Health Committee on Oct. 17th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I'll call the meeting to order.

First of all, I see a hand.

Pat.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce a motion on procedure. I wanted to do it at the last meeting, but unfortunately we ran out of time, and I wasn't able to do it. I would like to be able to do it today, and if I could do it before the witnesses appear, that would be great.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

What we'll do, because we have two other motions, is put that off until we take the motions, or until after the witnesses and questioning period is over, and then we'll accept it. Feel comfortable that we'll take it before the meeting is over. Is that all right?

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

At this time I want to introduce our presenters, to some degree, here this afternoon.

We welcome the Honourable Michael Chong, Minister for Sport. Thank you, Minister, for being here. You're going to be upstaged a little, Minister. Please don't take it to heart, but a three-time Olympian will do it every time.

Silken Laumann, thank you very much for coming and presenting to the health committee; and your associate, Sandra Hamilton. It's good to have you with us.

Then we have, from the Aboriginal Sport Circle, Rod Jacobs—I think you're going to be presenting—and Stephanie Smith.

Thank you all for coming.

We will start now with the presentations.

We'll start with Minister Chong. If you'll introduce the staff with you, we'll accept your presentation at this time, and then we'll move on to the other two.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Minister for Sport]

Thank you, Chair, for the introduction.

I am here with two officials from Sport Canada, Tom Scrimger and Jacques Paquette. They will be able to answer questions you might have afterwards as well.

I'm delighted to be here with the Aboriginal Sport Circle, and Silken as well and Sandra. I think the last time we saw each other was in Fredericton.

Thank you very much for allowing me to appear before the committee.

Good afternoon members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen.

I am very please to be here with you today as the minister for Sport, to discuss an issue that is of concern to us all.

Rising obesity rates and lack of physical activity, especially in our children, is a serious, significant, and long-term challenge facing the country. The only way we can meet this challenge is for all of us—parents, educators, the private sector, the sport and fitness communities, governments, and other stakeholders, all of us—to tackle this challenge together.

As we can see from the alarming statistics before us, it is imperative that we reverse this trend. Brian McCrindle, a cardiologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, said, “This epidemic of pediatric obesity may become the most important and devastating public health challenge of the 21st century.” In fact, some experts believe that an increasing number of children could die before their parents as a result of this obesity epidemic if we do not act now. The solutions to this looming crisis are complex and will require coordinated and sustained effort from everyone. I'm sure you'll agree our children's health is worth it.

We know that regular physical activity is of immense benefit to dealing with childhood obesity, but today's children are no longer as active as they once were. There are a variety of reasons for this. For many children, physical activity is no longer an integral part of the day. Children are bused to school, driven to wherever they need to go, and parents are often concerned about letting their children play outside unsupervised the way many of us might have done when we were younger.

We are well aware of this problem, and our government has already taken several measures to address the issue.

We have demonstrated our commitment to the good that comes from sport and physical activity by introducing the children fitness tax credit. This initiative is valued at $160 million per year and will encourage participation in sport while reducing the cost of organized physical activities for many parents.

An expert panel was appointed by my colleague the minister of Finance to make sure that this tax credit delivers maximum benefits when it comes into effect on January 1^st, 2007.

Our government made a commitment to encourage all Canadians to be more physically active and play sports. Currently, only 31 per cent of Canadians age 16 and over are actively engaged in organized sports. As surprising as the statistic may seem, less than 3 per cent of Canadians with a disability are involved in sport. Clearly, the challenge before us is great.

That is why earlier this year, I announced our government's new policy on sport for persons with a disability. This funding will improve access to sport, increase participation, and support our athletes with disabilities.

In addition, our policy on aboriginal people's participation in sport aims to reduce the barriers to aboriginal participation in sport. We recognize the positive role played by sport and recreation in strengthening the emotional, mental, and physical, as well as spiritual aspects of aboriginal life. The Government of Canada has committed $1 million annually to increase aboriginal participation, with a focus on enhancing coaching and building the capacity of provincial and territorial aboriginal sport bodies. I am pleased to say that these actions on the part of the government are strong, tangible manifestations of our commitment to get all Canadians active and fit through sport participation.

