Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Chair, I'll be splitting my time with Mr. Weston.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today. This is very important. I have grown children and grandchildren. As you know, we want the best for our children and our grandchildren. Moving forward, this bill will definitely make a difference, in my opinion.

In my community, there are many isolated communities that don't have access to rec facilities and there are very limited extracurricular activities. I think it's important that we use our existing school system to promote healthy activities.

My first question will be for Mr. Jones. How does Physical and Health Education Canada intend to promote national health and fitness day in schools?

[Chris Jones]

We already have begun to promote it through our website and through e-blasts to our membership. My board president has been very active in promoting it in her schools. Once it's proclaimed and given royal assent, we will be even more active in pushing it out to schools and to our provincial counterparts. There are provincial physical education associations.

I think you're pushing on a half-open door; a lot of people are going to want to do this spontaneously. There's a wellspring of people who have been waiting for an initiative like this. I think they see this as being truly a hand-in-glove kind of fit. Whereas Sports Day in Canada is focused a little more on competitive sport, this has the virtue of appealing to a range of different activities.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you.

When I was growing up in our community, we didn't have a lot of rec facilities, and our school was a sort of magnet for parents and their children to come to and to participate in various sports activities, whether it was volleyball, or hockey, or whatever it was. Are there any plans to incorporate involving the children's parents in an exercise regime in our schools maybe once or twice a week or whatever it may be? Do you think that's an important aspect of getting parents involved with the children?

[Chris Jones]

Yes. I think you hit the nail on the head in a sense that parents do role-model behaviour for kids, and children take their lead from their parents. In my own life, I try to run fairly regularly, when the weather permits, for my kids to see that. I think that increasingly our philosophy with some of the tools we create for use in the school system is to involve parents a little bit. The Health Promoting Schools tool is one of them where parents are key players.

But I think we are running up against some of the traditional challenges of two-income families, with parents getting home a little bit harassed, tired, and having to get dinner on the table, so we really need to make sure that in that time slot from three to six o'clock the kids get good, quality physical activity. By the way, I want to credit Canadian Tire for the work they've been doing recently to push that notion.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you.

That's it for my questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

This initiative has been designed to enable parliamentarians to be mini ministers of health. There's a parliamentary fitness initiative in which a volunteer coach comes out on a Tuesday and then a swim coach on a Thursday, without any regard to the level of competence of the MP or senator. In fact, some MPs who've never swam before are swimming not just for their health, but also as role models. The invitation goes to each MP to work with mayors and councillors to get more cities involved.

Is there a realistic dream, Senator, that one day every member of Parliament and every senator would come to Parliament Hill looking at the promotion of health and fitness as part of their mandate?

[Nancy Greene Raine]

I think it's a target that we should have. I would like to ask the members of Parliament in the room today, how many of you have engaged with your mayors in your ridings to get involved in this? If you haven't, why not? We've tried to make it very easy. I would encourage you to do that.

This is the heritage committee. Think of the heritage of Canada. We were a country that was very new, raw, and rural. Everybody worked hard. Life wasn't easy. Life has become easier and easier. Now we have to think about how we're going to go back to some of our heritage activities. Yes, it's good to have facilities, and it's really important to have the schools involved, but good old-fashioned outdoor activity like hiking and biking, these things don't cost a lot of money. We need to find ways to engage people in them.

I've seen members of Parliament who've taken on organizing a run/walk in their riding with huge success, so I encourage you to do that and to do it on a regular basis. A lot of times people need an excuse to do something. These charity and special events that happen are really good that way. Once people start, they find out that it's fun to go for a walk with their neighbour or friend and get involved. Everybody has a role to play for sure.

Thanks, John.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

In a moment we're going to hear from someone who was instrumental in the 125th anniversary of Canada and helped create the Trans Canada Trail. We're talking about the 150th anniversary now, Mr. Elliott and Mr. Jones. Do you have any sense of energy, excitement, or urgency about making health and fitness part of our 150th celebrations?

