Health Committee on Sept. 26th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Dr. James Lunney, you have five minutes.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank every one of the witnesses for starting a very stimulating conversation here. I appreciate the presentations.

I've been flipping through the report card here on physical activity, and I can't quite figure out who's responsible for this. Is this Active Healthy Kids?

I see some very encouraging ideas in here and a review of ideas. We've discussed some, such as the effort in Saskatchewan, and ParticipAction. I still remember very fondly being engaged in ParticipAction when I was in school. I guess we ought to be careful with “getting back to when I was a kid” conversations, but that's often where we seem to want to end up in these discussions.

Certainly where I grew up in Winnipeg, we were outdoors. We were in the south area, in an area called the Sticks. Everybody was on half-acre lots or three-quarter acre lots, and we were all outdoors all the time. Parents had a hard time finding us. We were climbing trees and running around the woods, and we were involved in organized sports, baseball, hockey, the whole bit. Then when we got into high school, it was all the same thing with our group of kids, but that was the era. Then we got into the ParticipAction thing, you see.

So that was all good, but times have changed now, and of course we have issues, which some of my colleagues have mentioned, with security and safety for kids walking to school, biking to school, being alone on their way to school. With the type of predation that has gone on in some communities, parents are terrified about the safety of their children.

Recognizing that we're facing a different society today, I guess the whole discussion is about how we get back to those kinds of activities in the new environment. I see some encouraging ideas here. You asked what the one thing was. Maybe there is one thing that the federal government could do. We have other programs such as municipal-rural infrastructure programs. Maybe as has been suggested here, there could be a dedicated program with significant funding by three levels of government, which would encourage provinces and municipalities to be partners in promoting a new fitness and ParticipAction-type mentality.

There are all kinds of venues that communities could tailor to their own communities. In our area, there is a skateboard park, and within that segment of the population, the kids spend hours and hours there roaring around on those things, doing acrobatics that make everybody else frightened. In our days there were roller rinks and now there are rollerblades. Maybe we could create some kind of an endroit for those who like that venue and encourage that type of participation. We could have hiking trails, more trails, more rope courses, more rock-climbing, and all of those types of things.

Now, one size isn't going to fit all, but if we had a program that would allow people to pick something for their community and then build on it, using a sustained effort over a number of years, maybe there would be one thing the federal government could do and that would be to create a framework for the provinces and the municipalities to participate.

Is that really what you're looking for? As well, of course, we're talking about healthy eating and diet.

[Dr. Ian Janssen]

I'm just going to speak very quickly, and I'll let Mark and Cora respond in more detail.

You know, there's the saying “if you build it, they will come”. That's true to a certain degree. I was just in Little Rock, Arkansas, last week, and they had this lovely trail behind the hotel where I was. It was called the wellness walkway. I was there for three nights. I went running three times. I was out for about 45 minutes each time. I saw three people in total in over two hours of being out there running.

So building the infrastructure and having it there does things to a certain degree, but it's not the whole picture. Getting people to actually change their behaviours is a whole other issue altogether.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

Everyone has had an opportunity for questioning. Ms. Bennett would now like a short opportunity, and then Mr. Batters as well. Please remember that we have two motions, a quick housekeeping motion and then a budget, to deal with at the end of the meeting.

So let's carry on.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

In terms of evidence-based practice, I am interested in knowing what kind of data we need, biometric data, with regard to heights and weights of kids in this country. How would you get that? Would you do that through the family doctor's office, or do you think that we could do that as part of the school health consortium, through the deputy ministers of health and education across this country?

The other question is about the bottom-up stuff that we all know, about the infrastructure. When the sports ministers met a couple of summers ago, the school health consortium seemed to need the help of the recreation or sport ministers to be able to make sure that there was this place where cities are planned, as Penny said, or where you actually made sure that infrastructure would pay for a cycle path, not just for a building, so that communities could plan and then get funding appropriately.

So it's the two things. How do we focus all government departments, given the gridlock we've had across jurisdictions, and also, how do we get the data so we can find the pockets across this country that actually are making a difference in terms of heights and weights of kids, to show that we're funding what works and not funding what doesn't work?

[Cora Craig]

I'll be brief.

In terms of stopping the gridlock, one of the things to do is to elevate the priority of this issue within government.

