Health Committee on Dec. 12th, 2011

[Kelly Murumets]

I have three thoughts. First, we need the federal Minister of Health to have a passionate burning in her heart and a vision for what health care should be in this country, and it does need to be focused on prevention and on deploying federal dollars for prevention and not just on treatment.

Second, we need to align provinces and territories, and I believe that does need to start at the federal level. So we need our federal Minister of Health to pull the provinces and territories together, share that burning passion, and be sure that it's shared by the provinces and territories so that we're all moving in the same direction.

Third, with Andrea and PHEC and about eight other organizations in this country, we've created Active Canada 20/20, which is a national strategy for physical activity. It's a change agenda for this country, which could form the basis of some of those conversations with the federal Minister of Health right through to provinces and territories. It includes not only policy but programs and social marketing as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Ms. Grantham, did you want to comment?

[Andrea Grantham]

I would support what Scott, Kelly, and Patrick have said in terms of the need to better balance the investment towards prevention, so that we're not seeing less than 1% spent on an area that's going to prevent the diseases to begin with.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Do I have a little more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Yes.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Just to pick up on what you said about this Active Canada 20/20, where eight organizations are involved, is the federal government at all involved in that?

[Kelly Murumets]

Yes.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Can you spell it out a bit more?

[Kelly Murumets]

They are at the table, so we've been creating this draft, Active Canada 20/20, and it has gone out for consultation. We've had opinions and feedback on this document from more than 800 people. It has been drafted and redrafted. I'm actually in Ottawa tomorrow for another round of drafting.

We're moving to presenting it at the SPAR meeting in April of 2012, the meeting of the ministers of sport, physical activity, and health prevention and health promotion. We're trying to have not only federal involvement and provincial and territorial government involvement, but also involvement of the not-for-profit sector in drafting this Active Canada 20/20 change agenda.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Murumets.

We'll now go to Mr. Gill.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here with us.

I'm going to start my questions with Physical and Health Education Canada.

Would you be able to discuss some of the most effective ways for schools to promote physical activity and health awareness?

[Andrea Grantham]

I missed the last part of that--sorry.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Let me repeat the whole thing.

Can you discuss some of the most effective ways for schools to promote physical activity and health awareness?

[Andrea Grantham]

Yes, absolutely: primarily through the delivery of quality physical education delivered by qualified instructors. In every province in this country, we have excellent curricula from a physical education standpoint and from a health education standpoint.

The problem is that there are issues in the delivery. Schools are restrained by budgets and by competing demands. Quite often, the first things to go in schools are physical education and health education.

I think this needs to be a priority in the schools. It is a core subject. It is education. Every child goes to school. If every child had access to a daily physical education program in which they could develop a variety of skills in a variety of different settings, they would have the foundation, the habits, the attitudes, and the confidence to participate in physical activity beyond school. I think that's number one within the school environment.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Do you feel that there's a link between physical activity and academic performance among students?

[Andrea Grantham]

Absolutely. Research shows that. In fact, in the Active Healthy Kids Canada report card two years ago, they focused on academic achievement, and many studies indicated that children who have access to daily physical education and physical activity learn better. Social cohesion was improved in school. It was a better environment overall.

So while some would say that physical education takes time away, it in fact contributes to better classroom management and to kids being better prepared to learn within a classroom environment. It's an investment of their time to perform better within a classroom.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Mr. Haldane.

[Scott Haldane]

Speaking from my experience in recently visiting first nation communities as well, where there is very little in the way of physical activity and physical education going on in the schools, one of the things we have learned from an analysis of Statistics Canada data is that there is a direct link between sports and recreation activities and first nation school success. It is one of the factors that we think makes a significant difference.

School attachment is the other factor. Even if you think of yourself or your own children...certainly for me, if I think about my high school years, I might not have stuck with it if it hadn't been for the sports and recreation programming. So in addition to the physical activity benefits, you also have school attainment benefits, which, through a determinants of health lens, helps us to break through the cycles and make sure that populations can stay healthy into the future.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is for ParticipACTION.

What do you think accounts for the decline in sports participation from 77% in 1992 to 59% in 2005 among youth aged 15 to 17? Is it just a rise in Internet use? Clearly, television has been around for a while. Since the 1990s....

[Kelly Murumets]

As a society we're more sedentary, so there are many, many, factors at play. Certainly technology is one of them. Technology is not going to go away, by the way. As a society, you know, we even have a button to push for pepper; you don't even have to grind pepper any more. We're just that much more sedentary.

Because we don't have physical education being taught in schools as physical education and we don't have physical activity times in schools, a lot of our kids aren't learning physical literacy. That's a term Andrea used a little bit earlier. Kids actually don't know how to kick, run, jump, tumble, and throw. They're not learning those skills, and they're very basic skills.

Without that confidence as young children, they then don't carry that confidence through school, so they don't join sports and they don't play sports. That continues throughout their lives. As well, if you don't have that confidence, you actually don't take up sport as an adult. You see sport participation levels going down, but you see overall physical activity levels on a decline as well.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you.

How do you feel that workplaces contribute to a more active lifestyle for adults, especially businesses in which employees spend the majority of their time at a desk?

[Kelly Murumets]

Just as Andrea mentioned that kids who are more physically active score better academically in math and reading, we know that in the workplace, if employees are more physically active, they're healthier, and productivity increases dramatically. That's indisputably supported by data.

I believe strongly—this is my background—that the private sector has a role to play in this. Without the not-for-profit sector being arm in arm with the public sector and the private sector, we will never turn this trend around. We need to pull the private sector into this conversation. They need to be ensuring that their employees are physically active at work, that they support physical activity time at work, that they support their employees being members of gyms, or even just being part of walking programs. As well, we need them at our table helping with the resources--money and expertise that we just don't have in the not-for-profit sector.

So there are a whole bunch of ways the private sector can help, not just in the workplace itself, but in this conversation in general.

[Dr. Patrick Morency]

I'd like to add that it's not only what people do at work or at school, but how they get to work and how they get to school. Forty years ago most children were walking to school. There are issues with urban planning. We need dense areas with a lot of destinations mixed in and safe roads. So there are a lot of issues with urban planning and road safety too, in order to go to school or to go to work either using public transit or walking or cycling.

Thanks.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

How much time do I have, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

You have just about 30 seconds.