Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fitness Industry Council of Canada (FIC) was working toward a tax credit for Canadians who joined a gym.
However, 2020 changed the FIC’s focus. “The pandemic hit and there was a pivot toward keeping gyms open and operationalizing fitness facilities with this new virus,” said Carl Ulmer, the managing partner and director of operations at Club 16 Trevor Linden Fitness & She’s Fit, as well as a member of the board of directors for the FIC. “Primarily, we were lobbying our government to keep us open so we could continue to generate revenue.”
But it wasn’t easy. Ulmer said when the pandemic rolled around, the FIC lacked a strong relationship with public health. Other industries, like restaurants, had lobbying groups already in place. Similar to clubs in the U.S., the fitness industry in Canada was behind, and the FIC realized it.
Despite that fact, the FIC’s approach to government interaction was far from short-term or adversarial. “We saw a lot of people around the world demanding things before they had invested and proven themselves with the government and public health officials,” said Ulmer. “So, we really were relationship focused. I called it putting things in the piggy bank before you take them out.”
Ulmer and Sara Hodson, the president of the FIC, began to build a relationship with British Columbia’s Public Health department. They worked to show who the FIC was and what it was about. After they had established the relationship, that’s when the requests came.
“The asks were more like, ‘Help us help you. How can we keep gyms open? Because we both agree it’s important to do that,’” recalled Ulmer. “Our argument has been consistent and is backed by hard evidence: The fitness industry is essential for the physical and mental health of Canadians.”
It’s been a long-term strategy for the FIC that is paying off. Even with the pandemic slowing down, Ulmer said they are in discussions with the Minister of Finance in British Columbia about a possible tax credit in the province.
“In 2021, the province of Newfoundland introduced a Physical Activity Tax Credit providing its resident with the ability to claim up to $2,000 each year on their taxes for physical activity, including gym memberships,” explained Ulmer. “The FIC is still speaking with the federal government, the Prime Minister’s office and various federal ministries about revising line 33099 of the federal tax return, which is eligible medical expenses. We still have the opportunity to continue advocating for gyms post-pandemic, where if we went up and tried to attack the government, or position ourselves as an adversary, we wouldn’t have those relationships today.”
A large part of the successful relationship has been tied to data. Hodson has been working behind the scenes with various global partners and universities, and shared the FIC’s partnerships with institutions like Sheffield University and 4Global allowed them to gather data around the direct healthcare cost in savings fitness facilities provide to every province in Canada. She explained the United Kingdom had done something similar years prior that then allowed them to keep gyms open through much of the pandemic.
“In the absence of data, we had a less powerful voice,” said Hodson. “But now we have the data. A report released in August 2022 by UK data firm 4Global and Sheffield University found the total value of health savings generated by sport and physical activity in Canada was $23.4 billion dollars (CDN), and over 2.2 million cases of health conditions were prevented in 2019 as a direct result of sport and physical activity.”
But the pandemic isn’t the only area where the FIC has found relationships make a difference. In fact, in the beginning of 2022, Hodson explained the federal government instituted a subsidy program for rent and payroll for the tourism and hospitality industries. Fitness wasn’t included.
“So, we went knocking at their door and instead of crying, we built a relationship with them,” shared Hodson. “Again, we really encouraged them and we helped them to understand. The Minister of Finance personally phoned me hours before it went to the media to say, ‘We have included fitness. This was important. We missed it. We’re sorry. It is now included.’”
Another big takeaway Hodson has learned over the past several years is even the small triumphs matter. For example, FIC had a recent win in Saskatchewan where gym and fitness memberships were removed from the planned expansion of the provincial sales tax.
Recently, when asked in an interview about how they succeeded to get buy-in from those outside the province, Hodson recalled something Ulmer told her. “‘As the fitness industry, we have to give our heads a shake if we think this is a Saskatchewan issue, because this is a Canadian issue. If one government puts this tax forward, every province is at risk. So, we need to all fight for this as if it’s in our own backyard,’” said Hodson. “I think that got people invigorated at a time where we already had this fight in us because we were all just kind of coming back from the pandemic. And that was really how we got Canada to fight the Saskatchewan fitness tax, and it was a fight from all angles. It was a fight with policy, and it was fight we brought to the media. It was a fight for all Canadians. So that’s kind of how we went about it, with that three-pronged approach.”
That fight is one that must continue. As Ulmer and Hodson have shown, it starts with relationships. Then it carries on with telling the story through data, showing the benefits of physical activity and demonstrating the solution the fitness industry provides. In the end, that’s what is going to help solve the healthcare crisis.
“With the data we now have, and how much we support our healthcare system, now’s the best time to really start continuing with those relationships and starting to advocate for this fitness tax benefit,” said Ulmer. “Our ultimate goal is to have fitness seen as preventative medicine. We have the infrastructure in place right now — in British Columbia alone there’s thousands of fitness facilities, and that can be considered part of our health care solution. All it takes is for our provincial and federal governments to see fitness as actual preventative medicine. As soon as they decide to do that, we’re here to support our healthcare system in a huge way even more than we are today already.”