[Chris Jones]

I can speak to that because I happen to work in the same building as the woman who runs the Canada Games. She has talked to me of her plans to make the Canada Games feature in a big way at the 150th anniversary. She and I have talked about how we could weave in a school dimension to that and how we could celebrate the physical education profession and its role in helping kids.

It's definitely in the works to have some kind of commemoration of the importance of that, and maybe as a way to catalyze more activity. I think our concern would be that as we celebrate 150 years of achievement in this country, a lot of that can be seen in architecture, policies, and many great things, but if our human capital is not in a good place, if we are overweight, sedentary, and obese, I think that will take away some of the celebration. It's very important that we use this bill and that forthcoming celebration to really drive this agenda forward.

[Nancy Greene Raine]

I think that taking on a real active role during the 150th anniversary would be great. We've talked about using the period between the national health and fitness day, the first Saturday in June, and Canada's birthday, July 1, to have a period where all across the country people are out doing things and being engaged.

Nowadays with social media and with the Internet there's an ability to track that and measure it. If we could get 20 million Canadians being part of this three-week festival of fitness during that time period, it would be great, and if we can celebrate it on the Trans Canada Trail.... The Trans Canada Trail to me is a magic thing. It just has such a connotation. It links Canada together coast to coast. In a lot of places, it's historic trails. It's aboriginal trails. It's old mining trails. It doesn't go everywhere, but our main artery doesn't go everywhere. Off that trail, there are all kinds of other trails. Every municipality has a trail of some kind. Building, utilizing, and celebrating all those trails as part of the 150th I think would be a really good plan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you.

On that note, we're going to wrap up this panel. I'd like to thank the witnesses for appearing today.

We will briefly suspend.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

We're going to call this 30th meeting of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage back to order with our second panel, which includes, from the Trans Canada Trail, Paul LaBarge, who is the chair, and Landon French, from Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities. I've actually played hockey with Mr. French a couple of times, and he's a not bad hockey player.

You both have up to 10 minutes.

We'll start with you, Mr. LaBarge.

[Paul LaBarge, Chair, Trans Canada Trail]

Thank you very much.

It's a pleasure to be here today. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee.

I have been involved in the Trans Canada Trail since 1992, which is either a tribute to my stupidity or a demonstration of dedication, I'm not sure which.

I can tell you that the comments that Senator Greene Raine made about the Trans Canada Trail are in fact truly evocative of what the trail means. This trail is within 30 minutes of 80% of all Canadians. This trail goes through a thousand different communities. This trail will ultimately link every community in Canada to each other, at a human pace.

We recognize, as Senator Raine said, that this trail goes through historic sites, goes through some of the most beautiful countryside in the world. This trail is accessible to all. This trail is free. This trail is probably the biggest gift that Canadians have made to each other in the last 25 years. This trail represents an opportunity for every individual to be active and to participate.

I think it's interesting that this committee itself previously recognized the significance of the Trans Canada Trail. Let me say back to you some of your own words:

The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada or any agency authorized to undertake the organization of Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations consider ways to encourage communities and donors to assist with the completion of the Trans Canada Trail.

This trail is a legacy project from Canada 125, so the celebration of the 125th anniversary was to launch something that would be a legacy for all Canadians for all time to come.

In January 2014 the Prime Minister announced the federal funding of the Trans Canada Trail with these words:

The Trans Canada Trail will allow Canadians and international visitors alike to enjoy some of the world’s most breathtaking scenery, while promoting health and fitness through a wide variety of recreational activities. Completing the initiative by 2017 would be an incredible legacy of Canada’s 150th anniversary as the Trail would connect almost 1,000 communities and provide users with a unique perspective on our spectacular natural and cultural heritage.

