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?