Ottawa's Sport Secretary to Appear at Calgary Photo Op Today While $129 Million Funding Promise Still Sits in Review

Ottawa's Sport Secretary to Appear at Calgary Photo Op Today While $129 Million Funding Promise Still Sits in Review

Capital Power, Alpine Canada and the federal government are scheduled to hold a press event at WinSport in Calgary this afternoon, billed in a media advisory from GlobeNewswire as a "major announcement on the future of Canadian winter sport."

The 3:30 p.m. MT event is set to feature Capital Power President and CEO Avik Dey, incoming Alpine Canada President and CEO Andrew Baker, and Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden. Members of Canada's National Ski Team are expected to attend, including Olympian and Kitzbühel World Cup podium finisher Cameron Alexander, four-time Crystal Globe winner Reece Howden, and three-time Paralympic medalist Kalle Eriksson.

The advisory doesn't spell out what the announcement actually is, only that it involves Capital Power, an Edmonton-based power generator, and Alpine Canada's future.

A Slower Story Running Underneath

While that photo op gets set up in Calgary, a different sport-funding story has been playing out in Ottawa for months.

CBC Sports reported on September 10 that the federal government is preparing to roll out supplemental core funding for national sport organizations "imminently," nearly five months after the funding was first announced in April. According to CBC, 101 organizations, including national sport organizations, multi-sport organizations and Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Sport Institute Network members, submitted applications requesting a combined $168 million. The government has only budgeted $129 million for the 2026-27 fiscal year, a gap of roughly $39 million.

Applications opened in June following the federal government's spring economic update and were due in July, giving organizations about three weeks to prepare, per CBC. NSOs have now waited two months or more just to hear whether they got funded at all.

Bahoz Dara Aziz, a spokesperson for van Koeverden's office, told CBC Sports that "applications are now under review, with funding decisions and rollout expected imminently." Dara Aziz is also listed as the media contact for the sport secretary on the same Capital Power/Alpine Canada announcement happening today. The same office is juggling both the celebratory Calgary event and the overdue funding decision.

Canada Snowboard CEO Dustin Heise gave the process a measured review. He told CBC he was informed about a week before the story ran that a decision could be coming soon. "We should know in the next week or so, or certainly over the next couple of weeks, what we'd be looking at," Heise said, adding that the government "has been cooperative and informative throughout the entire process" and that the timeline, while not instant, "certainly met expectation on what could be achieved."

That's a fair, on-record defense of the process from someone directly affected by it. The plain fact remains that organizations are still waiting. Winter sports are gearing up for their season and summer sports are hitting championship competition, so the money's timing matters regardless of how reasonable the bureaucratic runway looks on paper.

Two Sport Stories, Not One

Nothing in these reports ties the Calgary announcement directly to the delayed NSO funding pool. Capital Power is a private energy company, not a federal funding stream, and Alpine Canada's arrangement with it appears to be a separate sponsorship or partnership matter. The two developments simply share a news cycle and a common government spokesperson.

Still, the contrast is stark. One is a scheduled, camera-ready event with Olympic athletes and a corporate check-writer standing next to a cabinet-level minister. The other is a $129 million pot of taxpayer money that Ottawa promised in April, opened for applications in June, closed in July, and still hadn't been distributed to a single group as of CBC's September 10 report.

Van Koeverden's office is also organizing a summit for sport leaders in Ottawa on November 9 and 10, according to multiple NSO executives cited by CBC. Whether that summit happens after or before the $129 million actually lands in the hands of the organizations that applied for it remains an open question. The more basic math problem is also unresolved: even under the rosiest scenario, Ottawa's committed budget covers less than 80 cents of every dollar the sport sector says it needs this fiscal year.