The Game Planners studies the policy-making process in six Canadian national sports organizations, each of which deals with a different high-profile Olympic event. The authors argue that the creation of a "high-performance" sport system in Canada is due to pressure from three areas: the Canadian government, the physical education profession, and the sports community.

The authors examine the key events of the Department's involvement: Prime Minister Trudeau's quarrel with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over the conditions under which Taiwan could compete in the 1976 Montreal Olympics; the Canadian government's successful efforts to avoid a boycott of the 1978 Edmonton Commonwealth Games by black African nations; government acquiescence to demands from the United States that Canada support its boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics; government use of sport in the 1980s to maintain a leadership role within the Commonwealth in the fight against...

Active Canadian government in sport is recent. Even after the passage of the Fitness and Amateur Sport Act in 1961, government activity was limited to small grants to national sport governing bodies and cost-sharing agreements with the provinces aimed at increasing participation in sport. By the end of the 1960s sport had come to be seen as an instrument which could be used to promote national unity. Government involvement increased, and by the 1980s the federal government was pouring increasing funds into the support of elite athletes and the construction of sports facilities.

The Game Planners studies the policy-making process in six Canadian national sports organizations, each of which deals with a different high-profile Olympic event. The authors argue that the creation of a "high-performance" sport system in Canada is due to pressure from three areas: the Canadian government, the physical education profession, and the sports community.