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From a Post that I made on LinkedIn yesterday (all but identical, notably except for a couple of smilies I used there):
Re: Gov't of Canada’s policy of not automatically granting access to funding for chess (that's called a sport by the IOC, though it's not part of the IOC's Olympic Games program) due to Sports Canada's 2025/26 Guidelines (i.e. chess not qualifying as being 'a regulated form of physical activity', but rather as being among 'games of skill'):
I can understand that's a convenient way of ducking the issue of funding chess by a given gov't of Canada. Anyone within a given #government of #Canada (say within a given decade) may have theorized (perhaps even in less than 5 minutes) that most North Americans would think that playing chess (with its typically low number of moves on average played during competitive games) shows little visible sign on the part of the players that they are being in any way physically active.
If this is the case, I have little reason to doubt that federal gov'ts of Canada (throughout those various decades) would then make much of an attempt to go beyond that rather superficial way of looking at things. As I see it, at least in Canada, gov'ts of one party or another (sometimes even if being left of center ones) are frequently quite happy not to spend money on things they may see as at best problematical, in terms of however they may assess their ROI (which could well include how it may affect their political party's chances of being returned to power).
That's especially if the general population, including their own political base, might (whether or not they were to be polled) think that (just as an example that's pertinent here) the national funding of chess would be a poor idea (or that even calling chess a sport would be a poor joke, at least for many who are North Americans/Canadians) regardless of their reasoning (however unjustifiable it may be).
Anyway I (no longer being active in the area of Canadian chess governance, for over a decade now) & others in Canada have wondered at times why Luge (which is a winter sport; it's kind of like bobsledding, except I gather that in the case of Luge, at the start the person lies down, rather than at first sprints, during that rather brief phase) gets national funding as a sport (& not just here in Canada, but in many nations, worldwide), while #chess doesn’t get any national funding as a sport in Canada.
That's because Luge shows little sign of its participants being physically active (as I more or less alluded to above), at least on a superficial level (much like in the case of chess, perhaps), notably at least in the eyes of some or many of us who are casual onlookers if & when we might watch the sport of Luge, if that's on our TV sets while we view them, say from Canada or elsewhere in North America.
Another dodge that #SportsCanada can use (& still does) is to define a sport to need 'physical, bodily effort' (=Google's AI answer). Luge meets that (=Google's AI), but so does chess!
Please support organized chess play, such as rated by the Chess Federation Of Canada.
Re: Gov't of Canada’s policy of not automatically granting access to funding for chess (that's called a sport by the IOC, though it's not part of the IOC's Olympic Games program) due to Sports Canada's 2025/26 Guidelines (i.e. chess not qualifying as being 'a regulated form of physical activity', but rather as being among 'games of skill'):
I can understand that's a convenient way of ducking the issue of funding chess by a given gov't of Canada. Anyone within a given #government of #Canada (say within a given decade) may have theorized (perhaps even in less than 5 minutes) that most North Americans would think that playing chess (with its typically low number of moves on average played during competitive games) shows little visible sign on the part of the players that they are being in any way physically active.
If this is the case, I have little reason to doubt that federal gov'ts of Canada (throughout those various decades) would then make much of an attempt to go beyond that rather superficial way of looking at things. As I see it, at least in Canada, gov'ts of one party or another (sometimes even if being left of center ones) are frequently quite happy not to spend money on things they may see as at best problematical, in terms of however they may assess their ROI (which could well include how it may affect their political party's chances of being returned to power).
That's especially if the general population, including their own political base, might (whether or not they were to be polled) think that (just as an example that's pertinent here) the national funding of chess would be a poor idea (or that even calling chess a sport would be a poor joke, at least for many who are North Americans/Canadians) regardless of their reasoning (however unjustifiable it may be).
Anyway I (no longer being active in the area of Canadian chess governance, for over a decade now) & others in Canada have wondered at times why Luge (which is a winter sport; it's kind of like bobsledding, except I gather that in the case of Luge, at the start the person lies down, rather than at first sprints, during that rather brief phase) gets national funding as a sport (& not just here in Canada, but in many nations, worldwide), while #chess doesn’t get any national funding as a sport in Canada.
That's because Luge shows little sign of its participants being physically active (as I more or less alluded to above), at least on a superficial level (much like in the case of chess, perhaps), notably at least in the eyes of some or many of us who are casual onlookers if & when we might watch the sport of Luge, if that's on our TV sets while we view them, say from Canada or elsewhere in North America.
Another dodge that #SportsCanada can use (& still does) is to define a sport to need 'physical, bodily effort' (=Google's AI answer). Luge meets that (=Google's AI), but so does chess!
Please support organized chess play, such as rated by the Chess Federation Of Canada.
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