Health Committee on Feb. 9th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you. I have another minute, so I have one more question. It relates to the aboriginal sector.

My son is married to a full-blooded aboriginal girl. I know there's a community that is very concerned about the welfare of the young people and about obesity. How do you get that educational component to these young people? It seems to me that a lot of the kids don't even know what healthy eating is about; they're obese because they like pop and they like chips, and the parents encourage them to go out and buy some. How do you get that education to them?

[Dr. Martin Cooke]

Certainly that's something we hear from our partners. Our co-coordinator of this project, Teri Morrow, is a dietitian whose job has been health promotion among urban aboriginal children, for the most part.

My best answer is that it depends on what's going on in that community. Local folks know how to do that and how to make it most meaningful, I think, but I'm an outsider as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you. I'm out of time, so I have to go to Dr. Morin.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

I think my question was misunderstood earlier, so I'm going to say it in English.

Mr. Wilk, in your presentation you mentioned long-term funding for programs, right? Can you tell us more about the current situation, and what you wish from the partners, the government or whomever, in order to increase long-term funding for good programs?

[Dr. Piotr Wilk]

Yes, I can talk on behalf of our partners in London, Ontario, because that's who we have heard from. Definitely one of the major complaints was that very often their funding would be for specific programs and would last for maybe a year or two; then the funding would be gone, regardless of whether the program was successful or not.

Definitely, there has to be some sort of structural change in the way successful or good programs are funded; oherwise, you create a hope, because something is being done at the community level, and then you take that hope by taking that programming away. It's not only the fact that it is not creating a positive trend at the community level, but also it's disappointing for our partners, who think they are being deprived of those things that were given to them before. Probably some sort of continuation in funding would be much better.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

I suppose that when funding stops and the program must therefore also stop, the expertise of the team, which after a couple of years has become great, is lost when the team is dismantled.

[Dr. Piotr Wilk]

I would completely agree with you. We are finding ourselves in a position where we are basically trying to find an answer to a question that maybe someone answered a few years ago, but there is no record and there might be no institutional retention of that knowledge. For that reason, there definitely has to be some change at the system level, rather than just at the individual level.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mary Collins, you also talked about this. Could you give us your experience?

[Mary Collins]

We would certainly ask the federal government to continue robust funding for the various agencies—CIHR and the different agencies that are supporting research projects—and perhaps have them look at the term of funding for many of these.

The other thing we've been very pleased about, of course, is that the cancer prevention strategy was renewed.

Perhaps we should look at a more integrated strategy around chronic disease prevention, rather than disease-specific or risk factor-specific, because we're recognizing it needs to be integrated. We should think about how the federal government might be able to provide funding through research organizations to do some on-the-ground kinds of research that will yield some really robust outcomes.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

With our current financial situation and with compression everywhere, I'm afraid that money devoted to research or to good programs will be cut. In health care when money is tight, prevention is the first thing that is cut, and the government focuses on acute care, which is not a good long-term solution.

[Mary Collins]

I agree. We would certainly plead that prevention is the last thing that should be cut, and the programs to support those kinds of activities. Otherwise, we're just going to continue in this cycle of ever-increasing health care costs.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you very much.

Now we're going to suspend. Committee, we're going into our business section.

I want to thank you very much for your presentations. I would kindly ask you, if you want to speak to anybody, to do so outside the doors, because we need to start our business right away.

Thank you so much. We'll suspend for one minute.

[Proceedings continue in camera]