The Current - The rising cost of being a Canadian Olympian

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

With the Winter Olympics just weeks away, Canadian athletes are speaking out about the rising cost of representing their country. Luger Trinity Ellis says she’s cutting pennies just to stay competitive. Speed skater Hayden Mayeur says even athletes at the top of the funding scale are struggling to cover rent, food, travel, and equipment. We hear from Hayden Mayeur about working part-time and why he believes future athletes may depend more on private sponsorship than public support. Then, David Shoemaker, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee on why funding hasn’t increased and what he’s asking Ottawa to do now.

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the great Canadians. Oh, here you are. You're here and we're here. No matter what race you were, what color you were, what religion you were, what language you spoke, you watched Mr. Dressup. The tickle trunk was this magical like Pandora's Box. I'm talking about Captain Dressup. Mr. Dressup, the magic of make-believe. You made me what I am today.

You know that. Watch free on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Trinity Ellis is one of Canada's top luge athletes. She's 23 years old from Pemberton, British Columbia, and she made her Olympic debut in Beijing in 2022. Now, Trinity is in Winterberg, Germany,

where this weekend she'll compete in her final Olympic qualification race. Getting to this point, it's been a test of endurance beyond her training on the track. We're Count and Fennies to make this work. work. You know, there's not a lot of funding out there, and, you know, we have to pay, pay to play. Trinity has received a couple of grants, including one from the federal government, and they help to pay the thousands of dollars in team fees and travel expenses, but it's not enough to cover her rent, groceries, gas, and other living expenses. She's done everything from working in restaurants

to picking strawberries to help make ends meet. And she feels the money crunch puts her and other Canadian athletes at a disadvantage. We're competing against countries that, you know, outspend us like three, four, five times. And there's only so much you can do with that. We're a great country. We're really passionate about sport. And we have the potential to be really great. So I think it's a shame. And I feel like everyone, you know, everyone kind of feels that, you know, we want to be successful. In just one month's time, the Winter Olympics in Italy will be underway. and many Canadian athletes are speaking out now

about the lack of new funding for national sports organizations. Hayden Mayer is on Canada's national speed skating team. He is a two-time world champion medalist. He's in Calgary this morning. Hayden, good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm well, thanks.

Does that sound familiar, cutting pennies to be able to compete? It does, yeah, that's pretty much been, I think, mine and most of my teammates' stories for the bulk of our careers. I'm going to do something which people don't do in polite company, which is ask you about money.

How much funding do you get from, say, the federal government? To put it into perspective, so I'm carded at what would be considered as the highest level in amateur sport in Canada. So what that's called is a senior card. And then I also receive a performance bonus because of my World Championship medals inside the past few years. So that senior card is 2275 per month. And then if you've won a World Championship,

Chit Metal recently. You get an extra 600 bucks a month, I think. So in total, it's about 2275 a month. And that's the absolute most you can unlock as an athlete. So how does that leave you in terms of the expenses that you have for daily living and for being able to compete at the highest level in speed skating? Yeah, I mean, 10 years ago, we might be having a little bit of a different conversation about how far that money can uh can stretch but in today's day and age um between the heavily inflated cost of uh of rent for most um the like extreme cost of groceries you know we're not in high performance sport you can't exactly go um to the grocery store and pick up the craft dinner and the mr noodles and stuff you have to be eaten pretty pretty freaking well to be able

to train at this level you know twice a day and to chase down those uh world cup or Olympic goals. And then, yeah, like you said, the cost of gas, the cost of just everything is so high. That 2275 now is barely, barely covering your rent and groceries. And so you've taken on part-time jobs. You worked for a while, and you still do, in different capacities. One was at the Calgary speed skating oval, right? Tell me a little bit about that and what that meant in that job in terms of being able to strike a balance between work and being able to train

so that, as I say, you could compete at that high level. Yeah, I mean, I'm not the first. I won't be the last athlete that's worked at the Olympic Oval. The Oval is a pretty great place for athletes to get to work because they're pretty flexible with us. They understand. But I was a Zamboni driver, so I was a nice technician for six years working there from, I want to say,

2016 until into COVID. So it was a good job, but it was a lot of work. Obviously, it's a blue-collar job. It's in the trade, so we're working late nights after training twice a day. Physical labor, a lot of the time, you know, when big competitions come around, we're tearing down the hockey rinks, putting. It's a lot of work for an athlete to be doing on top of training twice a day. So while it was a good job in terms of flexibility around my training, it was exhausting.