In the last nine months as minister in this portfolio, I have become familiar with many of the communities—local, provincial, non-governmental—in the wide world of sport and physical activity. Indeed, we have numerous partnerships to support the work of others in this field. Sport Canada has negotiated a number of bilateral agreements on matching funds with all provincial and territorial governments. These agreements support grassroots projects to improve sport participation opportunities for children and youth and aboriginal peoples. I have a few examples.

In British Columbia, community hubs for sport development gave over 2,200 children the opportunity to learn about and play soccer. This program reached 15 schools and also resulted in more than 80 coaches being trained in soccer and mini-soccer officiating.

In another example, in Newfoundland and Labrador there was recently held a Festival of Sports that reached most regions of the province and enabled 7,000 students to take part in non-competitive sports. There are plans to extend that reach to remote areas.

In Saskatchewan, Sport Match places a high priority on aboriginal schools. The program provides students with the opportunity to experience new sports and achieve active and healthy lifestyles.

During a June federal-provincial-territorial meeting of ministers responsible for sport, physical activity and recreation, we acknowledged overall targets for the participation of children and youth, girls and women, and the importance of working collaboratively in implementing public awareness campaigns. These targets include increasing sport participation rates for girls aged five to nine from 68% to 73% by 2012, while at least maintaining the current rate of participation for boys in the same age group at 77%. The target for teen participation levels is an increase of 5%, from the current 66% to 71%, by 2012.

The importance that regular physical activity programs in schools can play for children and youth cannot be overstated. While I recognize the clear jurisdiction the provinces and territories have with respect to education, I would like to invite my counterparts to open a dialogue on how we could expand our partnership in this regard. The upcoming FTP meeting of ministers responsible for sport and recreation in Whitehorse next February would represent an ideal opportunity for my counterparts to share their thinking with me.

Sport Canada also assists national sport organizations and multi-sport service organizations through its sport participation development program, with a view to increasing participation. Preference is given to projects that target children and youth in under-represented groups—in other words, girls and young women, aboriginal people, people with a disability, youth at risk, and the economically disadvantaged.

Some examples include support to Athletes Canada for Run-Jump-Throw, a program created to develop basic motor skills pertaining to all aspects of physical fitness that has a reach of over 25,000 students across the country; Softball Canada's program, Learn to Play, which has introduced the game of softball to thousands of kids over the past couple of years; and Speed Skating Canada's Cutting Edge program, which is aimed at children aged six to thirteen, with the goal of increasing interest and skill in speed skating.

These are just a few examples of initiatives that we have undertaken, working across all levels of government, that aim to address the issue of physical inactivity of our children and youth.

As a government and as a society, we are recognizing the infinite benefits that accrue from sport participation. Over the last nine months, my thoughts on sport in Canada have coalesced around what I call a core sport philosophy. As I see it, a core sport philosophy has three prongs: it's about participation, it's about competition and winning, and it's about supporting both the novice athlete and the elite athlete.

Allow me to focus just on the participation aspect for today. I am more convinced than ever that sport is a fantastic school of life. It speaks to almost every aspect of our daily lives and to the codes and values that guide us as a society. Through sport we learn the thrill of victory and the excitement of victory. Through sport we also learn to deal with disappointment and defeat, sometimes in the most public and exposed situations where there is no room to hide. In sport we learn to set goals and we learn to push ourselves to higher limits.

Sport appreciates talent and judges you on your skill, your ability, and your merit, without regard for race, religion, or creed. It bridges our differences and levels our status. Sport in Canada allows a guy with the last name of Chong to start a rugby club in small-town Fergus, Ontario, home of the Fergus Highland Games.

The lessons of the playing field make great athletes, but they also make great citizens, so our focus on participation is motivated by a much broader recognition of the benefits of sport in society. Our government wants to help expose as many Canadians as possible to the life lessons that sport teaches us and allow them to reap the rich social and health benefits that sport participation offers. I am confident that you will all see how the initiatives I spoke of earlier help in that regard.

Thank you very much for your attention. I'm sure that by working together we can help increase sport participation among all Canadians, including children. In my view, inaction is not an option. Our children's futures are at risk, and we need to act now.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much, Minister, for that presentation.

I should mention to committee members that the minister has a tight timeline and he has to be gone by, I believe, 4:25.

We'll now move on to Silken Laumann. The floors is yours, Ms. Laumann. Please give us your presentation.

