A forever project: Participation the key priority as Canada's sport future comes into focus at national summit

Adam van Koeverden’s vision for sport in Canada is built on five pillars: build, host, protect, participate, perform.

Increasingly, however, it is becoming clear that one of those pillars will be the weight-bearer.

Participation is the key priority in the initial funding framework that was distributed to national sport organizations (NSOs), multi-sport organizations (MSOs) and Canadian sport centres earlier in November. 

It was also the leading topic of discussion at the Playground to Podium Summit in Ottawa on Monday and Tuesday, which featured about 400 of the country’s sports leaders gathered at the National Arts Centre to set the course for the future of the industry, share ideas, hatch plans and understand what will be expected of them for the remainder of the five-year, $660-million commitment made to those three groups by the federal government.

After two days of panels, workshops and networking, that guiding principle of participation appears to have crystallized.

The funding framework — a rubric by which NSOs, MSOs and sports centres will receive their next dose of dollars — hammers it home. The document has yet to be finalized, but van Koeverden, the federal secretary of state for sport, said the established guidelines would be launched within two weeks and promised to be transparent with how applications would be evaluated.

“It’s about more than just the weight of gold, silver and bronze. We’re measuring the weight of the sport system in something that’s not actually quantifiable: it’s joy. And we just know that when more kids do it, it’s going to increase,” van Koeverden said.

A New Game Plan: Sports Funding 101

CBC Sports obtained a copy of the framework’s first draft, which was distributed Nov. 3. It has