Further reading
Ice allocation fairness is a bigger conversation than just this site, and a longer-running one. Reporting, research and policy from elsewhere in Canada, roughly in the order we'd suggest reading it.
Breaking the ice: Supporting fair ice allocations
Canadian Parks and Recreation Association
Argues that ice allocation should follow current registration numbers, not historical precedent. Cites Hockey New Brunswick data showing female hockey registration up 16% in a single season while male registration fell, with allocation practices slow to follow.
Key findings from the Nova Scotia pilot
Future of Hockey Lab, Open Ice
A national pilot studying ice bookings across Nova Scotia. Found that female participants travel about 15% farther on average to reach their rink, and that most ice booking data isn't tracked by gender or age at all. Covered in more depth on the how this works page.
Ice time, girls, and adapted youth hockey
CBC Radio, The Current
On the difficulty of even measuring fair ice access for girls' and adapted youth hockey in the first place, including how hard it can be for researchers and advocates to get basic booking data out of arenas at all.
Boys’ hockey teams tend to get better ice times. A new project wants to clear the way for girls to have a chance
The Globe and Mail
The story behind how Open Ice started, from 2023. A Toronto organizer trying to book ice for a girls’ league discovered the city does collect participation data by gender but doesn’t use it when allocating ice; piecing it together herself, she found girls accounted for roughly 7% of the ice being used. Probably the most readable introduction to why this is a data problem before it’s a fairness problem.
New City of Ottawa ice time rules could change cost of boys, girls hockey
CBC News Ottawa
A concrete example of the problem the CPRA article describes. In 2016 Ottawa still allocated ice largely on what each group had historically received, which left newer girls’ associations behind and pushed them into renting private ice at roughly double the municipal rate. One association calculated it was getting 57% of what the city’s own formula entitled it to, against 84% for the boys’ association covering the same area.
Viewpoint: Gender equality in ice-time distribution long overdue
Centretown News
What happened next: Ottawa council approved the switch from history-based to need-based allocation in March 2016. This opinion piece is worth reading for its honesty about the trade-off, since moving girls closer to their entitlement meant boys’ teams giving up several hundred hours of public ice. It also notes Toronto moved earlier, after a girls’ association raised the prospect of a human rights complaint.
Hockey Canada releases discussion paper on state of the women’s game
The Canadian Press, via Times Colonist
The national picture, from 2024. Hockey Canada wants more than 170,000 girls and women playing by 2030, up from about 108,000 in 2023–24, and names equity in resource allocation among the barriers in the way. It also reports that girls and women stay in the game about 2.4 years less than boys and men on average, with a lower year-over-year retention rate.
Future of Hockey Lab
futureofhockeylab.com
The organization behind Open Ice. Works on removing barriers to hockey participation in Canada more broadly, including cost and inclusion, not just ice scheduling.
Know of something else worth adding here? See the contact link in the footer below.