I was on the World Health Organization expert committee for the development of the global strategy on diet, physical activity, and health. The solution lies in many sectors. Having the Standing Committee on Health address this is a great initiative, and it shows the commitment of the government. Another thing that would show the commitment of the government is to have an interdepartmental committee and really marshal all resources to try address it.

As you mentioned in terms of monitoring, the ministers of sport in the provinces and territories and the federal Minister of Health have put in resources for three years to objectively measure physical activity levels of Canadian children. So we will have some data. But the Canadian health measures survey is another one that needs to be funded.

[Dr. Mark Tremblay]

And it's not just heights and weights that we need. Increasingly, we're understanding that those measures can tell erroneous tales in the absence of understanding the physical activity or the baseline fitness level or the waist circumference of the individual. So we need a more robust mechanism to do this.

A request came through recently--you've read about it in the media.... Child seats are no longer big enough for our chunky children--they're not made the right size, but we don't know how big they should be--similarly with airplane seats, and so on. How big are people now? We don't know. Lawsuits are going on. Transport Canada is involved in some of these things. On a national representative sample, we don't have any data. We go to other countries to get it because we have no mechanism.

The Canadian health measures survey is starting to get at that, just the front end of it, but ongoing funding is needed to be able to answer some of these questions that permeate other departments, not just health.

[Dr. Ian Janssen]

I wanted to quickly add information about a system they're using in the U.K. within the school system to monitor obesity. They do measurements periodically. They have health care nurses within the school system, so it's a little bit easier to implement. But that monitoring could be put in place in Canada. You could see regional differences and track certain individuals over time and see what works in particular areas.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

What is the status of the health measures survey funding?

[Dr. Mark Tremblay]

It's funded through the Canadian Institute for Health Information through the health information road map initiative. A portion of the necessary funding is there to do the survey once, starting this February for two years, collecting 2,500 samples per year. Many efforts under way to try to get ongoing funding for the survey are being driven from many sectors, thus far unsuccessfully.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

You're talking to the right test group, when it comes to airline seats, and whether they're too small. It would be a fairly quick vote around the room.

Mr. Batters, I'll allow a couple of minutes. It will leave time for the two motions.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Chair, did Ms. Demers or Ms. Priddy have anything to add to this conversation, in keeping with our rotation?

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

I would like to ask a question, but I'll ask it after you. Don't worry.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Okay, that sounds good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Be very tight.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Well, I'll be somewhat tight, Mr. Chair.

I have one quick question to Ms. Craig, and then I'm going to leave you all with this thought. If there are one or two things we haven't talked about today, or you'd like to reiterate the importance of something, we're going to write a report in this committee, and this is your opportunity to let us know what absolutely has to be in this report. Or putting it another way, if it's not in the report, we've absolutely blown it and wasted our time here. I leave you with that thought. How is that for pressure?

Ms. Craig, I think we're mainly on the same page, but I respectfully disagree on one point, and that is regarding the children's fitness tax credit. Granted, it's not a perfect tool. It's a start. It's certainly better than nothing. I agree with you in terms of, yes, some families are going to have some difficulty in, let's say--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I'm not going to allow a debate on whether that's good or not.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

I'm going to pose a question, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Okay, but just a very quick question. Then we'll have the answer to the first one, because I think that was a very good one.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Yes, the first one is the key one. I was going to give them a little bit of time to think on that one.

Granted, it's difficult for some families to come up with say $500 in one fell swoop for hockey registration, for example. Your point is very well taken. This is being studied as we speak, but if we can do it in terms of something that Dr. Tremblay has suggested where--public skating, $5--you save the receipts and build them up over the course of a year, I would argue it's going to benefit those in the middle-income or even lower-income brackets the most, because, frankly--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Dave, you asked the question. We'll have them take an answer.

[Cora Craig]

I would just like to clarify my response, which is that I'm not against the child tax credit. I am concerned about ways it may be implemented and about what we can do just to make sure that it is equitable.

One of the things I said in terms of evaluation to the committee when I was addressing them was that we do need measures to see whether or not it's encouraging participation as well, and not going to just perhaps buying equipment that's sitting on the side. So for one thing, when the tax receipts are being completed and the organizations have to do that, maybe they could just indicate as well things like the numbers of hours the program was intended to be offered for and whether the kids participated in it at all, so that the government can better evaluate not just the cost instrument but also the impact.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Any comments on the first question? Be very brief, and then we'll go on to the last question.

[Dr. Mark Tremblay]

My recommendation listed encapsulates what I think would be needed in sections of your report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.