The Petition to Make Chess a Sport in Canada

[Vlad Drkulec]

Olga may be too young to know about the Trillium Donation to the Ontario Chess Association President and how the money was used. The Trillium Donations did not give any more money after that situation.

In fact, Trillium did give money to the 2010 CYCC bid from Windsor. This turned into chess sets and clocks which will still be in use (at least some of them) at the Windsor Chess Challenge in late February and early March. Later they changed the rules which made it harder to apply for funding for chess projects but from the point of view of the Trillium fund that situation was resolved to their satisfaction.

[Henri Hughes]

Henri Hughes government has been funding other sports for a while. I'm sure they have a qualification system set in place. For sports clubs and individuals.

makes sense, im sure it would become formal when its setup if the petition goes well

[Olga Mushtaler]

Some good points here. Where would the funding go? I agree that it should be thought out carefully of where it should go.

The idea is that anyone eligible can apply for funding. You all can apply and have an equal chance. CFC will have nothing to do with your applications as club organizers or individuals. It will be between you and the government.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Governments help chess, maybe we just don't wanna acknowledge that, because we always want more.

On provincial levels:

Quebec (FQE) could tell long stories how much they get and spend left and right.
Alberta - part of lottery profits are distributed to chess too
Ontario - Trillium is throwing monies to chess too; someone need to sit and write proposals and collect cash. As the club we receive a funding from different government financing initiatives.

While the CFC charitable status was revoked, other organization worked and got the status.
While ago there was a tax credit for kids activities and chess was part of it.


Sport Canada put artificial barriers in money distribution, and chess is left out.

The debate about chess as sport is not new even for chesstalkers. Look for this thread as example (yeah 12 years old) https://forum.chesstalk.com/forum/ch...y-sport-canada

Then it was only talks, this time it is a step further - at least doing something to accomplish that.

Kudos Olga!

[Patrick Kirby]

Awesome publicity getting onto chess.com. https://www.chess.com/blog/MomOnaBre...-better-canada

However I'm not sure I agree with the comparison to Russia. To my mind, the Russian government would do better to prioritize spending on hospitals, roads, schools, and anti-corruption campaigns before sending kids to chess tournaments.

But for a rich country like Canada we can afford to spend a few more bucks on chess, so I support this petition anyway.