help address these issues through sport by being healthier in our own lives. If we are healthier, we reduce the need for doctor appointments, we reduce negative health outcomes that keep us away from the emergency rooms. We can inadvertently reduce issues in our healthcare system by participating more in sport and recreation. Reducing health expenditures by increasing our physical activity rates would also allow governments to refocus those tax dollars to other areas (thus addressing another top issue for Canadians).

Economy

In Canada, it was found that the Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation (SPAR) sector contributed $37.2 billion CAD to the economy and around 260,000 jobs in 2022. Broken down, the total economic impact of sport comes from retail sales ($21.5 billion CAD), recreation and amusement ($8.8 billion CAD), and the organised sport sector directly ($8.8 billion CAD). 

Sport tourism, the activity which refers to travel of participants or spectators for a sport event typically contributes $7.4 billion CAD to the Canadian economy. While recreation and entertainment activities (for example adventure tourism) made up 7.8% of Canada’s total tourism activities contributing over $3.4 billion CAD to the country’s tourism GDP.

The economic impact of sports events can also be a great bump to the local economy. The 2023 Canada Winter Games held in the province of Prince Edward Island (PEI) had a net economic impact of over $179 million CAD to the Canadian economy, $117 million CAD to the PEI economy, and $102 million CAD to the Charlottetown and Summerside economies. This supported over 1,400 jobs in PEI and contributed to over $53 million CAD in tax revenues across Canada.

The broader outdoor recreation sector in Canada is hugely important to the national economy. Protect Our Winters Canada develops a yearly report on the outdoor recreation economy in Canada. By combining the collective economic activity of 23 outdoor recreation activities in Canada, they estimated that this sector contributes $101.6 billion CAD to Canada’s economy annually. Compared to other sectors, the outdoor recreation sector is larger than fisheries (36.1 billion CAD), agriculture (68.9 billion CAD), and forestry (97 billion CAD), and only slightly behind the oil and gas sector (139.2 billion CAD). In addition, the outdoor recreation sector creates more jobs than many of the other large industries in Canada. The outdoor recreation sector creates an estimated 1.1 million jobs, compared to 830,000 in forestry, 569,000 in agriculture, 559,000 in oil and gas, and 298,000 in fisheries. The contributions of the outdoor recreation sector in Canada is huge, yet we do not see a recognition of this from our policy makers.

Who talked about the importance of the SPAR sector during the last election to our economy? No one. We always hear politicians talk about the oil and gas sector, the agriculture and fisheries industry, forestry, but why is no one talking about sport? As the Protect Our Winters report shows, it is a huge economic driver, creating more jobs than other sectors and creating a lot of economic activity.

Housing affordability

Sport cannot directly decrease or impact the cost of housing. But, by building denser communities and focusing on building 15 minute cities where people are able to live within a short walk or bike of daily essentials, we can decrease the cost of housing. This is directly related to the cost of housing, as car centric culture requires a lot of parking. Historically, many municipalities have required new housing constructions to have mandatory minimum parking (example: one parking stall per unit). Today, an underground parking stall costs range from $80,000 to $100,000; deep, multi-level parking structures can cost up to $165,000 per stall. This adds a huge amount to the overall cost of housing. While yes, this does not solve the entire issue regarding housing affordability, being able to knock off around $100,000 in construction costs can go a long way. This also encourages people to live car free, which will further reduce the cost of living (no insurance, no gas, no car maintenance: some estimates put car ownership at nearly $16,000 a year in Canada). This is doubly beneficial, reducing the overall cost of housing, while also reducing other aspects of our living costs, thus by reducing other costs we can put more towards housing - making it more affordable - having an extra $16,000 a year would ease the sting of housing costs just a little.

Environment/climate change

I truly believe that climate change should be the number one issue on every Canadians list as it impacts all the other items on this list, as well as items not on this list. Climate change will have wide ranging repercussions across our society and economy. If we do not address it urgently and aggressively we are going to have much bigger problems and challenges addressing it retroactively.

While not traditionally considered “sport”, active transit is one very important part of our push to decarbonize. Implementing national, regional and local strategies to increase cycling, rolling or walking rates can go a long way in making active transit safer and more accessible to everyone. Investments are needed in this area too. The Government of Canada launched its $400 million CAD Active Transit Fund in 2021 to help communities shorten commuting times, promote healthy lifestyles, reduce air pollution and noise, and reduce GHG emissions. 

Sports as a sector also creates its own carbon emissions. A lot of it is out of the control of sport organizations: travel. Unless we do not want to have sports, travel is something that is not going away. Addressing our own carbon emissions will serve as an example to the rest of society that it can be done.

Deficit/government spending 

I think that people feel that the government is spending a lot of money and that they aren’t getting a good “return on investment”, that government spending is misguided and focusing on the wrong things. This causes a feeling of wanting to reduce government spending to reduce taxes.

