Thank you.
People are often shocked to learn that only 18% of adults and 8% of children and youth get enough physical activity to be healthy. Unfortunately, we pay a hefty price tag for our sedentary population. The estimated health care costs of physical inactivity in Canada total $6.8 billion per year. Caring for people with chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease costs $2.4 billion, while the remaining $4.5 billion is due to the loss of productivity from poor health, resulting in the huge cost of staff turnover, short-term disability costs, and absenteeism.
Unfortunately, getting the population to move more is not as easy as just telling people to do it. What most decision-makers don't truly understand is that physical inactivity is a very difficult thing to fix. Getting active is something not everyone has time do to, can afford, or is even comfortable doing, even if they want to. It is simple in theory, but in reality it's very difficult to get people to change their behaviour. To better understand what's required, it helps to examine the smoking cessation situation.
Few countries have been as successful as Canada in lowering smoking rates and shifting public attitudes about tobacco. To make this happen, governments have invested over $2 billion in a variety of coordinated efforts from smoking bans to tax policies and public education. Over time, multiple efforts have created supportive environments that help people quit, and even made it socially unacceptable to smoke. This is the kind of large scale, multi-faceted, long-term approach we need to shift Canadians' behaviours to be more active and less sedentary, and government has a critical role to play.
We can't just build new recreation centres, or tell people to simply walk their kids to school. We do need to build new recreation centres, make sidewalks safer to walk and bike on, improve the duration and quality of physical education in schools, have active workplace policies, and create public education campaigns to motivate people to make the active healthy choice.
Being active is not a pastime, a frill, or a nice-to-have we will get to when the economy gets better. Regular physical activity is a fundamental aspect of a productive and high-quality life. Physical activity improves mental health by reducing anxiety, depression, and isolation. Physical activity improves test scores in math and reading. It promotes concentration and keeps your thinking sharp as you age. Physical activity lowers the risk of hip fractures in older adults. Physical activity also improves sleep, which is especially important for children's developing brains.
This is not about creating the next Olympians, but about being competitive in a global market, producing leaders who can stay on task and be innovative, and raising children who are less anxious and more resilient.
We already do many great things in Canada. Permanent bike lanes across a major city artery was just approved in Toronto, for example, but all told, the efforts across Canada are fragmented and inconsistent.
We need an approach that is comprehensive, coordinated, systematic, and ties all the efforts together. ParticipAction is a prominent Canadian organization that ties cross-sectoral physical activity efforts together in a responsible, measurable way.
Even in light of our stellar reputation and long-standing leadership in Canada, ParticipAction is still faced with federal funding that is short-term, unpredictable, and unfortunately rarely guaranteed. Over the last five years, our federal funding has ranged from $2.9 million to $7.8 million per year. For 2018, our confirmed funding is just $305,000.
ParticipAction is only one piece of the solution. Physical activity needs the same kind of commitment as the $1 billion-plus spent on smoking, to support many partners working together on many approaches at every level to be successful. The first step, however, is to provide ParticipAction with guaranteed long-term funding of $10 million per year for five years, to align, support, and lead efforts in a coordinated, persistent way.
ParticipAction's mighty collective effort to create behaviour change, which we're calling a movement, will include a variety of components that reinforce each other to: digitally track and reward physical activity at group and individual levels; educate the public about the latest exercise science; shift attitudes and perceptions; mobilize communities; and ultimately influence behaviour.
With this five-year movement, ParticipAction will connect its 5,000 local partner organizations, the provinces and territories, national, regional, and local NGOs, to get us all working together. This investment won't solve the inactivity crisis alone, but it is a key part of a large-scale successful effort.
There is a reason that Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Julie Payette, and even our Prime Minister, some of the busiest, most accomplished people in the world, make time for regular physical activity. They are not just staying in shape; they're staying sharp. They know it keeps them competitive and productive.
The nine in 10 kids and eight in 10 adults in Canada who are not active enough also deserve the same. All Canadians deserve to have the opportunity, the skills, and the motivation to be active every day, and an investment in ParticipAction is an investment in them. An active Canada is truly a stronger, more productive Canada.
Thank you.