How did you make it all fit? Or did you make it all fit? I wouldn't necessarily say I did I made it all fit in the sense that I was able to pick up the shifts but I was often having to condense training sessions so I'd skip rest and do my afternoon training a little earlier to be able to get to work and essentially what I was doing was I was never really allowing myself to recover properly so sport was almost coming second to be able to pay the bills And so you started your own a coffee truck, a mobile cafe, I mean it's a car, not a truck, but a mobile cafe that allows you not just to kind of control your own destiny, but you employ other athletes as well. Tell me a little bit about that and how that's changed things for you. Yeah, so COVID shut down the Olympic Oval as it did, you know, most facilities across the country at that time. So I lost my job right when COVID hit. And it kind of put me into a little position where I was thinking about how I could potentially build something.

out to take better control of my working hours. So I'd seen this little concept in Europe and decided to give it a whirl here. I figured the risk was relatively low because I wasn't investing in a brick and mortar. And at the end of the day, everybody drinks coffee. So I figured worst case with a little hustle, I'd at least get my money back out of it. So I started Halov Cafe with a little antique citra N2 CV with the goal of just subsidizing my own career so I could put my focus back on sport. And it ended up kind of blowing up here in the private event world. So we started picking up some pretty large clients in the corporate side of things downtown, whether it be oil and gas, major banking, real estate developers, et cetera. And it kind of snowballed from there over the years. We started

building out more bars and growing and growing. And then just inside this past year, I shifted the entire business model over to athlete owned and operated. So all of our baristas are now all also Team Canada athletes who compete in various different sports, Trinity included. If you speak to athletes from other nations who are, again, at the level that you're operating at, are they generally having to take on part-time jobs to be able to make ends meet and compete for their country? Not the bulk of the ones I've spoken to. To be honest with you, that's kind of a funny topic when we're hanging out casually at, you know, World Cups or whatnot. It's, it's, um, most, most of my friends internationally are pretty shocked at, um, the amount of time that most of us have to spend, uh, either finding our own sponsors or, um, working part-time jobs. It's just, it, it feels like a, a very off-brand topic for most.

Adam Vancouverden is the Secretary of State for Sport. He, of course, is an Olympian himself. We invited him to talk to us this morning about this. He was unavailable, but his office sent a statement that said, says in part investing in Canadian athletes and our sports system is a crucial part of our ongoing commitment to nation building, fostering a stronger, more united, and healthier Canada for everyone. He says that Canadian athletes are invaluable national ambassadors. Does it feel like that to you? I mean, I definitely do feel that way. Like, I'll tell you, you won't find athletes pretty well anywhere else in the world that are as passionate about chasing down their Olympic goals as Canadians are. And that's largely because of the lack of financial support. You know, none of us are in it for money because there is none. So every Canadian athlete that

you're going to speak to, in my opinion, at any given point in time, is going to have a lot of passion and is really just here because we want to wear the maple leaf on our chest and to represent this country. But that being said, from the perspective of the federal government, I don't feel like most athletes in this country have felt support. um you know at a minimum for the length of my career um and i've been with this national team for eight years now so uh yeah definitely don't feel feel the support i was going to let you go but let me just ask you finally why this matters i mean we're in this moment now of great canadian pride elbows up flags everywhere and the olympics will be a huge symbol of that to you why does