The fact of the matter is, sport is dependent upon government spending. If we look at different National Sport Organisations (NSOs) and Multi-Sport Organisations (MSOs) we see that government funding is a top source of revenue. In 2023, Alpine Canada received $7.6 million CAD from the Government of Canada, this out of total revenue of $17.9 million CAD (42.4% of total revenue). In 2024, Swimming Canada received $8 million CAD from the Government of Canada, this out of total revenue of $13.9 million CAD (57.5% of total revenue). In 2023-24, 52.5% of the Canada Games funding came from the Government of Canada.

I think there is a misconception of the amount of money in sport. The most visible aspects of sport are professional leagues like the NHL, NFL, CFL, or the MLS. All of which are not exactly strapped for cash. Because of this visibility, there is a perception that all sport has a lot of sponsorship money coming in. But this is not the case, and we can see this in the financial reporting of our national sport organisations. The largest share of the funding in our NSOs come from the government, not from sponsorships or ticket sales.

If the current mood of the electorate is that we need to cut government spending, we can easily imagine that sport will not be receiving any increased funding any time soon.

Taxes

I’m going to take a wild guess that when a Canadian says taxes is a top issue for them, they are meaning that taxes are too high and contribute to the cost of living crisis that we are in, so I will be exploring this topic through the lens of personal income tax that citizens pay.

The relationship between sport and taxes is a little more convoluted than some of the other issues discussed here. Other than direct tax credits for putting children in sport programming or for having a gym membership, there may not be a direct relationship to taxes.

I think part of this is that we are seeing our recreation infrastructure decaying before our very eyes. The pool I swam in in Fredericton was built in the 1940s and is still being used because governments cannot pull together to build a new one yet. We are paying so much in taxes, yet government spending does not seem to be addressing the everyday issues that we experience. High quality recreational infrastructure like pools and ice rinks ands active infrastructure like bike lanes and community gardens  are all funded through taxes. If we can’t solve issues like the infrastructure deficit, what is the point of paying taxes?

Income inequality/poverty

Canada’s highest paid CEOs make 246x the average worker. Obviously sport cannot address income levels like this, but we can use sport as a policy tool for addressing issues related to poverty, addiction, and homelessness. Investing in sport as a tool to address these health issues will in turn help address other costs in forms of other social services down the line. It can also help address crime and associated damage to public and private properties.

After school programs can also help keep kids off the street in a structured, supervised setting that provides support. It is essential that these programs that are being used as crime prevention are not a top-down approach, but include young people in developing the programmes. It must be participatory so that there is an ownership over the programme and buy in from the participants. Obviously sport cannot eradicate poverty and crime on its own, but it is an important piece of the puzzle. When sport programming becomes too expensive, it pushes kids away and into other, potentially more dangerous areas.

Immigration/refugees

Immigration has largely been a non-issue in Canada until recently when housing prices became so unaffordable at the same time that our population started increasing extremely rapidly. We were unable to build enough housing to accommodate those already in Canada, not even to mention the newcomers that were coming to Canada. While sport cannot address that issue specifically, sport is an essential tool for integration and settlement of immigrants to Canada. Governments should work with sport organisations and settlement organisations to increase participation of newcomers to help them build community and networks in Canada that help them succeed and contribute to building Canada up as a nation for everyone to have a meaningful life.

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These are the issues that the SPAR sector needs to be talking about. Winning medals at the Olympics or Paralympics is not relatable (or, quite frankly, relevant) to the everyday lives of Canadians. Should we be arguing for more spending on sport just to increase our medal count at the Olympics or Paralympics? This seems out of touch with reality. Families are struggling to put their children in soccer or swimming clubs and we think that we will be able to reason with them about our international medal standings? 

This unfortunately is what I see coming from the sport sector: constantly hammering away at the high performance aspect of sport and how many medals we win. This is the wrong messaging at the wrong time. We need to focus on how sport can contribute to improving Canadians' lives.

The main messages that sport and recreation needs to focus on are the social, environmental and economic aspects of how they contribute to building up Canadian society. If we want Canadians to care about sport and ask the government to invest in sport, they need to see the value in these programmes. Why should people care snot sport? Four reasons related to the top issues in the 2025 election:

• Uniting the country: sharing values, pride and culture

• The economic importance of sport: job creator and economic impact

• Addressing carbon emissions, cost of living and housing affordability by increasing active transportation options and addressing the cost of sport programming

• Integrating and settling immigrants and refugees in their new communities

Other benefits of sport include, but are not limited to: Indigenous reconciliation, empowering women and girls, aiding in the just transition, and developing youth and teaching them life skills.

Yes, there is an emotional and national pride aspect of sport, as already mentioned. But this is not going to convince anyone of the necessary investment in sport that we need. If we focus on addressing the day to day issues, we can make the case for why sport needs and deserves investment. Changing our messaging will help get us on the radar for when the next election comes around. As the saying goes: change or die. Do we want the sports sector to die?

Stop talking about medals. Start talking about benefits to Canadians.