Canadian Athletes Will Be Wearing Chinese Made Uniforms In Beijing

Canada's Olympic athletes uniforms are made in China. Yes, you read right instead of promoting the textile industry of Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee made the move to go out of the country for the gear.

The government isn't happy about the decision to not use Canadian textiles and designers to suit up our athletes.

"This is a no-brainer," New Democrat MP Paul Dewar said Friday.

"This is our Olympic team. We should be ensuring that all of our Olympic athletes are proudly wearing Canadian-made textiles and all of their uniforms should be made in Canada."

As much as the government is ticked off they can't change the way the Committee has done the deal.

"The Canadian Olympic Committee is an independent body that operates at arm's length from the government," said Blair MacLean, Guergis' communications director.

"We do not agree with the decision to produce Olympic clothing offshore and would have preferred that the clothing was made in Canada."

Chris Rudge, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee stated on Friday that the government had never raised the issue with the committee. He said that it was impractical for completely Canadian-made uniforms because of the volume of products needed.

"Times have changed considerably," Rudge said.

"The reality is that there's no longer manufacturing capacity in Canada that can meet the volume needs that are necessary to manufacture particularly the replica clothing that is sold to the public."

One of the problems with keeping the clothing made in Canada is the specialty fabric needed to help the athletes cope with the heat in Beijing. The uniforms are made of bamboo, cocona and organic cotton which is readily available only in Asia and primarily in China. The Hudson's Bay Company is the official outfitter of our national athletes. 80 percent of the uniforms to be worn by the teams from Canada in Beijing were manufactured in China. The two times though that everything covering our athletes is Canadian will be the opening ceremony uniforms and when the athletes stand on the medal podiums. Almost all off the clothing that athletes wear worldwide are from just one or two places in the world who specialize in the highly technical garments. HBC is not supplying that gear for the athletes. While the athletes may wear foreign uniforms during this Olympics in 2010 that should be changing. Dewar wants to ensure that only Canadian made clothing is used when the Winter Games are in Vancouver.

"Wouldn't that be an embarrassment to have, you know, our uniforms made in China or anywhere else for the upcoming Vancouver Olympics? So hopefully someone is doing their homework on that."

HBC is already at work on the clothing to be used in Vancouver. While they would love for all the materials to be Canadian they know the reality is that most of the specialized fabric industry is overseas.