Lasting Support for Canada’s Athletes
The Montreal Games provided a focal point for the development of funding programmes supporting Canadian athletes.
A national government grant programme and the centrepiece of Sport Canada’s funding policy, the Athletes Assistance Programme (AAP) helps Canadian athletes raise their performance levels at major sporting events around the world.
It also allows them to continue pursuing their careers in tandem with work or study commitments, contributing to training, living and tuition costs.
Having set up the Intensive Care and Game Plan ‘76 programmes to provide financial support to the country’s elite athletes prior to the Games, Sport Canada consolidated them under the AAP in 1977.
Over 1,900 elite Canadian athletes across more than 80 sporting disciplines currently receive monthly stipends from the AAP, some 15 per cent of them Para athletes. Since its creation, the programme has invested over CAD 512 million in assisting more than 15,000 of the country’s athletes. That long-standing support continued during the coronavirus pandemic, with the Canadian government making a further CAD 5 million available to the AAP in May 2020.