Health Committee on Feb. 19th, 2007

[Richard Caborn]

To be quite honest, I think they'd be very naïve if they did not. Sport is one of the major drivers. Young people, broadly speaking, want to play sport, whether it's a team sport or some of the less structured sports. Dance is one that we are looking at very carefully now. There are a lot of young boys who are taking dancing, which in terms of physical activity is absolutely fine.

Going back to the point you made about bureaucrats tending to be risk averse, they're no different here than in Canada. But we've overcome that, and they are now joining in a very positive way.

On the other point, if you can't measure it, I don't think you can manage it. In that sense, we have to have these measurements. I don't think measurements are an end in themselves, but they're a very good guide to whether you're actually achieving your objectives.

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

In our country, we have a bit of what we call the “playground to podium” approach. There's an ongoing fight, which is not all that healthy, between physical activity and actual sport, where performance is measured. People are not thrilled that somebody has just gone for a walk. How have you handled that?

[Richard Caborn]

We actually had to go through a learning curve on that. The vast majority of young people want to be involved in team sport for the competition. We have competition managers now. That is very, very important as far as sport is concerned.

With many of the informal sports such as skateboarding, BMXing, dance, and others, young people will not necessarily be involved in team sports and hard competition.

I believe we have to evolve a system that allows that flexibility to engage all those young people. It is amazing how some young people start an informal sport but go into formal sport. It is about keeping the comprehensive structure in play.

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

We are now in the position of having to have sport animators to teach kids how to play tag.

I guess I'm a little worried that we haven't taken the idea of physical literacy in our school system seriously enough, that if kids' parents don't play ball or run with them they end up with no confidence in those things. Do you have the concept of physical literacy there? Are kids encouraged to run and to be able to catch a ball?

We used to have performance levels of gold, silver, and bronze, where kids were asked to try out for these various levels. Do you have anything like that to encourage kids from a very early age to know how to throw and catch a ball?

[Richard Caborn]

Very much so. We're doing that now, and we've come from a very low base, as I said a little earlier. Only 20% of our kids got two hours of sport or physical activity. We've moved that.

You're absolutely right in what you're saying about physical literacy: it is important. We have now put a whole series of pilot schemes into the primary sector in particular, where we believe it will have the greatest gain. We're invested in that physical literacy now.

I think also informal play is important. We're now in the informal play, marking out every school playground so that young people can actually play games themselves—organize their own games—and get the type of physical literacy you're referring to as well. We are still going through quite a steep learning curve in these areas, but we believe we're making some progress.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much, Ms. Bennett.

For the committee's information, I think there was an announcement this morning of $5 million to reinvigorate the program you were just alluding to.

Ms. Davidson.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for your comments. They've been very enlightening.

One of the things we have found in this study we've been doing is that our stats are very similar to yours when it comes to the numbers who are obese and overweight in the country.

The one thing we found was that parents do not recognize that their children are obese. I'm wondering, did you have that difficulty in the U.K., and if you did, how did you address it and make that awareness come through for the parent?

[Richard Caborn]

We have recognized it. We haven't gotten the solution. At this point, there are discussions going on with the Department of Health, my department, and the Department of Education on what should be on a child's end-of-year report. Besides his academic attainment, we believe, and I believe, that the BMI ought to be there as well. This is the discussion that's going on, and it's one that I think is getting quite a lot of credence.

The argument is that once you've told the parent what the problem is, you also then have to say what the solution to it is. This is an area now under discussion with the three departments—Health, Education, and my own department—to take forward, and I think we will be doing that in the next year.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

I think you've made great strides, going to the two hours per week, with up to 80% compliance with it, and in hoping to move to the four hours.

You said that when you moved to the four hours, two hours would be within the curriculum and two hours would be outside the curriculum. What is “outside the curriculum”, and how do you control that? If it's not within a system where you can monitor it and set the criteria for it, how do you get that extra two hours?

[Richard Caborn]

We're invested in a number of areas now with our national governing body. We think, first of all, the cultural shift will be that when a young person has had the experience—and hopefully a nice experience—of participating in sport, they will want to continue beyond the school gate and therefore will join the local cricket club, multi-sports club, rugby club, or whatever. We think it's important to be able to do that.

