Encourage good sports for better sports.

• Author: Corbett, Rachel
• Position: Special Report on Sports Law

Fourteen years ago in this space, I wrote an article about injury prevention and liability in recreation ("Could This Happen to You? Recreation Workers Can Take Steps to Prevent Injuries and Avoid Liability", LAWNOW 17:8, May 1993). My organization, the Centre for Sport and Law, was fairly new at that time. The focus of our work in the sport and recreation sector was risk management as it was then defined and interpreted. As we have expanded and evolved, so too has the traditional concept of risk management. Today, we help sport organizations approach risk management as a tool to improve organizational capacity through improved governance, dispute management, and business management.

Since I first wrote for this magazine, the Centre has grown from two professionals to five. It has moved from its origins in Edmonton, Alberta to a network of virtual offices in Ontario where we work with local, provincial, national, and international sport bodies. Public education around safety, injury, and liability has been replaced with dispute management as the mainstay of our activity. This is not to suggest that safety is not important--it certainly is, but most recreation and sport organizations are finding the resources they need from funding bodies, government agencies, and the insurance industry. The issue of conflict management, on the other hand, represents a ubiquitous problem and a constant challenge across the sport and recreation sector.

To put this into perspective, it is useful to examine two recent pieces of information. The first is "A Portrait of Sports and Recreation Organizations in Canada" published by Imagine Canada in 2006 and based on data from the 2003 National Survey of Non-Profit and Voluntary Organizations. The second is the "Canadian Public Opinion Survey on Youth and Sport" conducted by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport in 2002.

The sport and recreation sector is the second largest segment of the total non-profit community in Canada, slightly smaller than the social development sector but larger than the religion, arts/culture, health, environment, and international sectors. According to Imagine Canada, the sport and recreation sector comprises over 33,000 organizations employing over 130,000 individuals, supported by 3 million volunteers, and earning over $6 billion in revenues annually. However, sport and recreation organizations in Canada tend to be small, and over half of them report annual revenues under $30,000. As well, they are less likely to have paid staff than any other type of non-profit organization in Canada. Nearly three-quarters of Canadian sport and recreation organizations have no paid staff whatsoever, relying solely on volunteers to oversee and manage their programs.

The results of the 2002 national survey on youth and sport revealed that while the vast majority of Canadians (92%) feel that sport can make a positive contribution to the development of youth and the quality of life in our communities, less one in five Canadians (19%)...