[Silken Laumann, President, The Silken Laumann Active Kids Movement]

First of all, I'd like to thank the committee for having me here; it's a marvellous opportunity. It's such an important issue. I would really call it the “childhood obesity and inactivity” committee, because I think these really are such deeply connected issues.

What's happening to our children is almost overwhelming, when we hear that only half of Canadian kids are getting enough physical activity for optimal growth and development. And when we hear some of the statistics around obesity and inactivity for our children, they're alarming. We know the health costs—that it costs twice as much to have an inactive, obese smoker in our system as to have a healthy person; that our system is built on the premise that our healthy young people support our aging population. We can only imagine what happens when the young people are not healthy.

There's also a huge cost to the children themselves, not just in the quantity of their lives but in the quality of their lives—how they feel about themselves when they're inactive and overweight. That was really startling to me as I wrote my book Child's Play: Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Communities. I talked to a lot of children and listened to how children who are obese feel about their futures. Some of the studies I read showed me that these children felt less hopeful about their futures than children with cancer.

As an advocate for children and activity, I think we deserve to take a serious place in this discussion. We need to look at physical activity as not a “nice to have” for our Canadian children but a “need to have”, a primary building block for good health in our children. I think sport and physical activity have too often in our culture and in our funding strategies been seen as an extra, as a “nice to have”.

My first recommendation to this government and to this committee is that we put serious dollars into physical activity initiatives for children. There are so many programs out there that we see are working; they're actually getting kids active. There are lots of experts in our country who know how to get kids moving, know how to take an inactive child and get them engaged in physical activity, and they're struggling for funding. They're constantly having their hands tied. I think we have to look at a serious financial commitment that's not going to take a back seat when we have a critical issue in health care but is going to be a sustained commitment on the part of the government.

There are people now in Canada.... This issue has been talked about in the media now for at least three years, and people are starting to pay attention. I would argue that we are reaching a tipping point, where people are wanting to take action. For three years we've been running something called Silken's Active Kids. We take calls from people who have heard us speak, who have read articles I've written, and who say, we want to do something. These people want to know how they can connect to the best ideas and the best practices, how they can take action.

We got a call last week from the City of Vancouver, which is hosting the Olympic Games and which is asking us, how can we get our community more active? So there are people who are really searching for the ideas, the strategies, the best practices. They want to connect to others who are having success in this area.

I believe there's a place for a national strategy on getting children active, a national strategy that would engage communities and give them a tool kit for how to get things active. There are a lot of tools for how to get children active.

There's a lot of duplication in this area. Many of us, in our cities, in our schools, are being charged by the same challenge—let's get our kids active—and we're duplicating marketing materials, duplicating strategies. There is an opportunity here for the federal government to take a lead position, with a national strategy that engages Canadians. It could be with the Olympic Games, or it could be with other programs that are being suggested, but I believe there's a real need in this area.

I can't speak on this issue without addressing what's happening in our schools. Our schools used to be a place where physical activity was taught by physical activity experts, where we had intramurals, where we had sports. Our schools today no longer provide enough opportunities for children to be active.

I think one of the most startling things I learned while writing my book is that our elementary school children are being taught by teachers with little or no training in physical activity. We are not empowering our teachers to teach physical activity with innovation, with enthusiasm, with skills. How do we expect to turn on a generation of kids to being physically active when we're not even giving them the basic skills and giving the teachers the innovation in order to teach physical education properly?

As well as physical education, children are no longer receiving adequate access to after-school sports and intramurals. After-school care and before-school care have become really important. There's a huge percentage of children now in after-school and before-school care. I think this is actually a really important opportunity. We should be training our before- and after-school care providers in activity, in how to lead groups of children. Now many children come home at 6:30 in the evening from school, and they're hungry, and they have homework, and their families are tired.

That window between 2:40, which is when my children get out of school, and 6:30 is a very important window for activity. I'd like to see a lot more effort being put in on the part of the education system, with us as a federal government and provincial governments really supporting it.

