by Chris Wodskou CBC Sports Online It all starts here - the schools, the clubs, the community athletic and recreation programs. These are the incubators of athletic excellence, the repository of athletic knowledge, the carnival of athletic enjoyment for its own sake. Now a lot of people fear it's ending here, too. Or to be more exact, not starting at all. It's one thing when ample funds aren't flowing to elite athletes to support their training, but quite another when there's not enough money to keep sports in schools or communities. Yet that's what's been happening across Canada in recent years. Amateur sports funding is one of the first things on the chopping block of governments looking to cut spending. The effects of budget cuts are even more drastic in schools. In Ontario, where high school teachers have had an extra class added to their workload, they've scaled back on coaching and organizing and supervising extracurricular sports. Faced with a political climate mandating a no-nonsense curriculum focused on career training, schools across Canada have been cutting their physical education and other sports programs along with the ever-vulnerable arts programs. Some schools are even being built without gymnasiums. CBC's Summit on Sports documentary on the grassroots of amateur sports looks at the Toronto School Board's plan to axe a program that teaches swimming in elementary schools in a bid to save $1.2 million despite the protests of parents. Obviously, such moves hurt kids who wouldnąt otherwise have ready access to swimming pools, or other sports facilities and programs, for that matter. Over the scores of interviews with athletes by the CBC Sports Online staff while putting together our Sydney Olympics site, a recurring theme was the importance of school and community sports programs in introducing them to their sport and providing them with the initial training, coaching and competition that put them on the road to the Olympics. Their passion for their sport and their competitive spirit might never have been aroused without this grassroots level, nor would their talent have been recognized. While Australia continues to sink abundant resources into recruiting and grooming young athletes, athletic opportunities for young Canadians seem to be decreasing, and we see our country staring at an athletic divide. When the school and community programs get cut, only those who can afford to pay for sports facilities and activities are able to play. That not only denies opportunities to less-privileged young people, it also limits a country's talent pool of potential champions and erodes the entire culture of sport. And it does little to improve the alarming numbers of obese children in this country. "Cuts to high school sports has greatly affected the number of student athletes," says Toronto track coach Frederick Andrade, "and there is not enough support from the teachers. So these sports start to die. And for a lot of sports, there's no way of getting into them if the kids aren't in university or college, and universities are getting more inacessible to people at lower income levels. "The underlying issues are the physical development of kids and the fact that there are fewer avenues for them to tap into their athletic potential. "The irony," he laughs ruefully, "is that the politicians that cut money to schools send their own kids to private schools where they still have the sports and arts programs that have been cut in the private schools." Amateur sports are considered by many in the bean-counting classes to be a frill at the elite level. How much more of a frill must it seem when the money goes to nurture a small handful people who only might develop into top athletes and a majority of people who do it for enjoyment, for the social interaction, for the release that comes from healthy competition and for the sheer fun of it? Grassroots-level sport is what gives a lot of people a deeper athletic involvement than being spectators and armchair analysts of pro sports. The reality is that Canada has become a culture of spectators. A recent study revealed that the level of participation in sports by Canadians 15 years of age and older dropped to 34 per cent in 1998 from 45 per cent in 1992. Those numbers only seemed more pertinent with the news late last year that the survival of Participaction -- the Trudeau pet project that once shamed Canadians into getting off their couches through unflattering comparisons with fitter, healthier Swedes -- was in jeopardy due to steady attrition of its already-meagre funding. The ironic punctuation mark was added days later with the release of a study that showed that sedentary lifestyles were costing the Canadian health care system some $2.1 billion annually. "People don't realize through Participaction's efforts we've saved billions of dollars in health care," said Peter Katzmarzyk, the author of the study. For Olympic swimmer Marianne Limpert, who has become a de facto spokesperson on amateur sports issues, the equation between sports funding and health is a no-brainer: "I thought with all the attention given health care, wouldn't it just make sense that sports is a huge part of health care?" Denis Coderre, the Secretary of State for Amateur Sport, estimates that getting another 10 per cent of Canadians to participate in sports would save the health care system up to $5 billion. Such estimates are hard to pin down, but at least they're quantifiable. It's harder to prove the other benefits of grassroots-level sport -- that it reduces truancy and youth crime, suicide and unemployment, while encouraging discipline, self-reliance and civic-mindedness. It's hard to prove the argument that a healthy society in one in which citizens are active and fit, and that champions will arise out of these ranks, with numbers. But people like Dominique Bosshart, a bronze medallist in taekwondo at the Syndey Games, are living proof. Bosshart told the CBC's documentary crew that her involvement in taekwondo gave her a sense of direction and purpose when she was an angry youth. CBC found another excellent example in Beardy's First Nation Reserve, north of Saskatoon. About 15 years ago, the band council started pouring money into coaching, facilities and equipment for their kids' hockey program. Now their team is playing in the Air Canada Cup, the biggest midget hockey tournament in the country. "Sport is looked upon as a character builder," says Rick Gamble, a former band chief who helped spearhead the initiative. "It builds identity, camaraderie, (you) learn to lose together, learn to win together. It's the very game of life itself." Locals credit the program with steering kids away from substance abuse and other kinds of trouble, so they're finishing high school and taking pride in their community. "You talk to people who have first-hand knowledge of sports at the local level and beyond competitiveness and fitness, they'll tell you about the far-reaching benefits," says CBC's Nancy Wilson. "A case in point is the Beardy's Reserve. Their hockey team is a huge source of pride for the whole community. The older generation will tell you that this kind of stuff wasn't there when they were kids, and they had nothing to do, so they got into trouble. Without it, this generation might have gotten into the same trouble. And It's not just native kids who play for the team, so they're also building social bridges between natives and non-natives." The Beardy's example shows how public will and community spirit are key. The grassroots can't just wait to be supported, but have to take an active role in supporting amateur sports with their time, money, enthusiasm and expertise. Andrade believes Canadians fall short in this respect. He sees a world of difference between attitudes toward community and sport in Canada and his native Jamaica. "People in Jamaica want to know what's going on with their athletes and are proud of them and willing to do what they can to help. Here, they don't really care, and that extends to where they work. Corporations won't sponsor you unless you're a big name or they can get a tax writeoff. They need to see that they can help smaller athletes, not just the bigger athletes, that we need them there during the struggle when athletes are just starting to develop. "It speaks to the kind of society we have. It's less communal. A lot of people forget that it's not about funding national-level athletes – it means you fund your community, you fund your school. A lot of Canadians are only waiting for the government to fund things, but a real democracy is about everyone taking a role in their community - people as community members have to take the initiative to support themselves and each other."