You heard from your previous speakers about the levels of obesity. Well, I can tell you that those are only the tip of the iceberg. There is much more than that. I happen to be, in one of my other roles in life, the chairman of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute Foundation, and guess what? We see huge numbers in the demographics, huge numbers of people who are aging, overweight, out of shape, and suffering from heart disease. Consistently, the single best prescription is to get up off your butt and get out and take a hike. That's the truth of it.

By the way, that truth doesn't apply to just those people; it applies to seniors who are suffering from declining mental facilities. There is a clear demonstration between exercise and increased mental acuity. This a good relationship between exercise and reduced diabetes. The truth of the matter is that the most generally prescribed medical remedy is exercise.

The challenge you have—this is the question you asked yourselves just previously—is what do we spend the money on? Where do we put it? How do we get these facilities?

I can tell you that in New Westminster they held a plebiscite asking if they'd prefer to have a recreational trail or a new arena. They said they'd prefer to have a recreational trail, because it's accessible to everybody as opposed to being restricted in terms of its availability within the community.

I tend to be a little passionate about this, and there's a reason for that. I happen to be somebody who bikes, who walks, and who hikes. I've done it all over the world. I was talking with a guide in the Atacama Desert in Chile and he saw my business card for the Trans Canada Trail. He said, “Trans Canada Trail, that's one of the great trails in the world”. I was talking with the Premier of P.E.I., and the Trans Canada Trail is second only to a non-existent person as the second largest tourist attraction in P.E.I. You have Anne of Green Gables and you have the Trans Canada Trail. The premier believes that it is a significant part of their economic posture as well as providing an accessible route throughout the communities.

I congratulate you on passing this legislation, because I'm hoping it's the thin edge of the wedge. I hope it's the beginning of a demonstration of true leadership that will encourage all Canadians to consider their health and their well-being as a part of their daily lives.

In the early days people used to have to run and to hunt to survive. The only thing that has changed is you can drop the hunting, but you still have to get up and run because that's the truth of life. If you're not moving, you're into entropy.

One of the other comments I would make to you is that sitting is considered to be the new smoking. That's exactly the impact it has on your health. If that's the case, I have a prescription for you. Take a hike. Get up and walk. Walk where you go. Don't take that parliamentary bus. Run or walk, quickly or slowly. Just walk. It's good for everybody. It's good for you. You'll go into the House with a clearer head than if you had been sitting on the bus. That's the truth of it.

I can tell you as well that walking has proven to be a great source of comfort to people who are under stress. It's also a great source of comfort to people who are bereaved. They have groups that walk because it reduces tension and increases blood flow. Again, it's just good health.

One of the comments I also hear is that people are so busy. Yes, you are. Yes, we all are, but I can tell you something. You can look around this town; you can look at your public accounts, and you can see the cost of deferred maintenance when you don't look after buildings. Guess what, folks? Remember how they used to say your body is a temple? It's in need of serious work. If you don't maintain it, the deferred maintenance cost is very high, and it's showing up in our medical system right now.

I'll finish with a personal example. I had quadruple bypass surgery in 2008 and yet I was somebody who exercised every day. I was allowed to blame it on my parents, which is what most people do with their faults, but the point was made to me that if I had not been exercising, I would have died. After the surgery they said I recovered very quickly. I asked why that was and they said it was because I exercised. I leave that with you as a personal life lesson that is something you should take into account.

What we offer at the Trans Canada Trail is a chance for you to have a venue, right across Canada, that is historically and culturally significant, and represents the most accessible stage and opportunity for Canadians to celebrate fitness and health not only one day a year, but throughout the year.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to Mr. French.

You have the floor for 10 minutes.

[Landon French, Executive Director, Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

My name is Landon French. I'm the vice-president of community relations for Canadian Tire Corporation. I also serve as executive director of Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities. I have the honour of wearing two fun hats, in some cases. I say I've got one of the best jobs in the country because I get to represent a great brand and help kids get into sports, and it's great.