Our schools are public spaces. In a place like Rouleau, Saskatchewan, theirs is the only gym in the entire city. They should be available for all children to be in after hours, to play. There are many programs we have come across in our country that were running basketball clubs or running floor hockey and that have had to close down because of the fees they were having to pay to keep that gym open after school hours. I don't think this should be happening. When we have an obesity crisis in our country, when we have a crisis around inactivity, those schools should be open for all the children in all the community to enjoy without this cost.

The last recommendation I would like to make is that we're very careful about the message we share with our children around inactivity and obesity. When we think about our fondest memories of childhood, for many of us it was riding our bicycles around the neighbourhood and playing road hockey. The neighbourhoods were our network; we met our neighbours; we connected to a sense of community. While we were running and jumping and playing, we were experiencing joy. And we weren't thinking about strengthening our bones or building our lung capacity; we weren't thinking about getting healthy; we were just playing.

I think the messages we as a government and we in our organizations share has to be around that joy and that play for children, because that's what children want to do.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Now we'll go to our final presenter.

Yes?

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I have a question for you.

We were supposed to hear the minister and then have a period of questions, according to today's agenda. We were to hear the minister and then proceed with a question period. Furthermore, there are more witnesses. Why was the order on today's agenda changed?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I understand what you're saying. What we had wanted to do is to make sure we had enough time for all of the questions, so we just placed the minister there. At the last meeting there was some discussion about whether we'd even invite the minister, so we decided to put the minister in a panel. You certainly are free to ask the minister questions in the question time period.

We're going to go ahead with the presentations, and then we'll open it. We've done this with the other meetings as well. We had the same problem when, I believe, as a finance—

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Chairman, we agreed to the minister's appearance and he has now outlined his positions to us. I think we should have the opportunity to ask him questions. He has to leave at 4:15 p.m. and we will not be able to ask him questions. That is not right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Okay. If this is the will of the committee, I'm certainly open to the idea. We've had two presenters right now. If we want to go to questioning and then have the final presenter after a round of questioning, I'm open to that, if that's the consensus here.

I'm seeing a lot of nodding heads.

Okay, then, let's do that. Is it fair to say, then, we'll do one quick round for each of the parties on the questioning, and then we'll go to the final presenter and then continue with the questioning? Is that fair?

Okay. Who is the first questioner over here?

Ms. Dhalla.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

I want to thank all of the panellists and the minister for coming out. Silken, it's a pleasure to have you. To hear you speak with such energy and enthusiasm about an important issue was extremely admirable.

I have a question for the minister, since he is on a time constraint. There are a couple of things. There was an important program that will probably resonate with many people in this room and around this committee, and that was the program called ParticipACTION. I think it was a program that was promoted among many school-aged children to promote physical activity and to promote play. I think there has been some talk about bringing that back. From what I have been hearing, there has also been a lot of controversy and resistance in regard to that. In your capacity as minister, could you provide insight into the whereabouts of this program, whether it will be reinstated by the federal government, and what this committee needs to do to ensure this type of program is initiated.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

I thank the honourable member for the question, through you, Mr. Chair.

It is true that the government is looking at various ways to promote the need for physical fitness and participation in sport among Canadians. We also have a campaign commitment to reintroduce the Awards of Excellence, those badges that you and I probably went through the public school system with. I have made it clear to officials at Sport Canada that we will only proceed if, first, the results can be shown--if the program can be structured so that results are ensured--and second, if there is value for money. To this point, we have not reached an agreement yet with ParticipACTION, but those certainly are two criteria that need to be in place if we are to proceed.

With respect to some of the criticisms that have been out there, I believe they've been unfounded. There were suggestions that this would be a sole-source contract. That is factually incorrect. This would be a contribution agreement, and contribution agreements are subject to a set of Treasury Board guidelines than are different from those for contracts, so the information that was reported out there was factually incorrect.

It was also suggested that existing organizations out there could undertake this work or are undertaking this work. That too is factually incorrect. There are a number of organizations out there--multi-sport organizations and other non-governmental organizations, to be sure--but none of them is engaged in a national public awareness campaign to promote the need for physical activity and sport.

The reason we think it's a good idea to embark on this path, just to finish up, is to look at the good example of good public policy with respect to anti-smoking. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s there was a plethora of research to show that smoking was bad for your health. There was no doubt about that, but it wasn't until governments in Canada put in place regulations to address the sale of tobacco to minors and restrict the sale of tobacco, as well as a public awareness campaign, that you really started to see a significant decline in smoking among various groups in Canada. it wasn't until those two pieces were put in place. It's a public policy success story.

