Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members.
On behalf of the BC Healthy Living Alliance, we would like to thank you for the opportunity to share our experience and views on what can be done to promote healthy living in Canada.
By way of information, BCHLA is an alliance of nine provincial organizations that have been working together since 2003 to address the common risk factors and health inequities that contribute significantly to chronic disease.
While our work has focused specifically on British Columbia, our experience in overseeing $25 million worth of initiatives to address these risk factors and our involvement in policies to reduce health inequities have provided us with a wealth of knowledge that we believe has applicability to Canada as a whole. We have provided copies of a number of our reports to the committee. We hope you'll have an opportunity to peruse them in more detail.
In the limited time available today, we would like to highlight three main areas.
First, to effectively change social norms related to healthy living, we need a holistic and comprehensive approach. We call it a “whole of society” approach. No one sector can do it alone. To see real results, we need to align our priorities and work on a common agenda.
Within governments at all levels there also needs to be a “whole of government” approach. Whether to redress the underlying social and economic determinants of health or to enact specific policies or actions, the health ministry alone cannot do it all. We need accountability requirements for all departments to address the health and health equity impacts of their policies and programs. We also need a commitment from the Prime Minister, premiers, and mayors to put this issue at the top of their agendas. Only in this way will we move towards a healthier Canada, which will also be a wealthier and more productive Canada.
Second, as you well know, whether you will be healthy or not, in many cases, depends less on the health care system and more on your economic and social circumstances. Without focusing on these determinants of health, including income security, food security, housing, early childhood development, and a healthy built environment, among others, we will never really redress the health inequities that continue to plague us or the ever-increasing levels of chronic disease, with the attendant costs for the health care system, currently estimated at $93 billion a year.
Finally, we need to focus on specific policies and actions that can assist Canadians in changing behaviours and in engaging in healthier lifestyles. We would like to share with you some specific examples of where we believe the federal government can play an important role in making this shift.