COVID has impacted our lifestyles. We're in front of screens now more than we ever have been before. We need to be a bit more purposeful in our physical activity, whereas before a lot of our day-to-day physical activity was generated by walking to and from the bus stop or going out for lunch and grabbing a sandwich.
In saying that, I think we need to also support Canadians with this notion that physical activity...yes, you could visit a facility and enrol in a program, but you can be physically active just by going outside and going for a walk. We need to encourage Canadians to be thinking about physical activity as a way to support their mental health and their other day-to-day issues.
Our platform as an organization is everything gets better when you get active. We need to have Canadians think about physical activity, not as something that you put on a to-do list, but something that is incorporated as part of your everyday lifestyle.
Community organizations are a key partner of ours. In saying that people can just go outside, obviously people want to participate in sport, as an example. To be physically active they need to enrol in a particular program. Many have been suspended or closed as a result of the pandemic.
We need to support these local community organizations to be able to continue to reach out and engage Canadians in a responsible and safe way. Most of the emergency relief funding that has been provided has benefited national and some provincial organizations, but it has not filtered down into the local organizations.
Part of our proposal is to support these local community organizations, many of which are volunteer based and volunteer run. Giving them money will be helpful, but we're positioning that support in the context of a national campaign around this Canada Moves month in June so they can utilize and leverage that focal point as a way to re-engage people within their local programming.