Thank you very much.
I'd like to thank the committee for an opportunity to be before you today to present some of our thoughts and perspectives on the important issue of childhood obesity.
I've prepared a small presentation, which I've given to the clerk. Hopefully it has made its way around; if not, I'm sure it will during the presentation. I promise there won't be too much propaganda in it. We'll try to get right to the good stuff.
There is a tremendous urban aboriginal issue in this country today. Approximately half of all aboriginal people live in urban areas, half of all aboriginal people are under the age of 25, and half of all aboriginal people do not graduate from high school. What's occurring is an increasingly tough demographic for us to serve. It's an incredibly challenged population, and we are on the ground all across Canada to meet that challenge.
There are a number of key issues, certainly as related to childhood obesity, that I'd like to highlight. I'm not going to go over them all with you. There's more contained in the presentation we had prepared for the committee.
52% of all aboriginal children living in urban areas live in poverty—more than one in two. It's an incredibly challenging reality for us to deal with in these communities. In urban communities across Canada, we face an incredible housing crunch, living in overcrowded housing situations. Our employment standards are lower than the general population's. Our youth continue to struggle through education and to deal with drug and alcohol addictions in the communities we're serving. We have a tremendously challenging issue of community engagement with our people in penitentiaries, and with our women suffering higher degrees of spousal abuse than the mainstream population, or than should be accepted in any case whatsoever.
These are the challenges the friendship centres are facing across the country. The National Association of Friendship Centres is mandated to provide services to the local friendship centres that exist across the country. We do so through the provision of programs and training supports.
Our structure is that we're very much made of local community members. Local community members make the boards. The boards make their regional board; these make our national board, of which I am the executive director. There are 116 friendship centres across the country from coast to coast to coast. Through these 116 friendship centres, we provided 1.1 million client services last year. We did that through 1,260 various programs and services, a number of which directly impact on the issue of childhood obesity.
Let me give you an example of some of those programs. We have 23 aboriginal head start programs within friendship centres across Canada. These are programs that help young aboriginal people get ready for school. They give them a head start by providing training in culture, a lot of which results in a higher self-esteem, which ultimately is going to result in better health outcomes.
We have a variety of programs, such as full-fledged day cares in ten of our friendship centres; we have a variety of family support programs to train parents for better parenting skills, from feeding their children better to having better outcomes in general—we have sixty of those programs; and we have ten specific early childhood development programs looking at the very outset of these young people's lives. Those are the kinds of things we're doing.
We have a variety of food and nutrition programs that directly impact on child obesity. We're talking about people who live in poverty. It's much cheaper to buy a bag of chips than it is to get the fruits, meats, and vegetables that are required to have a healthy lifestyle.
We have 24 prenatal nutrition programs to train young moms at the start, to make sure they are ready when their children are born and while they're still in fetus, to make sure we're having a positive outcome with nutrition and that they have the information they need.
Unfortunately, we operate a number of food banks and community meals as well to make sure that aboriginal people across this country have access to food and are not going hungry.
And unfortunately, we have few proactive kinds of programs. Very few formal sport and recreation programs are available in community centres. We have only two formalized activity programs across the country. We have 18 formalized summer camps or “out on the land” programs. We have one fitness centre and 13 general recreation-type programs. These are very small numbers when you consider that we're in 116 community centres and serve 1.1 million client contacts through the year.
We have a variety of cultural programs, which naturally impact on childhood obesity. Most friendship centres do powwows and have traditional dancing and things of that nature—very much activity-oriented activities—and language programs, teachings, and things of that nature.
We have two kinds of formalized programs through our structure that I want to tell you about quickly and that certainly impact on childhood obesity. We have an urban, multi-purpose aboriginal youth centre initiative, which looks directly at recreational social programs for urban aboriginal people. A lot of it impacts on the kinds of recreation programs we are able to provide that look at childhood obesity.
Finally, we have a summer employment program called Young Canada Works, which really funds a lot of camps and moving kinds of activities in the summer, to keep kids active.
All of this is to say that this is what we're doing. We conducted some research in 2005 to take a look at the lack of recreation we saw in the communities that are currently able to provide it, and we had some interesting findings.
What we found was, as I said, the majority of friendship centres are involved in some type of physical or recreation program rather informally, and that the opportunities for aboriginal youths to access physical activities within communities is limited. It's hard for them to get access to programs.
The largest barrier to aboriginal youths participating in physical activities is financial. They can't afford the shoes. They can't afford a change of clothes. They can't afford the basketball, the hockey stick, the lacrosse stick, the fishing rod, the canoe paddle, to go out and participate and be active.
The largest barrier that our community centres are facing, the friendship centres, is financial. They can't afford to keep a worker there to have their young people go through programs.
The basic infrastructure exists across the country to have a meaningful impact in urban areas. There is just not a financial commitment at any level of government to look at that type of programming on a consistent basis for urban aboriginal people.
I know our time is short, so I'm going to begin to summarize.
With respect to barriers to programming, I'll say there are a couple. There is limited urban aboriginal programming in general. There's a huge constitutional divide—I'm sure I don't need to tell the members about it—when it comes to aboriginal services. Particularly in urban areas, there's a bit of a dearth of the will to step in because of the concern that it will be seen as taking the provincial responsibility that many believe exists for urban aboriginal people.
In general, there's limited physical activity or recreational programming available in communities. What sport and recreation programming exists in the aboriginal community is focused on high-performance athletes, such as those going to the North American Indigenous Games and things of that nature.
There is lack of provincial programs to fill in the void that exists. While some programming does exist, I think the jurisdictional divide remains.
I've talked about poverty from a very programmatic perspective, and I think it's important to note that childhood obesity is linked to poverty. Poverty is linked to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health of people in our communities. It's not one thing. If it was simply childhood obesity, we'd buy a bunch of treadmills and balls to chase and be done with it. The reality is that broader systemic issues exist in communities, and we need to have a more comprehensive approach to address them.
Programs that support this, like the aboriginal friendship centre program that we administer, are important because they provide the context and the framework for other programs to be involved. We are currently involved in a process—which I'm not going to sell you on today—to look at enhancements to fund that program appropriately. However, I'd note that programs like the aboriginal friendship centre program are key to ensuring that the recreation programs are available in communities that those centres serve.
If I could be so bold as to finish with some recommendations, I would recommend four things.
First, it's vital that this committee look at the programming for the group of kids aged six to twelve. We have some programs in the early childhood area, but when we get to that magic six-to-twelve age group, there is a huge divide. In the community centres, unless a young person is in trouble with the law or drops out of school, there are no formalized programs for them, so we're seeing childhood obesity as an outcome.
Funds are clearly required for specific physical activity and recreation programs. These have tremendous health, justice, and other outcomes. If they're playing basketball Friday night, they aren't out drinking or breaking into other places or getting into other kinds of trouble.
We believe a broad urban aboriginal action plan is required to address the broader issues that we address. It's not enough to have one-off programming. We think we need a systematic approach to address the over 50% of aboriginal people who live in urban areas. That approach doesn't exist in this country today.
And finally, we recommend supporting urban development issues like the aboriginal friendship centre program funding.
Thank you.