With Team Canada’s victory at the 4-Nations tournament, hockey has been at the centre of the ruling class’s attempt to stoke nationalist sentiment.
As the Globe and Mail put it, “Just when the country required a little patriotic chauvinism, Team Canada delivers.”
Trudeau’s tweet after the 4-Nations finale, “You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game,” is nothing but an attempt to cut across the real divide between the ruling and working class. “Our” country is really two nations; there is the Canada of the rich, and the Canada of the working class.
In fact, “our” game is split between classes as well. Financial strain has forced families to pull their kids out of hockey, resulting in a 33% drop in youth participation in the last 15 years. Placing a kid in hockey nowadays costs a family $1666 annually in fees alone – a price so high that 38% of hockey families claim they’ve skimped out on groceries in order to afford the cost.
The pricing-out of working class kids has fostered an aristocratic atmosphere of privileged rich kids in high-level hockey. This toxic culture was brought to the public eye with the World Junior’s sexual assault scandal which broke out a few years ago. And it is scandals like this which has given the state the pretense to cut funding for Hockey Canada, which has only worsened accessibility of the sport for working class families.
If the capitalists actually cared about “our” game, they would provide the funding necessary for anyone to play hockey. Instead, funding for Hockey Canada has only been cut, and to simply maintain current enrolment the Canadian Sports Support Program would need an additional $100 million in annual funding.
Instead, in their love of “our country,” the capitalists have been creating a crisis which has priced out millions from “our game,” leading to the declining state of Canadian hockey we see today. In their cynical use of Canada’s 4-Nations victory for political clout, the Canadian ruling class is merely covering up the fact that they are actively sabotaging Canadian hockey alongside the Canadian working class.
– Cayden Ransom
