Enough is enough. It’s time to regulate registration costs for minor hockey.
How is it remotely fair that families residing in the same province and in the same country, with children playing the same sport and at the same level, shell out totally different sums of their hard-earned dollars each year?
If little Johnny’s parents are paying $500 to play hockey in Victoria, B.C., then little Sally’s parents in St. John’s, N.L. should be paying the same.
However, it doesn’t quite work out that way, does it?
Soaring ice time fees vary from centre to centre ($110 per hour in Rouleau, Sask., to a preposterous $456 per hour in Burnaby, B.C.) and I fully understand that while one town may have a shiny new recreation centre to pay for, another has a fully paid old relic with much lower operating costs.
However, it has still become a free-for-all across this country for minor sports associations and their respective municipalities. They can basically charge what they want, when they want and, really, do many parents ask why?
A number of minor hockey associations are now accepting amortization payments (which should be a hint that registration costs are exorbitant), while others demand a one-time payment in full. Again, how is that fair?
Hockey registrations are down, and continue to spiral downwards on an annual basis, in many provinces across the country with the number one factor being, you guessed it, high registration costs.
According to Statistics Canada, approximately 68 per cent of children from high-income families are active in sports as opposed to only 44 per cent from low-income families.
That’s not just scary, it’s catastrophic.
To have a child play at the more competitive levels of hockey, it can cost parents the equivalent of a post-secondary tuition, if not more when you factor in equipment, team jackets, accommodations and fuel costs.
Registration fee issues don’t only stem from the upper echelons of the sport, however.
For the upcoming 2015/16 hockey season, it will cost parents of a child residing in Airdrie $575 to play Novice house league hockey, while a child can play at the very same level 20 minutes north in Crossfield for – get this – $175 less.
Unfortunately, it has gone from having a right to play to whether parents can afford to pay.
It’s time to get children off the sidelines and into the game. And I’m not talking about donating money to the plethora of charitable programs that are cropping up across this country that help offset costs to children that would otherwise be unable to participate (yet another hint that registration costs are too high).
Not to knock these charitable organizations, because obviously there is a dire need for them, but all they are really doing is masking a much bigger problem.
With all these charities, grants and bursaries, minor sports associations and the municipalities they operate in can continue to charge an arm and a leg and, maybe more importantly, not lose any precious sleep knowing that children from lower-income families are not their problem, that they are being looked after by someone else. They can also go on gouging the middle class, who are not eligible for charitable bursaries, with upper class costs and get away with it.
Can you imagine a Wayne Gretzky or Christine Sinclair – a couple of the top athletes this country has ever produced – being forced to watch from the sidelines because their one-income families couldn’t afford what minor sports associations are charging?
Honestly, I don’t think anyone wants to imagine it, which is why we just keep on truckin’.
We continue to cough up the money because childhood only lasts so long and as parents we want to support our children.
If registration numbers continue to dwindle perhaps Hockey Canada will take notice and enforce a country-wide registration cap.
Until then, which is likely never, I better start signing the cheques.
