Radha Balani: Canada at a Crossroads, Affordability First & Building Healthier Nations

Canada needs change in its sport system; Radha Balani has seen this before. As an expert partner in strategy and leadership at Think Beyond, she spent decades inside the UK's sport system, including its radical 2015 overhaul. Since then, she's worked with several countries and companies directly, including Jumpstart and the Canadian Paralympic Committee. She knows exactly what it takes to change a national sport system at scale because she's lived it.In this conversation, Radha traces her own youth sports journey growing up in a small English village, playing every sport she could find, and the progressive PE teacher who simply refused to put kids in boxes. She's candid that her own success was luck, not design — the system wasn't built for someone who looked like her, and she knows it.Radha breaks down exactly why the UK's 2015 reform worked, why Canada's current moment looks similar but lacks a critical component that made the difference, and what it actually means to measure outcomes instead of outputs. She makes the case for a mixed economy of public, private and community sport, explains why affordability is the single biggest barrier in Canadian sport today, and lays out what model nations like Norway and Australia got right by treating sport as a vehicle for health and wellbeing rather than the end goal itself.Better Sports Parents is helping parents positively contribute to the youth sports environment. Subscribe for new episodes every week.Chapters00:00 Opening02:04 Itroducing Radha Balani03:11 Liverpool, Her Father & John Barnes05:09 Youth Sport Was Luck, Not Design07:18 Injury, Identity & Losing Sport at University09:39 Why She Loved Sport: Safety, Repetition & Belonging11:59 Inclusion, Exclusion & Growing Up Different16:00 Survivor Bias and Realizing How Lucky She Was18:48 The UK's 2015 Turning Point21:27 Canada in 2026: Similar Crossroads, Missing Piece23:52 Why NSOs Can't Carry This Alone27:14 The System Is Fractured — Can It Be Fixed or Rebuilt?30:05 Is Sport in Canada Truly Unaffordable?34:16 What's Missing: A Strategy, Not Just Recommendations40:26 Norway, Sport as a Vehicle, Not the End Goal43:55 The UK Tied Funding to Changing the Rules45:15 Outcomes vs. Outputs: What Actually Changes Lives49:01 Travel Teams, Sport Sampling & the Cliff Edge53:32 Duty of Care: The Governance Piece Missing in North America56:36 Paying Coaches for Training 59:14 Trauma-Informed Coaching 1:03:09 The Mixed Economy: Public, Private & Community Sport Together1:06:14 Canada's Biggest Issue: Affordability1:07:00 What Progress Actually Looks LikeResources⁠Think Beyond⁠⁠Future of Sport in Canada Commission Report⁠⁠Jumpstart⁠⁠Kick4Life