Thank you very much, Mr. Chairperson.
I'm Gord Steeves and I'm a councillor from Winnipeg. I'm also the vice-president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is the organization that represents all municipal government from across Canada. We have about 1,400 members; by extension, we represent about 85% of the Canadian population by virtue of our members.
I'm joined by John Burrett, who is our senior manager of social policy, and Dallas Alderson, who is one of our policy analysts in the social policy group. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to present today on this extremely important issue.
At the Federation of Canadian Municipalities we have identified this as one of the emerging issues in municipalities across Canada, and is something we've tried to spend a little bit more time on over the course of the last few years. Out of that discussion has emerged a couple of very important documents. The first was “Promoting Healthy Lifestyles in Children and Youth”, a report that was presented to the ministre de la Santé et des services sociaux by a group called the Équipe de travail pour mobiliser les affaires en prévention; that was out of Quebec, chaired by one of our vice-presidents, Jean Perrault, from Sherbrooke, Quebec. The second was “Active Cities: An Opportunity for Leadership By the Big City Mayors Caucus”, which was prepared by the chairperson of the Big City Mayors Caucus, Mayor Pat Fiacco, from Regina. I hope the existence of these two documents underscores the importance municipalities are giving to this very important issue.
Obviously, the problem has been more clearly delineated today than I could probably have done to do it justice. I'm a politician, not a researcher by trade, so my information comes at least second-hand. However, we work on the understanding that in Canada currently one in ten children is overweight, that this trend is growing, and that obesity is linked to diseases and premature death. An obese child has a 70% chance of becoming an obese adult and may face severe health consequences as a result. This epidemic has not stopped. Perhaps this generation will be the first generation to not outlive their parents. Obviously this comes at considerable societal cost to all of us.
Our diagnosis is that the leading cause of this obesity is related to the lack of physical activity in our communities, and the single most important thing that can be done by young people in our communities is to become physically active. We would applaud the government's introduction of a fitness tax credit as an important first step to ensuring that our children become physically active. However, the purpose of things today is to ensure that our young people can have proper access to that type of credit in the current rubric of our society. We need the type of infrastructure to support this type of activity so that everybody can benefit.
In our estimation, Mr. Chairperson and members of the committee, there are two areas of infrastructure that have to be considered. First is specific areas for recreation and fitness, things like arenas, swimming pools, and the like, which can be built right into our cities and communities. But we can't get stuck on the idea that those are the only types of opportunities we can offer our young people.
In our cities that exist right now, maybe, as you've heard from the esteemed presenters who have gone before me, one of the best things we can do is evolve and change our built environment. Things like cycling paths, diamond lanes,and bicycling access within our cities and communities are probably the best services we can offer to the young people who live in our communities today.
It's an important distinction to make, because it would probably be easy to get caught up in the idea that this is a talk about new arenas and about new swimming pools, when in fact that's probably only a very small part of what we're discussing today. The idea, I think, is that every day in people's lives they could live more actively, and that probably has a better role to play than this type of traditional thinking.
Government cooperation is probably at the heart of this. We feel that municipal governments have taken on a huge responsibility for the type of infrastructure that exists in the cities to promote active living. Things like cycling paths, arenas, and swimming pools--we'll use those as examples--are borne to the largest extent by municipal governments. That presents a challenge, because municipal governments have to do this within the envelope of their current funding parameters, which present all sorts of difficulties because of the limited fiscal capacities of those governments to produce that revenue and thus produce that recreational and active infrastructure within our communities.
The vast majority of our recreational infrastructure was built between the 1950s and 1970s, including a lot of arenas and recreational facilities. Many of these facilities are now in pretty dire need of structural repair or outright renewal. We feel there's been an imbalance over the last several years, probably owing to an imperfect understanding of the problem at hand. These are some of the challenges that have to be addressed.
The federal government has taken steps to address the challenges encountered by our young people, some of whom are getting involved in illegal behaviour. We believe that physical activity in young people enables them to achieve greater health, a wonderful end result. It also keeps our young people busy and constructive and tends to lower participation in crime and raise marks in school. It isn't just about the physical activity and health of our young people. It's also about their psychological health, their role in society, and their opportunities for success and productivity.
The environmental benefits that have been discussed by the federal government over the last several years are augmented by all of these initiatives. Active transportation allows us to achieve all sorts of environmental benefits.
We know you understand that municipal governments can't help communities all by themselves. The fact that you're sitting here today listening to us proves that you understand this as well as we do.
Solution-wise—and this where we can move the ball a little in our thinking—we have some ideas and directions that we'd like to set out today for discussion by this committe and the government as a whole.
This government and past federal governments have done yeoman work in addressing the infrastructure deficit in our communities right across Canada. We're trying to evolve the thinking on the infrastructure deficit and what infrastructure means in cities and communities across Canada. We're trying to expand the definition to include not only roads, bridges, and transit, but also arenas, swimming pools, and bike paths. We want to establish the necessary connection between active living and the built environment in our community.
There are all sorts of places where this connection can be established. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is trying to evolve by expanding the way we think about infrastructure in Canada. It's a very important step that we have to take, and we think you have to take it with us. We're hoping that this discussion, which started some time ago, will continue.
The gentleman from British Columbia spoke a lot about the built environment and how zoning decisions can affect the health and activity of young people within Canada. This is not purely within the jurisdiction of the federal government. It has a lot to do with what we do. If we can't access that funding, if we can't get there within our current envelope, then we feel we have significant challenges.
If we can expand the way we think about infrastructure, then we can get to that place, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, and we can have that ongoing, more inclusive discussion about what it means to build our built environment within Canada.
Thank you very much for your time.