Health Committee on Dec. 4th, 2007

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

Unless I'm mistaken, next March you will be organizing a conference on the impact of marketing on the weights of children and youth. Before that conference is held, I imagine you have a number of working hypotheses concerning marketing and its influence on the weights of children.

Is it possible for you to state a few for us?

[Jim Ball]

As I mentioned in my remarks, we have commissioned a report on advertising marketing to children. This report deals with a number of aspects of the issue of marketing in general to children, and specifically with advertising food products, etc., that may have a relationship to being overweight or obese.

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

Is there anything specific, any specific points?

[Jim Ball]

Further to the committee's recommendations, this report looks at the legislation that has been put in place in Quebec, which has put a ban on broadcast advertising to children, as well as the work that has been done and the legislation that has been put forward in Sweden. We're following up as per the committee's recommendations.

One of the issues we're particularly concerned about goes beyond broadcast advertising in looking at ways and means to deal with this issue that take into account the broader marketing strategies of industry. This is an important tenet in terms of the way we're looking at this, because there are ways around the regulations governing broadcast advertising--in-store product promotions, brand products appearing on the Internet in games, etc.--so this is a broader issue than just regulations around advertising. It's going to require bringing together industry with government and other stakeholders to develop coherent policies and industry practices that will address this issue.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lui Temelkovski]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Ball and Monsieur Malo.

Madam Wasylycia-Leis is next, for seven minutes.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson, and thanks to all of you for being here today.

I wasn't on the committee when this excellent report was done by the health committee and I'm trying to get up to speed quickly. I would probably share some of the concerns already expressed around the table. It seems that the response rate is rather slow and tedious, given what we know in this area around what really causes obesity and what to do about it.

I break this down into three areas. One is access to good food and to facilities and programs in which you can actually get decent physical activity. Your report is pretty skimpy on those areas, the first being access to good food in northern, remote, and reserve communities. It takes a definitive decision on the part of government to say that we're going to find a way to work with provincial governments and territorial governments to find a way to transport food affordably up to those communities and not just simply review the food mail program. I'll first ask if you have anything specific on that front.

Related to that is access to recreation and physical fitness centres. We can promote this tax credit all we want, but that's going to help only a small number of individuals on a very ad hoc basis, as opposed to creating places people can go and have fun and be physically fit.

Take a community like my own, north end Winnipeg. There's lot of obesity because the kids haven't got access to any recreation facilities. Do you support, and are you going to recommend, something that the Heart and Stroke Foundation has been suggesting, which is to demand that a certain percentage of any government infrastructure moneys goes into the creation of such recreation facilities and physical fitness centres?

[Jim Ball]

Certainly we recognize clearly that access to physical activity opportunities and, further, removing barriers to physical activity opportunities is an important area. It is an area that falls within the jurisdiction of provincial and municipal governments more so than it does with the federal government. Nevertheless, we have put forward a number of initiatives and funding supports that would provide for increased access to physical activity opportunities.

For example, as I mentioned, we are launching the age-friendly cities initiative, which is a supportive set of resources for communities to look at barriers to physical activity participation and to put in supportive opportunities for physical activity participation, such as--

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Can I just stop you? We're not talking about barriers. We're talking about absence of physical fitness facilities, absence of recreation centres, absence of hockey arenas, absence of soccer fields, absence of clubhouses. And government does involve itself through meeting infrastructure needs across this country. It has dominated the federal agenda for a long time.

All I am asking for is whether or not, through the Public Health Agency, you're prepared to recommend to your minister, who can then recommend to cabinet, that in fact, whatever government does with respect to infrastructure dollars, a percentage is allocated to meet the needs of communities when it comes to physical fitness and recreation, which is key to dealing with obesity.

[Jim Ball]

We would agree that increased resources—particularly in those communities that can't afford to put these things in—need to be dedicated. Those resources could come from federal programs, but that may be insufficient alone. I would recommend that there be a collaborative approach to this, engaging federal resources along with provincial-territorial resources and what the community can do for themselves.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Okay, except that there is an area, of course, that's totally federal jurisdiction, and that is the area of reserves. Can you tell me now how many reserves actually have appropriate recreation centres and physical fitness opportunities? Do you have any sense of it on a percentage basis?

[Jim Ball]

This is an area that's clearly being worked on. For specific details in terms of percentages, I'll turn it to my colleague Kathy Langlois to respond.

[Kathy Langlois]

Thank you for the question.

