Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to present here today.
The Sport Matters Group, SMG, represents the collective interests of sport and physical activity in Canada. We have been in existence for a decade and work to advance supportive public policies for the sport and physical activity sectors.
This past April we held an advocacy day on Parliament Hill, during which we met with 90 MPs and five ministers. Our theme that day was to promote the concept of “from playground to podium”. This theme is relevant to the inquiry your committee is presently undertaking in relation to the preparations for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer. My comments are confined to a discussion of the background context in which Canadian children and youth are provided with the necessary physical literacy, physical education, recreational access, and sporting opportunity, which will—over time, it is hoped—result in an expansive pool of high-performance athletes from which to draw.
Permit me to say that the sector is grateful for the foresight and enlightened thinking that led the federal government in its recent 2012 economic action plan to protect the funding allocated to core sport, high-performance sport, athletes assistance, the Canadian sports centres, and ParticipAction. Coupled with the decision to re-authorize funding for the Own the Podium agency in the aftermath of the 2010 Vancouver games, this lastest decision is to be commended, for it demonstrated recognition of the critical role the federal government plays in providing leadership to the entire sports system.
Additionally, the Canadian sport policy renewal discussions, in which I have been privileged to participate and in which the federal government has played a key role, have been an exemplary exercise in consultation, outreach, and cross-sectoral vision. The final document, which will be presented to FPT ministers later this month, has considerable strengths and virtues, and should serve as a strategic road map for sport in Canada over the next decade.
Notwithstanding these sound decisions in recent years, some of the key benchmarks in the sport world continue to move in the wrong direction.
Broader sport participation rates at the community level continue to stagnate. Private sector investments in sport, while still healthy, have been somewhat strained by the global economic downturn of 2009. One quarter of Canadian adults are obese. One quarter of Canadian children aged two to 17 are overweight or obese. And according to some, the economic costs of obesity rise as high as $7.1 billion. Data from several provinces suggest that community recreation infrastructure continues to be in need of repair or investment. The deficit has been estimated to be in the order of $15 billion. Some regions of the country, such as Alberta and the north, are considerably underserved by recreational and sporting infrastructure. Due to the influx of Canadians to Calgary, that city has a multi-billion-dollar need for new infrastructure.
Finally, 43% of Canadian schools fail to deliver on the primary outcomes of the physical education curriculum. Hence, many kids fail to develop the necessary building blocks of physical literacy, and are unable to pursue sport with any degree of confidence.
During our advocacy day on Parliament Hill, the sport, physical activity, and recreation sectors—supported, I should add, by the Heart and Stroke Foundation—had three main tasks. First, the federal government should continue to make a robust, sustainable, and predictable commitment to funding for both the core and high-performance sport systems. Secondly—this is more of a stretch target—2% of the $200 billion currently spent on conventional health care by all levels of government should be redirected towards physical activity, recreation, and sport as health promotion and prevention measures. Finally, the Government of Canada should, when fiscal circumstances permit, reinstate the recreational infrastructure program in order to remedy the multi-billion-dollar recreation and sport infrastructure gap.
Thank you for your time.