One of the fault lines I inherited as sport minister was that 70% of our young people, when they left school, did not continue in active sport. We are trying to address that by first of all giving young people an experience in school. When I say that, I mean we are exposing our young people in schools to around 12 to 14 different sports so that they can experience sports that they hopefully will enjoy. Beyond the school gate, we want to make sure they continue that, not just in school but well beyond school life also, so we're trying to encourage your people to join sports clubs.

We've invested very heavily in two areas. One is through the governing body and the club structure and volunteering, and the other is in coaching. We've now invested some £60 million over three years in 3,000 community coaches, who are working within the communities—away from schools, in their communities, with the sports clubs—to try to create a more sustainable infrastructure of sport beyond the school gate. We will measure that through an organization called Sport England, which is a body that is fully funded by government.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Your program is for ages 5 to 16. Is 16 the mandatory age to which kids have to go to school? Was physical activity or physical education ever mandatory in the schools?

[Richard Caborn]

No, it's not mandatory. The only thing that is mandatory, actually, is swimming, but that's for safety reasons, not physical activity reasons. There is now an acceptance, within the curriculum, that everybody does their two hours. That I think is now being broadly accepted by the sheer force of the argument that where we have increased physical activity in sport, academic attainment level has gone up, truancies have come down, exclusions have come down, and the schools are playing a wider role in the community in which they are located. So it's a win-win for everybody. That is now I think accepted right across the education structure.

Beyond 2016, we are now working on further education and our universities in a project similar to the one we've had in our secondary structure.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

So another leg of the program, if you will, is to extend it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Fletcher for five minutes.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

I just have a couple of questions.

Canada, I'm pleased to say, announced this morning significant funds for a Participaction program, which is bringing sports standards to schools throughout the country. We also introduced a tax credit to encourage parents to enrol their kids in sports.

One thing that Canada and the U.K. have in common is that we have the Olympics coming to our respective countries. One is in 2010, and of course yours is a couple of years after that. Are you utilizing that event to encourage sport among young people to deal with obesity, and if so, how?

[Richard Caborn]

Yes, very much so. In fact, we were looking at some stats the other day that showed that the nation has never been more united than on the day of July 6, 2005, when we actually won the Olympics. The whole nation was behind that and still is behind it. It's been a fantastic opportunity to engage more people in thinking about sports and physical activity, probably more than anything else could.

We are capitalizing on the Olympic “gold dust”, as we call it. Indeed, one of the narratives that we were able to win the Olympics on back in Singapore in July 2005...we said to the IOC that we wanted to use this great opportunity to reconnect young people to sport, not just in the U.K., but around the world, through the five rings and the power of the Olympic movement.

Indeed, we're doing that in a number of areas here in the United Kingdom. But we're also working with the Commonwealth, and wider than that, in terms of trying to reconnect young people in the less well off countries in the world with sports. So in a number of ways, we are using the Olympic gold dust, as we call it.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

In fact, Canada will be hosting the Commonwealth Games, too, in a few years.

When you say that you are engaging, could you give us specific examples of how you're leveraging the Olympics to encourage more activity or to tackle childhood obesity?

[Richard Caborn]

First of all, there are the U.K. School Games. The very first one we ran was last year, in Glasgow. The next one will be in Coventry, and then we will be announcing, in a few weeks' time, the other four. So every year now we are building up through every school sport partnership, through to the regions, and then nationally, and every year, starting last year, as it were, we will have the U.K. School Games. We will be changing that to the Schools Olympics next year. By the time we get to 2009-10, we're hoping to have 15 disciplines of sport run at the national level each year. And that will be building up through our school sport partnership competition. Every region and nation of the United Kingdom--nine regions, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland--is also pursuing, on the Olympic ideal, activity levels in each of their regions and nations.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Minister, can we get our people to contact your people to find out some more specifics on this?

Perhaps we can include it in our report, Mr. Chairperson.

[Richard Caborn]

Yes, very much so. My officials are here now, and there are a few officials who I think my officials will be working with. Whatever documentation you want we will make sure is forwarded to you. On the Olympics, specifically, I'll make sure that note has been taken of that. On the U.K. School Games and on our nations and regions committee, which we now have working on the 2012, we will send that over.

Also, in terms of our international policy, we've targeted five nations at the moment, which will move to 20 nations, and I will send you the outline of planning on that as well.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

I look forward to plagiarizing your ideas.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Richard Caborn]

We share them internationally.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Okay, that's enough dirty talk.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!