Charles Parkinson is the Director of Sport and Community Development for B.C. Sport. Parkinson also played for the national men's volleyball team for four years during the 1980s and has a distinguished himself as a career commentator for CBC's Olympic volleyball coverage.

Angela J. Schneider won a silver medal in rowing as part of Canada's women's eights boat at the 1984 Olympics. Schneider is currently an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean, Ethics and Equity, in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Western Ontario with a scholarly focus on ethics and gender issues in sport.

Curt Harnett won three Olympic medals from 1984 to 1996 and still ranks as the greatest track cyclist Canada has ever produced. Some 30 national championships and numerous World Cup medals later, Harnett is a CBC cycling commentator and a consultant with International Management Group.

Greg Joy won the most famous silver medal in Canadian Olympic history in the high jump on the last day of the 1976 Montreal Games. Joy was the executive director of the Ottawa Food Bank during the 1990s and is still active with the COA in addition to working as a fundraising consultant.

Farida Gabanni is a long-time physical education teacher, but in the Nova Scotia public school system and at the Nova Scotia Teachers College. Gabanni is the President of CAHPERD, a national non-profit organization committed to the healthy development of children through strong physical and health education programs.

Mitch Geller is the National Team Head Coach for Diving Canada. Since the late 1980s, Geller has been instrumental in building a Canadian team that won two medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics with a strong core of young divers.