Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to say thanks to all the presenters. Certainly I enjoyed each of them, and we've heard some very good information here this afternoon.
I have one question and I'm going to put it to all of you. I'm not sure if anyone has any ideas.
We talk about the increased incidence of obesity, and we're all well aware that that is the case. We've got huge numbers; whether it's native, non-native, it's right across the country.
But I've also been involved in politics at the municipal level for a long time and I know that at the lower levels of government there have been increased programs--healthy children's programs and things set up through public health agencies and units, and cooperation and partnerships with education people and institutions. We've had all these initiatives. We've had fitness incentives at the federal level; we've seen that. Certainly some of those are quite recent, and we probably have not had time to see any results. We've seen better labelling, much more information being supplied; this is an ongoing thing, and I agree that consumers are really starting to pay attention to that. I know probably ten years ago most people never read a label and now they do, and I think the standardized form is extremely beneficial. Whether or not people understand what it all means, they can at least compare this product to this product because it is in a standardized form. I think that's good.
I know there are education programs for smarter shopping; they do supermarket tours and teach lower-income families how to shop smart. Those things have been going on for a long time. There are healthy breakfast programs in schools.
You've talked about redesigning Canada's Food Guide again. It was done a few years ago; it's going to be done again.
But where are we going wrong? We've been taking several initiatives, but the incidents still keep increasing by leaps and bounds. So what are we doing wrong, and what direction should we be taking?
We talk about sports, and a lot of people are involved in sports. Certainly at the municipal level people are getting more involved with hiking trails and biking trails and all of those types of things. A lot of initiatives are happening, but we don't seem to be touching the problem.