I would hate to refer you to somebody else, but the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs is responsible for the infrastructure needs of communities. I'm only going from memory, but I think in terms of answering a specific percentage, it might be in the order of 50%, but I'm only going by memory from previous testimony. You would need to confirm that with them.

We know that we need to work more in this area, and we are indeed working with Indian and Northern Affairs on physical activity infrastructure and we are considering the issue. In the meantime, we want to maximize the existing school facilities that are there. Many of them have gymnasiums, so we're looking at, through our community-based programming, putting in place those community-based diabetes prevention workers I was talking about. They would work at the community level--bypassing all the federal infrastructure between INAC and Health Canada--to make those gymnasiums available.

So that's our strategy in the interim.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

The other area I want to touch on, if I have time, is the question of junk food and trans fats. That's been a big focus of this committee. We have real concerns with the fact that you're still following the voluntary approach as opposed to something more mandatory and definitive. If there was arsenic in food, we would ban it because it's dangerous. We know that trans fats are dangerous, they're bad, but yet we're taking a voluntary approach. Why is that? Is the business so dominant, is the industry so influential in government, that we can't even stand up and, say, give them a timeline by which we say we ban them. The community is there, Canadians are there, the health organizations are there, and I guess we're looking for some leadership from the Public Health Agency.

It's the same with advertising. We know advertising to young kids is bad when it comes to junk foods. We're all interested in creating junk-food-free zones, whether it's in terms of advertising or schools or stores. It's time. And I don't think we can wait. We keep waiting for more studies and more analysis to see how the industry is complying. Why not just set the standards and give them a time limit and say it's done?

[Jim Ball]

Given that I've already spoken somewhat to this issue, I'd like to refer further comments to my colleague Mary L'Abbé from Health Canada, who is responsible for this particular area.

[Dr. Mary L'Abbé, Director, Bureau of Nutritional Sciences, Department of Health]

Thank you very much.

With the trans fat initiative, we had some very good concrete recommendations from the Trans Fat Task Force, as you are aware. They set some very targeted limits that would help Canadians achieve recommended intakes of trans that the WHO had set forth. In looking at the progress, because there had been a lot of publicity around the risk with consuming trans fats and there had been an awful lot of innovation already occurring, we really did see a market that was under transition. They had changed, and there had been a lot of changes to reduce trans fat. So the decision of the department was to give industry a firm direction of the objectives they had to achieve and a firm timeline, which would be two years.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

If the industry is that compliant, then it wouldn't hurt to actually say we're setting a deadline by which Canadian products must be trans fat free.

[Dr. Mary L'Abbé]

The department did set a timeline of two years for industry to demonstrate that they are removing trans fats from their food product.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lui Temelkovski]

Thank you, Madam Wasylycia-Leis.

Mr. Tilson.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Like Ms. Wasylycia-Leis, I am new to the committee. Obviously this is a very important topic, and I congratulate the committee for the work it has done. Mr. Ball has given an excellent summary on the response. I think, Ms. Bennett, the government is doing an outstanding job.

I have a couple of questions, though many of the questions have already been asked in this area, and that has to do with your comments about the whole issue of obesity, or the topic that has been raised on “Healthy Weights For Healthy Kids”. I think you used the words, “it's a shared responsibility”.

I'd like you to elaborate a little more on that. I look, for example, at the province of Ontario--and I realize what I'm about to say is a provincial issue--where many of the school boards, for the food that's served in the schools, have changed their philosophy about what they're serving. In other words, it's better-quality food. They simply said they weren't going to serve certain foods, which I think is a good thing.

We've talked about advertising. I think all that's very good. We have regulations about advertising for liquor and cigarettes, and there's nothing wrong with putting restrictions on advertising for certain types of food. There's nothing wrong with that, because clearly we have a social problem. I appreciate what you are saying about where the government is going.

Canada's Food Guide is a good thing. I made sure that all the schools in my riding received copies of that document. The problem is, how do you get people to read the darned things? How do you get people to respond? How do you educate mom and dad? We seem to be getting into the schools, but how do you educate mom and dad?

I guess I'm returning to my initial comment about your response of a shared responsibility. I appreciate that you have conferences and consultations planned, and all those are excellent. We have to talk about it. You can't simply snap your fingers and solve this problem that has been building up for years, whether it's food packaging, advertising, or kids playing on computers and watching television, etc. As the papers indicate, it's a very complex issue.