it matter that you athletes like yourself are supported yeah i mean to me i think right now what it's really doing is it's hurting the next generation of kids coming up in sport. I think sport brings everybody together. And what we've started to notice is there's fewer and fewer kids choosing to even take a shot at chasing down that dream out of high school, you know, pursuing a career in amateur sport. And a lot of that's because of the funding because there's no money in it because their families can't afford to, you know, fund that dream anymore. And, you know, it's just it's not possible for a lot of people. And that really hurts individuals like myself to see that kids can't chase their dreams anymore and that we're seeing less and less of the next

generation coming up. So I think it's really important to take the time to realize that that investment into amateur sport isn't just into helping us at this level pay our bills. It's also investing in the future for sport in Canada altogether. Hayden, it's good to talk to you. I wish you the best of luck. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for having me. Hayden Mayer is a speed skater in Canada's national team, also the owner of Hayloff Cafe. He was in Calgary. Hey there, I'm David Kahnman. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy.

Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you got to know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighborhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, Check out, this is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. David Shoemaker is the CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee. He's been listening, and David, good morning to you. Good morning, Matt. Federal government says that athletes like Hayden and Trinity are invaluable national ambassadors.

Why are we asking them to work in landscaping to help compete for Canada and represent this nation? I have no idea. Hayden is 100% correct. What's unique to Canada is that we don't seem to understand that being an Olympian or being a Paralympian is a full-time job. I don't think you can compete at a world-class level, compete for medals, as we expect our athletes to do in under a month's time, and also expect them to work part-time to subsidize those careers.

It's broken. And for so long as I've been in my... role, I've been advocating for increased funding for athletes, but more importantly, increased funding for the national sports organizations that are asked to fund the whole system. How does the funding, and I want to talk more about why this is happening, but how does the funding that athletes in this country get? How does that compare to other countries? It's hard to say exactly, but I think we heard from Trinity that said, you know, she she compares herself to other losers in the world that are three, four, five times better funded.

I think our statistics would say that in other sports it could be as much as six, seven, ten times. At least when we measure investment by national governments in sport across the board, we see countries like Italy, France, Germany outspending us by ten times. And that's shocking. And that's hard to compete. She said Trinity has written in McLean's magazine that she's trying to do her best, but she's competing against countries spending four times Luge Canada's entire budget just on sled technology. Where does that leave Canadian athletes, do you think?

I think that leads them to a place where they show up at the proverbial start line. You know, when she's in the start hut and the Luge, wondering whether she has the technology, let alone the skill, right? I'm convinced she has the skill. But the technology and the experience, the time on a sliding track, for example, to compete fairly and evenly with her competitors in particularly the European countries. Why does this matter? Answer that question that a lot of people might be. There are any number of pressures on taxpayer dollars in this country right now. Why does funding athletes in 2026 matter? I think our Canadian athletes are a national treasure and this matters more in

2026 than ever before. We saw it on a small level, even in the four nations face-off. In hockey, there was something riding on that hockey tournament. Canada against the United States, especially. Absolutely. Or we see when Victoria M. Boko wins, the National Bank Open, how incredible a catalyzing moment, a unifying, the moment that is, for Canadian communities. But we take sport for granted.

We think that Victoria gets to that place in the finals of that tennis tournament without support. It takes a ton of her own personal effort, but funding to get her there. And what I heard from Hayden is absolutely right, that I think we have national sports organizations that are mortgaging the future for the present. So I have a strong expectation that we can and will do well at the Milano-Cortino Winter Olympic Games. But I worry a lot about our future athlete pools, because it's not just about the expense of sport and performing at the highest level in Canada. But it's also about getting into sport and at the grassroots level, access to sport is becoming increasingly exclusive, not the inclusive sport system. We aspire to have

it be. Do you see a disconnect between the elbows up rhetoric? I mean, moments of Canadian pride and Olympics are a big part of that, people waving the flag and what we're hearing. Trinity Alice, again writing in McLean's magazine that she knows athletes who are doing delivery for DoorDash, cleaning Airbnbs, working in a cemetery, for example. Is there a disconnect between those things? Well, there is. This is nation-building at its finest. These are athletes who go and represent us with the maple leaf on their chest or their backs, depending on the sport that they're in, and do us incredibly proud. And we will be cheering them on. We've got, you know, Mikhail Kingsbury, the king of moguls who will be competing for us at the Malano-Cortina Olympic Games, who will hopefully win

