Evidence of meeting #146 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was school.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Conservative
An hon. member
I'd like to put on the record that we're actually going to be doing jumping jacks.
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
Twenty-five, everyone. All right. Let's go. Go borrow some music.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11.... Let's stop at 12.
Conservative
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
Okay, we'll start all over again. Press zero.
Thank you.
Thank you again for being here today.
I'm just going online here, Elio, to take a look at your organization, Participaction. Are you currently a non-profit organization?
President and Chief Executive Officer, ParticipACTION
We're a national non-profit charitable organization.
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
Do you rely mainly on government funding, or are there other revenue avenues?
President and Chief Executive Officer, ParticipACTION
About 30% of our funding is relied upon from the private sector and through other means. Currently 70% of our funding is through federal or provincial governments.
With regard to that point, we're very, very pleased and happy that we were in the 2018 budget for $5 million. We also get about $2 million from Sport Canada, so our total federal contribution is about $7 million. However, up until now, our funding has been very much project-based. We implement a great project, and then we have to go apply for more money for another project. I don't think that we've ever had the luxury or the benefit of having a long-term perspective on our strategy. This is now the first time that we've been able to do that. We've been given secure funding for five years. I'm very excited about the opportunity to do that.
Conservative
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
I'm just reading through here again.
I understand you were shut down at one time, back in 2001, due to financial cutbacks by the Chrétien Liberal government. Thankfully, back in 2007, the Conservative Harper government revived you. Thank God for Stephen Harper for that.
Now Mr. Peterson has brought forward his motion. I think the Liberal government sees now that the issue of children and obesity is a very important area to look into. There's my election plug.
I recall growing up with the names Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod. They were household names, along with BodyBreak. You certainly don't hear from them anymore.
Do you have any aspiration of bringing back Hal and Joanne or anyone similar to put together a national campaign, a minute's break on TV when two people talk about BodyBreak?
Is there anything?
President and Chief Executive Officer, ParticipACTION
I think that in my role as CEO, I hear two things:
First, where are Hal and Joanne? Are they still part of Participaction? Second, whatever happened to the Canada Fitness Award program?
President and Chief Executive Officer, ParticipACTION
With regard to both of those things, I would say no, we're not planning to bring them back.
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, ParticipACTION
The Canada Fitness Award program actually wasn't that successful. It actually turned more kids away from physical activity than it turned on. It was very performance-based.
We are looking at other programs.
With respect to Hal and Joanne, I think the media landscape has changed and our society has changed. We're not convinced that's the right format as we go forward.
However, with the $25 million over five years, we have implemented three key initiatives. One is a new campaign called “everything gets better when you get active”. The notion is that Canadians need to understand that physical activity is something that will benefit them now, not 20 years from now. By being physically active, you can think better, you can focus better, you can be a better parent and you can have better relationships. We're trying to ingrain this notion of the immediate benefits of being physically active. That's our campaign and our strategy over the next five years: that everything does get better when you get active.
The second is something we're launching on May 31. You should be getting in your inboxes this week some information about the “community better challenge”. We're challenging every community across Canada to get their residents to be physically active, to track their physical activity over a two-week period and to try to identify the most active community in the country. We will then provide $150,000 to that community to support physical activity there.
Again, a challenge in itself is not going to change behaviours, but it does create awareness and it mobilizes community organizations to work together and to value physical activity and building community.
You might think the third is a bit odd: We've actually created a digital app. We've talked a lot about technology and the fact that technology contributes to being sedentary. We understand that, but we also understand that technology is not going to go away. With this in mind, we created a digital app that gives Canadians the targeted support and content to help them become more physically active. It customizes the content and the actual information that we provide to Canadians depending on their age, their location and their particular barriers to being physically active.
If everyone here had the app, you would all have a different experience with it. We just launched the app in February and we have over 50,000 people utilizing it.
The challenge is being launched on May 31. We already have about a thousand communities committed to participating.
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
That is excellent.
Very quickly, there was a commercial back in my day, too, that was on TV. It compared the health of a 30-year-old Canadian to a 60-year-old Swede.
Have things gotten worse since? Thirty years ago we were quite active. Has it changed? Where in the world are they doing a good job? Is it still in Sweden?
