Health Committee on Feb. 19th, 2007

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much.

The people from the food agency were talking about having 55 million consumers enrolled in a study to try to get some idea as to what is working and how well it's working. Do you have some way of evaluating these dollars that flow through the idea of sport and play? Do you have a methodology to evaluate what kinds of results you're getting?

[Richard Caborn]

We are doing that in terms of the schools with BMI, the body mass indicator, which we are now bringing in through the Department for Education and Skills. We are monitoring. We have just done the active people survey. It is the most comprehensive survey that has ever been undertaken in England about activity. It goes down to what we call a borough, which is a small sample. So we now have what we call that active people survey, which shows us the level of activity we have today. We will be getting that and measuring our performance.

Beyond the investment into schools, we have also committed ourselves to getting the nation active by 1% per annum, not on the World Health Organization's criterion, but one that we've brought forward ourselves. We think it's realistic, and that is three half-hour sessions of moderate physical activity per week, per person. We want to increase the participation in that by 1%, year on year. Again, we're monitoring that against the active people survey that was completed a couple of months ago.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

Our situation here would be much like yours, in that there are several federal departments involved in trying to tackle this problem, or ones that will be involved if we get this project off the ground.

How did you achieve this necessary collaboration between and among departments? Do you have, say, a committee of deputy ministers or some such mechanism? How did you get everybody on board to tackle this, or was it an initiative of the Prime Minister?

[Richard Caborn]

It was an initiative of the Prime Minister to start with, there's no doubt about that, recognizing that physical activity in our young people, not just on the question of health, but also the questions of social inclusion, of education, and of academic attainment levels, could be addressed in part by having our young people more physically active and indeed involved with sports. That was how we started talking across departments. The Department for Education and Skills and my department have had a very clear working relationship for some six years now, in driving forward the school sports partnership.

If I can just explain it very briefly, the school sports partnership is a partnership for roughly 100,000 of the population. There are 450 of these partnerships in England. They comprise one sports college, eight secondary schools, and an average of between thirty to forty primary schools. Involved in those are 3,000 school sports coordinators. A coordinator is a teacher who has two to three days a week of organizing sports within the schools and between the schools and developing the whole physical activity agenda. They are back-filled by another teacher, and that's where the big investment comes in.

In terms of the link between the primary schools to their secondary school—the feeder schools—we have 18,000 primary-link teachers who have 24 days a year, who are again paid for and are back-filled by other teachers, so that they can organize sport and physical activity, again within the schools and between the schools. The output for that, as I said, is to give every child two hours of quality physical activity or sport every week from the ages of 5 to 16.

What we have seen from that is that academic attainment levels have gone up. We believe we have now settled the question of the health of our young people, particularly around type 2 diabetes. Thirdly, we find that where young people are engaged in sport and physical activity, they are less likely to get involved in activities of a disruptive nature, such as crime and social disorder.

So we are working on three agendas there: on health, on education, and on social inclusion.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Luc Malo.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for joining us today, Minister.

If I understand correctly, you are attempting to bring about a genuine change in culture. You want the public to move from a more sedentary lifestyle to a more active one.

Can you tell us how much time you have given yourself to bring about this major change? What means do have available or what tools will you be using to assess if indeed members of society have acquired new and healthier habits?

[Richard Caborn]

On the very clear output that we are trying to achieve—and we're talking now about young people in our schools, in our education system—our first target was to have 80% of the population doing two hours of quality physical activity or sport every week by the year 2008. By the year 2010, we want to move to having every child doing four hours of physical activity, with two within the curriculum and two outside the curriculum.

We also want to affect eating habits as well, and that is being done by a series of innovations; of education within schools; by banning certain types of advertising on children's television; and also through a process of education across the schools' population about healthy lifestyles. So we have very clear outputs that we are trying to achieve at certain dates on the calendar in the years ahead.

In terms of the general population, against a survey we did that was completed last year, we know the activity levels of the general population now. Roughly a third of the population is doing three half-hours of moderate physical activity per week. We want to move a further third of the nation over the next period by increasing the physical activity levels of the nation by 1% per annum. We will be measuring that against the data from what we call the active people survey, which was done last year.

So we have very clear outputs that we are looking for, and we're investing in certain programs and projects to make sure they happen.

Does that answer your question?

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you.

I also understood you to say that you want society to be more inclusive.

Are you planning to, or have you already put in place specific measures to promote a healthier lifestyle among lower income or economically disadvantaged people?

[Richard Caborn]

Yes, at a number of levels we are targeting the more deprived areas. First of all, slightly away from the health issue but on social inclusion, we're developing a number of community sports committee coaches who will go into various systems, particularly the probation service, and help to bring young people back into society through the medium of sport. Many of our young people on the estates, in inner city areas, tend to be at the bottom of the economic ladder and those who are likely to fall out of society the quickest. We believe they could also be brought back into society through the medium of sport and physical activity, and we have some very good examples of that in operation.

On the wider issue of sport and physical activity to the more deprived areas, yes, we are focusing the investment strategies into those areas to make sure we have the facilities, in terms of buildings, but also, importantly, in terms of people, whether they be coaches, teachers, or indeed volunteers. Again, we're investing in those areas, and there's a bias to the investment strategy into those areas as well.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

I must also admit that our figures on the number of overweight or obese people are as distressing as yours. As the committee chair was saying earlier, it's important to be aware of the problem.

What did you do in your country to increase public awareness of the extent of the problem? What measures were put in place to achieve this objective?