Some of the brands and banners we represent include not only the 500 Canadian Tire stores across Canada, but also Sport Chek, Sports Experts, National Sports, Pro Hockey Life, Atmosphere, Mark's, Intersport, and a few others. We have quite a bit on the go across Canada and we see many Canadians who are active every day.

Supporting this national health and fitness day is a fantastic opportunity and something that we wholeheartedly support. We thank everyone for working on this and bringing it forward. It will be a tremendous thing that we will support and help celebrate when passed.

I also want to recognize the Government of Canada's work on many other activities and programs such as the Children's fitness tax credit and funding from Sport Canada, which in 2013 allowed Jumpstart to help another 1,500 children get into sports across Canada, many of them into recreational facilities that were revitalized by this government many years ago. One example would be the Abilities Centre in Whitby, where we have a wheelchair program and other things going on to help those kids play when they wouldn't otherwise be able to play.

The year 2015 is a year of sport. It's something that's certainly caught our attention and something that we want to support wholeheartedly, particularly when you have some fantastic events coming to Canada like the Pan Am Games, the Parapan Games, and the FIFA Women's World Cup. We are working with Hockey Canada now to support the Century Tour and many other things like that across Canada.

Sport is clearly at the heart of our business. You may have noticed through the acquisitions, and some other things in our growth over the last little while, that Canadian Tire and this whole family of companies is now the fifth largest retailer of sporting goods, outdoor goods, and recreation products in the world. It's no surprise we're the largest hockey retailer in the world. That's something we're very proud of.

It's part of our DNA, sports and recreation, from the very first sets of camping equipment and tents that we started selling in the 1930s right through to the running shoes, skates, bikes, and other things that you'll find at our stores today.

We've done a lot of work to understand what's important to Canadians when it comes to sport and recreation. Our research has shown that it's part of our country. Part of being Canadian is to move and be physically active, and enjoy the great outdoors that we have and cherish. Three-quarters of the Canadians we talked to said, “if you're not moving, it's a very un-Canadian thing to do”. It attracts people to this country and we want to support that in any way we can.

We've made a commitment over the last couple of years, as you may have noticed, to our customers, and our 85,000 employees, and Canadians from coast to coast to coast, that we will play a leading role in sport and physical activity in Canada, and help more kids and families get into the game and lead healthier lives.

It promotes teamwork. It obviously improves health as we've heard. It allows kids to focus on the classroom, which is essential. It brings confidence and self-esteem. It brings communities together, and as we've seen so many times it brings Canadians together. It is a community spirit that we want to foster. We believe it's essential as an activity as Canadians.

We've signed long-term partnerships to support that with the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Paralympic Committee, as well as Alpine Canada, Canada Soccer, Hockey Canada, Canada Snowboard, the Canada Games, and many other organizations that we will continue to support over the coming years.

Earlier today you may have heard that the Province of Ontario has agreed to support Active at School, which is a campaign that we launched about a year ago to encourage 60 minutes of physical activity in the school day. I'll give you an example of what happens.

I have a six-year-old and and an eight-year-old boy at home. They are very active, as you can imagine, but the curriculum in the school board where they live in Ontario says that they are required to have 20 minutes of physical activity twice a week. We're working with school boards across Canada and ministries of education to encourage those boards to reduce the barriers, figure out what they need, whether it's equipment and structures, parent volunteers, what is needed to get kids active in Canada.

Active at School is a coalition of organizations. We have about 80 different organizations working with us right now. So far, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and as of this morning, Ontario are on board and supporting Active at School. We thank them all very much, and look forward to working with other provinces to get them on board. Next year we'll have over 300 schools committed to Active at School, with an hour a day of physical activity at some point in their school day as part of their daily routine.

These efforts are ongoing, but we noticed many years ago, too, that the financial barriers to being active are leaving kids on the sidelines and leaving kids behind. Too often, as you've seen, families struggle to keep their children engaged in the sport programs that they'd like to participate in. The high cost of fees, equipment, registration, uniforms, transportation, all of those things add up. They're really a heavy burden on families across Canada. One of the most eye-opening statistics that remains true today is that we estimate that about a third of Canadian families cannot afford to put their kids into the sports programs and recreation programs they want to participate in.

