With increase of funding, Canada's sports leaders know there is expectation to increase participation

Earlier this month, Rugby Canada board chair Kathleen McGinn happened to be visiting the prime minister’s office around the same time as Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

As is customary, the state leaders exchanged gifts — for example, in a meeting between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Erdogan in July, the former gifted maple syrup while the latter offered a personalized revolver. 

This time around, Carney avoided stereotype. Per McGinn, who was speaking on a panel at the Primetime Sport Conference on Friday, Carney sourced a Canada basketball jersey to hand to Erdogan.

It’s the latest visual of the federal government’s continued emphasis on sport. There was Carney’s campaign slogan ‘elbows up’ and a commercial filmed in a hockey rink. There was a $1 billion sports investment in the spring, and another $1.5 billion toward sport infrastructure included in the last week's budget.

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On Monday and Tuesday in Ottawa, federal Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden convened around 400 of the country’s sport leaders to discuss what’s next. The two-day summit covered plenty of ground, from alignment to participation to corporate investment to inclusion.

It ended with plenty of ideas — but no specific calls to action.

McGinn said the next step should be a way to measure the outputs of the investment.

“How do we know that the investments that we are making into the sports system are going to yield gains?" McGinn said. "And measure and invest in doing that and doing it really specifically, in a smart way that's like, yes, about KPIs, but actually be so clear: