RJ Barrett appeared legitimately giddy.
As he stood at the podium at Humber Polytechnic on Wednesday to help announce a new home for Canadian basketball — flanked by fellow national-team basketball player Michelle Plouffe, Canada secretary for sport Adam Van Koeverden, Ontario premier Doug Ford and others — he couldn’t help but flash back to his youth.
“I’ve been coming here since I was a little kid. I’ve had practices, games. So many of my friends, we kind of grew up here. This place has always felt like home for Canada Basketball,” Barrett said.
“I’m one of the players that gets to use this. I’m all excited.”
In a landmark announcement, the federal government injected $76 million into a new national basketball facility, topped up by $24 million from the province of Ontario to reach an even $100 million in funding.
Located in Etobicoke, Ont., at Humber’s North Campus, a state-of-the-art community centre will serve as Canada’s home of basketball, featuring six gyms to be used for provincial, national and international competition as well as a high-performance training centre. It will break ground next year and also house Canada Basketball’s national operations.
“This represents the single largest investment in basketball ever in this country,” Van Koeverden said.
The federal government is committing to 32,000 hours of community use annually at what it is calling “The Hub.” The hours will be monitored by Humber, per Van Koeverden.
Rounding out funding for the new site, Canada Basketball will team with Humber to launch a private donor campaign with opportunities for naming rights, while Humber Capital and student fee allocations will contribute, too.
“I’m absolutely ecstatic and I’m a huge basketball fan,” Van Koeverden said. “I grew up watching Steve Nash and today is a real turning point. There’s a new era in Canadian sport, new era for Canada Basketball. RJ Barrett said it best: these are real tangible bricks-and-mortar evidence to Canada as a true basketball nation.”
As of the beginning of last season, Canada claimed 23 NBA players — second only to the U.S — including Toronto Raptors forward Barrett and two-time reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of Hamilton, Ont. Five Canadians currently play in the WNBA, including Kia Nurse of the Toronto Tempo.
Canada also sits within the top seven in the international rankings for both men and women. However, success on the world stage has been mostly hard to come by.
The women’s team missed qualifying for the World Cup earlier this month and has never earned an Olympic medal despite consistently strong rankings over the last 15 years.
The men’s team captured bronze at the 2023 World Cup, its first podium appearance ever at the event, and returned to the Olympics for the first time in 24 years in 2024 before losing in the quarterfinals to host France.
“Being on a national team, you’re spanning a whole country. Guys are coming from B.C. or girls are coming from Alberta or here or the Maritimes or wherever. And to have one place where you guys could meet up and train together, with or without coaches, is a big deal,” men’s team captain Kelly Olynyk said.
“The more you’re together, the more you train together, the more you see each other, that translates onto the court into success.”
In addition to the facility funding, Canada Basketball received $1.8 million in supplemental funding, the second allocation of a $660 million bump in core funding for national sport organizations (NSOs) that was announced in April. A $2.77 million top-up for Alpine Canada was announced on Friday.
For the feds, the facility marks the latest in a string of investments which also include $9.8 million to planning a Canada Soccer national facility as well as $33.6 million toward the rehab of Calgary’s Olympic oval, a Canada Snowboard national training centre and a national alpine centre. Those commitments came out of the Build Communities Strong Fund (BCSF), a 10-year, $51-billion initiative toward Canadian infrastructure.
The investment in the Canada Basketball facility likewise came from the BCSF.
“I want to invest in every national sport organization incrementally and imminently as quickly as possible.” Van Koeverden told CBC Sports. “We go back to Parliament on the 21st of September. It’s a tough deadline but we’ve got 100 applicants of NSOs, MSOs, all the sport institutions on a national level and I’m confident that all of them will receive above them their investments and their ambitions this year.”
Feds to begin sport funding rollout ‘imminently’ after months-long application process
Van Koeverden specifically mentioned meetings with Football Canada and Athletics Canada, which could be the next potential funding targets.
He said basketball worked out early due to the NSO’s ambition and the sport’s affordability.
“Everybody understands it. It’s on TV, it’s popular. Whether you’re a fan, whether you’re somebody that wants to cheer, whether you’re somebody that wants to coach or help train, there’s more opportunity in basketball,” he said. “It’s low cost, it’s low barrier, and that’s what we want for Canadians.”
While the national centre will be in Etobicoke, both Van Koeverden and Bartlett insisted the rest of the country would have access to basketball on both community and national-team levels.
“We promise Canada we will continue to travel coast to coast to coast, but this will be a flagship,” Bartlett said.
Added Van Koeverden: “We’re relying on municipalities, towns and cities across the country to be ambitious about their physical activity and recreation infrastructure because that’s available through our BCSF.”
On the topic of safe sport — a key pillar in the Future of Sport Commission report that was released in March, outlining the “crisis” facing Canadian sport — Van Koeverden called Canada Basketball a leader in initiatives across the national team and provincial levels.
He said “almost every” province has signed onto a “third-party mechanism that will provide the safe sport institution that I think is really, really necessary when we’re looking for expertise, monitoring, feedback, regulations, rules, accountability, transparency and governance.”
Also in attendance at Wednesday’s announcement were Ontario premier Doug Ford, Ontario minister of sport Brian Saunderson, secretary of state for labour and federal MP John Zerucelli, Humber Polytechnic president and CEO Ann Marie Vaughan and national-team basketball player Yvonne Ejim.
Together with Barrett, Bartlett, Van Koeverden, Plouffe and Olynyk, they formed a model for other NSOs to follow as country-wide sport investment continues on an upward trajectory.
“I don’t know if you all know this,” Barrett said, “but Canadian basketball is getting serious.”