I'd like you to elaborate, or perhaps your colleagues can elaborate, more specifically on the shared responsibility that we have as a federal government with provincial governments, municipal governments, school boards, moms and dads, etc.

[Jim Ball]

Thank you very much for the question. I think you've hit on a very important topic in terms of a shared responsibility.

First of all, the problem of excessive weight and obesity is based on certain societal drivers that are being brought about as a result of the policies and practices of a number of different stakeholders, such as the food industry, for example, the industry that's advancing technology.

In terms of a shared responsibility, the Government of Canada is working with a number of other stakeholders to advance and extend our work. We clearly cannot do this alone. It is a shared responsibility. We are working with the food industry, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, and we are working with other federal departments as well as non-governmental organizations. We have a funding program that is supporting the work of nine different non-governmental organizations to put the kinds of initiatives in place that will support physical activity and healthy eating and thereby address the issue of childhood obesity. As well, we are working through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to bring representatives together with the food industry, agricultural policy, etc., to address this. Furthermore, we are working with provinces and territories through the public health network and have recently jointly funded a joint consortium on school health with the provinces and territories. Through this joint consortium, we are able to work collaboratively with provinces and territories and influence the kinds of things being provided in schools for children and youth.

In addition to that, regarding your comment with respect to working with parents, families are a key stakeholder in addressing childhood obesity. We're working on a number of fronts to support parents. I'll ask my colleagues to comment on this in terms of the kind of information we're providing in the form of physical activity guides and food guides, as well as some social marketing work we are doing to put forward information to Canadian families and their children to address your question.

[Janet Pronk, Director, Policy and Standard Setting Division, Department of Health]

Thank you, Jim.

I think you're absolutely correct that it is very much a shared responsibility in terms of how we deal with the issue of childhood obesity. I'd like to talk about two areas.

One is with respect to the food guide, and I'd like to start by saying it is one tool in the arsenal we have against the issue of childhood obesity. While I know that distributing copies of the food guide is only one very small component, we have distributed over nine million copies right now to consumers and intermediaries--

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Ms. Pronk, I wasn't being critical when I made that comment. The food guide is excellent, but the question is, how do we get people to read it? I don't know what you can do, quite frankly. If people won't read something, they won't read something.

[Janet Pronk]

We work with various partners, and our social marketing campaigns are, I think, a key component in this area. In the winter of 2007 we launched a social marketing campaign specifically targeting the food guide to try to help raise awareness.

I wanted to read a couple of stats, because I think it's important in terms of getting.... We have some recent public opinion research about the release of the food guide, and quite a number of people have seen it. I won't get into that, but the interesting part is that more than 52% of those who saw the food guide said they had made at least one change to their household grocery shopping habits as a result.

The people who were responding to this.... We were targeting younger households where the head of the household was less than 35 years of age, households with children less than six years of age, and larger households with more than five people in the house. In other words, we were trying to get some information from that level that would help us target children specifically. I'll just say that the top three changes they're making include buying more fruit--31.7%--more whole grains, as well as more dark green and orange vegetables. Those key messages were inherent in the food guide.

While I know it's difficult to get the message out to parents, I think it's obvious some of our initiatives are working.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

As a guy who wanders around my constituency, I do notice that people are looking at packaging more. They're reading what they're buying. It's a slow process.

I'm interested in your discussions with the provincial governments. In Ontario, at least recently, perhaps even for the last decade, there has been less emphasis on physical education as a program in the schools. This is in response to Ms. Wasylycia-Leis' comment about our not having facilities and not doing this and not doing that. I concur with that, although my observation is--and I have no facts to rely on, just observations of having children go through the system--that there is less emphasis on physical education.

I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's my observation. In many cases, there are not even programs; there are not even courses. You can opt out of that if you wish; you don't have to take it, which I think is a shame. All of this is part of the package. Physical education is important. Even if you don't know how to play baseball, you can get out there and try to hit the ball.

I guess my question is whether--even though it's not under the federal jurisdiction--as part of your discussions with the provinces and the territories you can ask them in an amicable way to return to perhaps a little bit more emphasis on physical education.

[Jim Ball]

This is a very important area. Clearly you are right in that what goes on in schools is a factor, and that there has been some deterioration in terms of the amount of time spent in schools on at least mandatory physical and health education. It's an issue that we are concerned about. In fact we are trying to play--even though it's within provincial jurisdiction--a role to support some changes in this particular trend.

I will ask my colleague Claude Rocan to provide some further information on that.