two Olympic gold medals. And yet we're not prepared to invest in. these athletes and their organizations the way our competitors are. And I see a complete disconnect. I have been advocating, along with the CEO of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, Karen O'Neill, for the last six to seven years, not for a penny for the Canadian Olympic Committee

or the Canadian Paralympic Committee, but for the 62 national sports organizations that fund sport in this Canada. They have not had an increase in their funding since 2005. So 20 years, they've been operating on the same budgets that they had 20 years ago. And that's just not sustainable. We need to invest in these national treasures.

We need to support them with the same level of vigor that we cheer for them. Why do you think that the federal government hasn't ponied up? I mean, there was no money you're looking for, and the Canadian Paralympic Committee asked for, what, $144 million in November's budget that would go to national sports organizations, and the money wasn't there. Why do you think that is? It's hard to say because I know we have a prime minister that understands sport. We certainly have a sport minister who's a decorated Olympic champion who understands sport.

So I actually continue to hold some level of confidence that it's coming. Does some of this have to do with the fact that there is a conversation around sport? I mean, we had the head of the Future of Sport Commission on this program who talked about how the system is broken because of a systemic culture of abuse. Does that make it harder to ask for money when people think that the system itself is rotten? I don't know if it makes it harder. It shouldn't. I think we have to invest in a sports system to fix those issues. But do you think that people are, and perhaps governments are unwilling to put money into national sports organizations because the reporting and the legwork has shown that some of those national sports organizations

have a culture that needs to be corrected? I don't think so. And I've spoken with the prime minister and several Canadian athletes. have spoken with the Prime Minister. He attended the Women's World Cup rugby finals in it where we were taking on England with a Women's World Cup team that was crowdfunding their participation there

to the tune of a million dollars. And he told them privately that that's the last time that's going to happen. So I have some confidence that this is going to change. I wish it were changing faster. We ourselves at the Canadian Olympic Committee have developed a plan to invest $500 million over the next 10 years

in growing sport, helping finance these dreams, but also in changing how sport works at the grassroots level. And I'm eager to share that with the government. How much of that money that goes to national sports organizations actually gets to individual athletes so that they aren't delivering food to people when they should be resting or training? Yeah. Well, increasingly, the burden is working the other way around Matt, that as they have to

pair back on training opportunities or they're firing coaches, that the burden is shifting to athletes. You see that what's happening is increasingly in Canadian sport. Athletes you're talking about having to pay team fees. So this notion, you know, that you make it to your national team and then somebody says, and here's the invoice to be part of it. And we see shocking numbers, $20,000, $30,000 to be part of a team. We do put millions of dollars directly into the hands of athletes through Olympic grants, foundation grants and awards. Trinity, in fact, received one, a specific indigenous grant from our Canadian Olympic Foundation with an athlete excellence fund.

But she's still counting pennies. And she's still counting pennies. It's not enough. And it's sad for me. And I'm not going to stop advocating for this to change until it does. I have to let you go. But just at a time when the economy is suffering and when there are any number of industries that are knocking on Ottawa's door saying we need support because of what's happening from

south of the border, but just globally. Is this a case that you think you can make? I do. I think it's an incredibly modest investment when you compare it to pipelines and ice breakers and the return on the investment for what it does for our communities to inspire this nation to make us feel good at a time when we really need to feel good to cheer for these great Canadian ambassadors. I think it's well worth the investment. And that's something we're thinking about next month when these ambassadors, as the government calls them, are competing for us, for Canadians? We sure are thinking about it. I'm thinking about it every day. And, you know, seven in ten Canadians watch the Paris Olympics, nearly 27 million people. And I think it'll be even more for Milano Cortina. David, good to talk to you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. David Schumacher is the CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee. He was in Toronto.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.