We have a similar parallel with challenges around a lack of physical activity. It's been clear in the research. There has been a plethora of research since the 1950s and 1960s that being physically active, being physically fit, is tied to good health care outcomes--good cardiovascular health and the like--but we've not seen a decrease, or we've not been able to tackle this problem. Our government's view is that the children's fitness tax credit, which the finance department has estimated will invest up to $160 million a year into children's fitness and sports, plus a public awareness campaign that's tied to some of the things we talked about during the campaign, like the Awards of Excellence, would be very good two pieces of the public policy puzzle to put in place to attack this challenge. That's where we're coming from.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Ms. Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

Obviously, in evidence-based practice, practice-based evidence, tobacco is an excellent example. When I was elected to this House, smoking was at 31% and it's now at 20%.

I would like to know what evidence you were using in choosing to spend the $160 million a year on a tax credit rather than investing in the kinds of programs that Silken Laumann was talking about, that would be community-based and would hit the most vulnerable of our Canadians, who sometimes can't even afford the running shoes, let alone the hockey membership. In evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence, I would like to know what evidence you have. Do you have evidence from Nova Scotia that more kids actually participated, that more kids are more active? Sometimes public policy is that we have to do something; this is something, so let's do it. It isn't actually about evidence-based practice. I would like to know that.

Also, where did you get $500 from, and what was the policy process for choosing that rather than investing in the kinds of programs that we know work?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Through you, Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.

The first thing I want to emphasize is that the tax credit has not taken effect yet, so we don't have any results to analyze in terms of what impact it's had.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

But in policy analysis, did you examine whether tax credits work to incent the people who need the most--some who don't pay taxes?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

There's clear evidence with respect to other tax credits, such as the tax credits introduced by the previous government in areas like post-secondary education and training, that they do have a significant impact. Our government's view is that a tax credit was an effective way to deliver help very efficiently and very quickly to parents with the cost of registration and other eligible fees for sport and physical activities that are largely school-related--related to provincial areas of jurisdiction.

This was a way for the federal government to use the taxation code to do that, but I'd also like to add, though, that this is not--

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

No, but do we know whether one more kid will participate, or whether it's just the kids who are already participating whose parents will get a tax break?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

The asking of the question, Ms. Bennett, is through me. Could you please allow the minister to answer?

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

The other thing I want to emphasize is that this is not the only thing the Government of Canada is doing to assist children's participation in sport and physical activity.

For example, one of the initiatives I'm quite proud of is the core operational support we give to the Canadian Tire Foundation for Families. They've developed a program called JumpStart, and we provide them with core operational funding of about $250,000 a year. With that money they've been able to leverage 40:1 dollars; in other words, for every dollar that we've given them, they have raised another $40. In the next year they will contribute over $5 million to assist disadvantaged children with the purchase of sporting equipment and other related physical fitness equipment.

Our government is proud to support programs like that; we're not suggesting that the tax credit alone is going to deal with the problem. It's a multi-faceted approach, and the tax credit is just one component of it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

Madame Gagnon is next.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Thank you.

I have a question and a comment. My question is on the tax credit. I realize that the purpose is to encourage people to participate in physical activities, but I do not think it is helping the most disadvantaged members of our society, because this is a non-refundable tax credit. That means that one has to pay taxes. Therefore, those who do not pay any taxes will not be able to benefit from this tax credit. It will not serve as an incentive for the most disadvantaged people, those who do not have the means to pay for physical activities.

A committee was established for the purpose of analyzing the eligibility criteria for this program. I am told that this is a difficult process that will end up being costly. Can you tell us how feasible your tax credit is and how likely it is to achieve its goals? That is my first question.

My comment relates to the ParticipACTION program. Stanford University conducted a study on the increase in obesity amongst children at the time that program was in effect. They noted that child obesity increased by 300 per cent.

Can we conclude that this program was effective in preventing obesity amongst children if, during that time, there was a 300 per cent increase in obesity?

I do not think that the tax credit benefits our most vulnerable sectors, that is, communities that do not necessarily have the money to pay for the physical activities that ParticipACTION focussed on.

Thank you, Minister.