[Richard Caborn]

Obviously, as a government, through our normal advertising programs, we are trying to bring that to the attention of the British public, but I do believe now even the more popular press are taking up the message and indeed are very helpful in getting the message across that a healthy lifestyle is a much more desirable lifestyle than one that's associated with obesity and overweight. There is a general campaign, but also that general campaign now is being picked up by the popular press, and many programs, activities, are actually run by the media to show the problems of obesity and overweight.

So I think there is a cultural shift. People are now recognizing that life itself is at stake if we continue on the path we've had in the recent past. When I look at young people here in the U.K., 30 years ago a child got 70% more physical activity than a child today. Therefore, to turn that around is a major cultural shift by the whole of the nation and not just one part of it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I'm sorry, Mr. Malo, your time is done.

We'll now move to Mr. Dykstra.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's interesting listening to the background and the similarities in terms of my school days. It wasn't an argument about setting minimums; it was trying to keep all of us in school and coming in right after recess because we'd keep playing football and we'd keep playing outside. We had gym teachers. We'd never talk about whether or not it should be a minimum of two hours. It was about how to keep the kids in the classroom longer. So your point about the shift is very well made, Richard.

I wondered, just to refer a little bit back to that, in terms of the lottery fund, I'm not familiar with how it works in the U.K. Here it's basically a provincial entity; the provinces run them, versus the federal. How does it work in the U.K.?

[Richard Caborn]

We have one national lottery, and that's divided into four parts. Of that, 50% goes toward what we call the big lottery fund, which has certain themes, of which healthy lifestyle is one, but then there are three specific areas for which the other 50% is divided--heritage, the arts, and sport. Each of the organizations responsible for those three areas--heritage, arts, and sport--receive a third of the 50%. My math isn't very good, but it's a third of the 50% of the lottery. To sport, that is worth about £220 million a year.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

How did you develop the two-hour minimum and moving that forward to get to four hours over the next number of years? How did you set the threshold?

[Richard Caborn]

We set the threshold with our advisors from the Department of Education, and in partnership with them we are trying to achieve that. It was an agreement particularly driven by the Department of Education, and we accepted their analysis of that.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

So you've hit an 80% target with schools. I'm trying to understand that if you set the program up and requested or ordered this--depending on whether you did this through legislation or regulation—why you wouldn't have had 100% participation by all schools.

[Richard Caborn]

We're moving toward that, but we have set ourselves a realistic target of 75% of pupils by 2006. The target will rise to 85% by 2008. We then want to increase it from two hours to four hours for every child by 2010.

We really need to get the investment into infrastructure, school sports coordinators, and coaching. So there are a number of areas in which we were massively under-invested to achieve those activity levels. One can set these targets, but you have to be realistic about the investment and how quickly that investment can actually be realized in terms of buildings, people, and support staff.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I know we're dealing with things on a sort of macro level. You may or may not have received a number of letters, but I wonder what the overall reaction from parents has been. Have they found this to be the right thing to do? Was it difficult for them to organize, or has there been a positive reaction? More importantly, do they understand the issue they're dealing with in terms of childhood obesity?

[Richard Caborn]

I think they are becoming more and more aware of the problems of overweight and childhood obesity. There are no doubts about that. Broadly speaking, society is now concerned about obesity and will support measures to start to address it.

In the five years from 2001 to 2005, we have moved the school population from two million to five million, so three million young people are now doing two hours of physical activity or sport who weren't doing that in 2001-02. That is a massive shift in young people's physical activity. We want to build on that.

I think that's having an effect on their parents as well. It was very interesting a few weeks ago when I had Weight Watchers and Slimming World address these issues of obesity and overweight. Over the last two or three years they have gone from just programs on calories in to including calories out as well. Now 50% of the programs at Weight Watchers and Slimming World are about diet, but 50% are about physical activity. What is also very interesting is that they are both now involving the family unit in a way that never was the case a few years ago.

I think there is now a shift in culture, driven partly by the media and partly by what we're doing in schools, but there's a realization of the family unit in addressing these issues in a more collective way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you, Mr. Dykstra.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett.

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you again for your example of being able to cross government departments in your approach.

How important are realistic targets in getting government departments to work together on things?

[Richard Caborn]

I think it is realistic. The results from the investment in sport and physical activity are now being proven. Until three or four years ago, sport and physical activity were not really on the government or indeed the political agenda. I think they are now, probably in a way that has not been the case before. I think the more we incentivize that through finance and investment the more effect it will have.

It is interesting how we're engaging the private sector in this debate. A healthy workforce being a more productive workforce is one that will hit the bottom line of those companies in a really steep way. The more progressive companies are joining with us to make sure that the 1% per annum we are trying to achieve in terms of physical activity for the adult population is now finding a home, even inside the private sector. There is a shift.

You are also right in making sure that local authorities, through their planning departments, and architects, through the buildings they are designing, all have physical activity at the heart.

The other area we're trying to address—

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

Your Prime Minister was very bold early on in his tenure in setting hard targets on cardiovascular and other things that bureaucrats tend to be risk averse about. In terms of the political will to be potentially embarrassed by having a target we don't meet, I think what I'm hearing is that we have to have hard targets if we're going to do anything.

The second part is that we have a healthy school consortium here in this country. It is only the ministers of health and education. I know the sport ministers feel they should be part of that consortium. With the work in smaller communities in Canada—maybe it's happened in the gym of the community centre and not in the school—there has to be these sorts of partnerships.

Would you suggest that our committee recommend that they include the sport ministers in the school health consortium?