Modernization of Canada’s membership in FIS to enable more funding to athletes and sport programs  

Our five snow sport National Sport Organizations (NSOs) are recognized by the Government of Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) as the governing bodies for our sports in Canada. The sports are funded by Sport Canada, the COC and Own the Podium (OTP), and they represent 98% of the snow sport registered participants and activity in Canada.  Collectively we deliver over 50% of Canada’s medals at the Olympic Winter Games and 70% of the medals at the Paralympic Winter Games. Together with three additional NSOs (NordicCombined, Speed Skiing, Telemark), we are governed internationally by the Federation International de Ski et Snowboard (FIS). There are considerable differences in the size, scope, revenue, funding models, staffing, capacity, and commercial sophistication among our NSOs.  

To meet the need of FIS to have a single member from each nation, Canada manages our membership in FIS through a separate organization called the Canadian Snowsport Association (CSA).  The CSA’s role is to coordinate our membership in FIS at the direction and guidance from the NSOs.  Collectively, the 8 NSOs are the CSA.

With funding support from the COC’s NSF Enhancement Initiative (aimed at modernizing the sport system), our five NSOs undertook a project to modernize the management of our membership in FIS to become more effective and efficient, and to deliver more financial benefit to athletes and sport programs.  We engaged organizational performance consultant STRAAD, who consulted with 26 stakeholders including all NSO senior leadership and board chairs, CSA staff, FIS, COC, Sport Canada, and OTP.  STRAAD recommended governing our membership as a collaborative program of NSOs focused solely on managing the FIS membership.  Three options for the legal entity to “house” the program were considered, including:

1. creating a new organization,
2. using an existing organization, or
3. restructuring the CSA.  

It was recommended to first try to restructure the existing organization, the CSA. The eight NSO CSA members will vote on the recommended restructuring on September 5, 2024. Assuming a positive outcome, implementation will begin immediately. 

The restructured CSA would focus exclusively on managing Canada’s membership in FIS to become more effective and efficient, and to return a greater percentage (~70%) of Canada’s earned FIS revenue to Canada’s member NSOs in support of athletes and sport programs.  

One of the key principles of this modernization is to ensure that the restructuring helped make things better for ALL eight NSOs and the 246 athletes in our collective national team programs that will be competing for 169 Olympic and 174 Paralympic Winter Games snow sport medals available at Cortina 2026.  This is especially important as we continue to operate in an environment of flat to decreasing government funding, unprecedented costs, and our sport and funding partners asking us to find ways to be more efficient with the resources available.  

The “new” modernized CSA will:

• Optimize the sports’ individual and collective relationships with FIS
• Improve collaboration among the sports and with FIS
• Realize significant organizational efficiencies by streamlining decision making, eliminating duplication, and focusing solely on managing the FIS membership
• Return substantial economic benefits through both cost savings and the directing of FIS revenues to the sports in support of Canadian athletes and sport programs

The impact of the changes is outlined in the chart below:

If the resolution to restructure the CSA does not pass on September 5, we will move forward with an alternative approach to modernization recommended by STRAAD.  This involves creating a new legal entity or using an existing one to manage our membership in FIS.  While we think this would be unfortunate, as we had hoped to have all our NSO members benefit and leave no NSO behind, we are prepared to move forward with the support of our sport and funding partners to achieve the benefits of the project for our collective athletes and sport programs. 

An update will be available after September 5.