Canada: An Evolving Sport System

The purpose of this chapter is to examine Canada’s sport system and the role played in it by the numerous organisations involved. Specifically, it addresses the relationships between governments and non-profit sport federations operating at the national, provincial/territorial, and local levels. Canada’s sport federations, including both single-sport and multi-sport organisations, play a central function in ensuring Canadians’ access to sport participation programmes, and high-performance sport programmes. The nature of the relationship between governments and non-profit sport organisations is largely based on the financial resources provided by governments to non-profit sport organisations. Operating within public policies, procedures, and resources from three levels of government, Canada’s non-profit sport federations have had to address numerous challenges, for example, issues of coordination, power, and autonomy).