That's why we created the Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities program about 10 years ago. The premise of Jumpstart is to help kids get in the game by assisting with the cost of registration, equipment, and transportation. We also lend support to unique initiatives aimed at increasing access to sport and physical activity programming by working with local communities. We reduce those barriers across Canada. We have 330 chapters, led by volunteers, that help get the dollars from our stores. Those dollars are raised locally and stay locally in the communities where the money is raised. We have a network of 3,100 Jumpstart community partners, for example, the Boys and Girls Club, many municipal parks and recreation departments, and YMCAs, that we leverage to help get kids from financially disadvantaged families off the sidelines and into the game.

After 10 years, we have helped almost 900,000 children get into a variety of different sports and physical activity programs across Canada. It's something we're very proud of and will continue to accelerate over the next few years.

There's a lot going on at Canadian Tire. We certainly do want to continue to get not just children involved but all of our customers, Canadians, and our employees. With the help of the Canadian Olympic Committee and others, we have created flex programs so that we can hire athletes. Many of the folks you see at a Sport Chek store today are athletes from university programs and other programs. They study and they sell shoes, skates, or other things they're expert in. We give them the flex time to be able to train and also have a job. We have Olympians like Rosie MacLennan, who works just outside my office and helps us and advises us on a variety of different projects as well. We're happy to support them in those ways.

This is a fantastic opportunity. It's a great bill. It's something that we will be supporting wholeheartedly and that we look forward to working with you on over the coming days, weeks, and years.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you.

We will now move to questions.

We'll go to Mr. Young for seven minutes.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Mr. French and Mr. LaBarge, thank you for coming today.

As a child I had four brothers, and we had our own internal skate exchange in our house. There was a big box under the stairs, and on the first freezing day of the year, we'd all go down and fight over the skates. But of course our sizes had all changed. I don't think I ever had a pair of skates that actually fit in my whole life, because we were always doing the exchange thing.

I'm thinking of the fitness tax credit and I'm trying to do some math in my head. I think $1,000 a year per child now would probably be like $150 back in the early 1960s, perhaps; I haven't done it exactly. But if my mother had had $750 at that time to buy skates for us, or to pay towards a skating program or hockey or something, our activity would have been five or ten times more. So this is a very powerful program.

In Oakville the number one sport per number of players is soccer. We have 12,000 young people who play soccer...and coaches, in Oakville. They even had enough money to build their own indoor....

This is very, very powerful towards fitness. In your marketing programs, because you're part and parcel of those, I know, can you talk about results you've seen from the $500 fitness tax credit, and comment on how it might be more powerful, if you think it is, by taking it to $1,000 per child per year for programs?

[Landon French]

I think it certainly helps. There is no doubt. It helps those families who truly need it, in combination with a variety of other things that a lot of the sport organizations put in place. Many hockey organizations, for example, have their own programs for children who come forward and can't afford to play, and we partner with some of those organizations to help cover the registration fees if someone else can pick up the equipment side of that.

It's hard to say definitively where we would feel or see the impact, but we do know that hockey is a sport that's quite expensive, tough to get into sometimes, and the numbers show that in the registration. We see soccer growing at an exponential rate, and we are happy to support both.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

If your son or daughter isn't a goalie, how much does it cost to equip somebody for a season of hockey now?

[Landon French]

Well, I have a goalie at home. I have one of each at home, and it's not an inexpensive sport.

I can tell you this much. We've been working with Hockey Canada to talk about ways to address this, as well as with Bauer and some of the other manufacturers. We have starter kits that are in the $99 range which provide—

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

What does that include?

[Landon French]

The Jonathan Toews Bauer starter kit has everything but skates, a stick, and a helmet in it.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

You get—

[Landon French]

You get all the protective gear, everything except skates, which you have to size.