Thank you, Sally
I'll be very brief, Mr. Chair.
We know there are lessons to be learned from tobacco control. While we have said at the Heart and Stroke Foundation that fat is the new tobacco, we do not believe the food industry and the tobacco industry are equal. We believe the food industry needs to be a partner in the reduction of obesity in Canada. In fact, we work very closely with the food industry through our Health Check program. So while we're making some analogies between food and tobacco, we want to really clearly differentiate our views of the industries in this case.
We know there are lessons to be learned from tobacco, and I'll just point out a few of them. We know, for example, that education is important, but not enough. As Diane pointed out in her slides, education is important, but it only takes us so far. We need, as others have said, multiple jurisdictions working in a variety of ways to help us control obesity and reduce the rates. We have to take a comprehensive approach. What we really learned from tobacco reduction—and Canada now has the lowest rates of smoking in the world, and of that we should feel very proud—is that when we commit ourselves to addressing an issue and work in a coordinated way, we can make a difference.
We also want to reiterate that our data infrastructure needs to be improved, as Sally said. Canada is one of the few countries in the world without a lifelong cohort study. This is really unacceptable for a developed, first world country like ours. In fact, many Canadian researchers have to resort to using American and British data to be able to track health trends and outcomes over the course of an individual's life. Canada really needs a lifelong cohort study. It will increase our brain-gain, if nothing else.
We've talked before in our report and in other fora about the importance of using tax incentives and disincentives to address obesity. We've done it with tobacco and we can do it with obesity. We've talked about removing sales taxes from restaurant or retail foods that are deemed to be healthy, and perhaps adding some taxes to foods that are less healthy, although we know from the evidence that in the area of food, tax incentives work better than disincentives, so we would recommend them more highly.
We're asking the federal government to remove some of the sales taxes from sports and recreation equipment that would get Canadians moving, and combine it with a promotional campaign that makes it known to Canadians that it has happened and encourages them to get out and be physically active.
Finally, we are encouraged by recent moves, but we encourage the federal government to continue to provide tax credits and breaks for enhancing physical activity, whether those be for fitness classes, gym memberships, registration of kids, or organized sports, etc.
Canada desperately needs an integrated, adequately funded, chronic disease prevention strategy. We're urging the federal government to move on this and to work with the Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance of Canada to help develop and implement this.
I want to note, Mr. Chair, that four years after the federal government announced it was developing a healthy living strategy for Canada, we're still here calling for the implementation of a healthy living strategy. Clearly, the time to act on this is now.
We also want to point out that, like tobacco, this is not an individual issue, and that the environments we live in shape our behaviours and patterns. Diane talked about an obesogenic environment, and that's a very important point. We're asking the federal government to continue to look at how to enhance, through its gas tax transfer program, transportation infrastructure funding to the provinces and the cities that will enhance physical activity. We are asking the federal government to actually allocate 7% of its infrastructure funding dollars to transportation infrastructure that enhances physical activity. The United States federal government currently allocates 10% of such transfers for that kind of active transportation, and Canada doesn't allocate anything.
We also are asking the federal government to ensure that some social infrastructure that supports physical activity is included in the gas tax transfer program, so that it's not just roads and sewers, but also things such as recreation centres, community centres, pools, etc., that can be funded through the program. We're asking the federal government to continue enhancing transfers that would enhance public transit and other such physical activity-enhancing measures.
We've also noted the importance of the marketing and advertising of foods to children. The research on this is overwhelming and the evidence is clear that the marketing of unhealthy foods to kids leads to increased consumption of unhealthy foods. Young children do not understand when the programming ends and when the commercials start, and that influences their food choices.
The Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance of Canada, a coalition of public health organizations of which we are the chair, has been examining this issue, and we look forward to bringing recommendations on this issue back to the committee in the near future.
We're asking the federal government to explore options to reduce the marketing of particularly fatty foods to kids. We do have a world precedent-setting model here in Canada, in Quebec. Quebec instituted a TV ban on advertising to children in 1980 that applies to kids under the age of 13 years. It applies to commercial advertising, not to public service announcements.
What are the outcomes of the Quebec ban? Well, interestingly, Quebec has instituted such a ban and has among the lowest soft drink consumption rates in Canada, among the highest fruit and vegetable consumption rates in Canada, and among the lowest obesity rates in Canada. We want to be clear that we're not making a causal link here between that ban and these behaviours, but there's definitely an association and it's something worth exploring. You can see on slide 22 that the percentage of kids 6 to 11 who are overweight and obese in Quebec are amongst the lowest in the country.