Concerns raised over Canada’s aging aquatic facilities

Competitive swimming clubs are raising the alarm that communities across Canada are dealing with aging aquatic facilities and as a result, the chance for Canadians to reach elite swimming levels is diminishing.

“What happens after every Olympic and Paralympic Games is we have so many boys and girls who want to be the next Summer McIntosh or the next Josh Liendo,” Jocelyn Jay with Swimming Canada told Global News.

According to the organization that governs competitive swimming in Canada, there are 5,060 publicly-owned pools as of 2020.

More than half are near the end of their life.

“I think what’s scary is down the road, based on the influx of interest, based on the success of our high-performance programs, we’re not going to have the pools and the lane space to be able to manage the numbers that are interested,” Jay added.

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The Vancouver Aquatic Centre’s Olympic-length pool will be replaced with a 25-metre pool despite opposition from the swimming community.

“I think swimming in general will decline,” Kelly Taitinger with Dolphins Swim Club said.

“If you take a 50-metre pool and you shut it down for three years and you’ve got Hillcrest, which is the only other 50-metre pool that the city runs, I think the lessons — they say they have 8,000 on the wait list now — it’s going to probably double.

“If that’s the case in three years you are going to see a decline in people who even learn how to swim.”

Swimming Canada said it would like to see a national strategy that would make funding available to municipalities for pools and recreation centres, saying swimming is an important life skill.