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.