Health Committee on May 27th, 2019

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Maybe we could push them to get municipalities reading it and starting to implement it.

[Gerry Gallagher]

Absolutely.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I have maybe 20 seconds left. Could you talk about FitSpirit in 20 seconds?

[Gerry Gallagher]

FitSpirit is a funded project that targets teenage girls to support them in school environments, and outside in the community, through a peer-based model, and to essentially figure out what works to get them moving in a way that does not necessarily limit them to playing volleyball or doing dance or yoga. It's a community-based approach to get young women and girls more active. It's early days, but we're really looking forward to its results.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thanks very much.

Ms. Gladu is next.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to continue on that line of questioning, because I noticed in the statistics that girls are twice as likely as boys to not have enough physical activity. Do we understand why?

[Gerry Gallagher]

We do know that it changes over time. Although younger girls under five tend to be less active than boys, it's as they get older that we see a decline in physical activity. There's still a lot more to be done, but we do know that at a certain point, some girls may choose to not be as active in some of the more traditional physical activities, such as organized sport in a school setting. It may be gender biases influencing what's appropriate for girls to be doing or not doing, and similarly for boys to be doing or not doing. We've seen some of that carry over in the sporting community—in hockey, you see a lot higher participation rates for girls, but there are other areas where we tend not to see those same levels of activity.

I would say it's an area of strong interest. I do know that some of our colleagues in the research community are looking at this issue more closely. Within our own funded projects, such as FitSpirit, we're trying to better unpack this issue. We're also trying to unpack this for a range of young people who may be along a gender continuum that is not just about being a boy or a girl and self-identify as LGBTQ, as an example. We need to be making sure that our programs are inclusive.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Okay.

I noted the money you are spending in “promoting healthy living and preventing chronic disease through multisectoral partnerships”. One of the examples you gave sounded really good. Could you give some other examples of what people are doing with the money?

[Gerry Gallagher]

Sure. I'm happy to do that.

I did speak a bit earlier about Trottibus, which had some really interesting results. The other one I'll talk about is Sharing Dance. The recipient in this project is Canada's National Ballet School.

This project uses dance for a range of age groups, and in particular it shows boys and girls how to incorporate dance in building their physical literacy. It has both in-person and online resources. It's the notion that wherever you live, work, learn and play, you can be adapting dance to different types of circumstances.

We have it now in Alberta, Manitoba, B.C., Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, with the opportunity for further scale-up. It's a 12-week program, in 42 communities, in seven provinces. We expect that it will also be reaching 120 communities in other parts of the country. As for the number of project partners, we have 100 organizations and individuals across the country.

We feel that some youth may move more in school while others might move more outside of the school environment, because of some of the barriers we've talked about.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

The BOKS program looked like it was really successful. I especially liked the reduction in negative behaviours among the people who participated. It was in 1,300 schools. Are there any plans to expand that initiative?

[Gerry Gallagher]

That initiative is expected to wrap up in August of 2019. Part of what we do with any of our funded projects is seek partners for sustainable funding. I don't have that report with me right here, but certainly readiness to scale up is a feature of any of our projects. It's very much a part of why we bring other partners on board at the front end.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Do you have any information about an urban-rural divide with respect to physical activity? Are kids in the country more likely to be active because they're working on the farm? What do the statistics say?

[Andrew MacKenzie, Director, Behaviours, Environments and Lifespan Division, Centre for Surveillance and Applied Research, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada]

According to the data, there is not a significant difference between urban and rural. That was one of the first things I thought. I grew up in the country as well, and I expected that the rural kids would be more active, but according to the data, they're not.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

One of the things that can affect children's ability to be active is how much sleep they get. What kind of data do we have on the amount of sleep that children are getting? There was a mandatory eight o'clock bedtime for young children when I was growing up, and that seems largely abandoned.

[Andrew MacKenzie]

I don't have it in front of me, but there is ongoing data collection about getting sleep, and the results are showing that children are not getting enough sleep. I believe it was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50%-60% of children who don't get enough sleep. The leading example was screen time: They were up too late on their phones, iPods or tablets.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I've heard that they have their phones with them all night and they don't sleep. That's another problem.

[Andrew MacKenzie]

Exactly.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

How do we get children to play? When I was young, all the kids in the neighbourhood played. I don't know whether it happened organically, but the kids now seem very siloed and they don't seem to play in the same way.

[Gerry Gallagher]

I'm not sure I can give you a straight-up answer on that. What I will say is that the research community in Canada and elsewhere is very interested in that. There is a real push for active, outdoor play as a complement to more structured activities, such as dance or sport.

There's also an interest in animating our public spaces. It's one thing to have a nice green park down the street; it's another thing if you don't feel safe in it and/or there isn't a social environment in that park that makes it a fun and desirable place to go. There's some interesting work going on to look at some of those models, both in Canada and elsewhere.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

I was interested in the comments about how you exercise, how you get your fitness and the need for families to do things together. Are there any pilots you've invested in or things you've done that you think we should leverage across the country?

[Gerry Gallagher]

Within our team's multisectoral partnerships funding initiative, family is often a feature of some of the funded projects. We do not currently have a family-targeted initiative, but through some of our agency's children's programs, we do support more vulnerable families for healthier environments, not only within the program but outside of it. This includes physical activity, healthy eating and social support. We see that very much as a complement to what we do.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Ms. Quach for seven minutes.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for joining us today.

I have several questions about Mr. Peterson's statement regarding the lack of funding and research on physical activity issues among young people in particular. According to him, several of the groups consulted said that they lacked research and evidence concerning the impact on the physical and mental health of young people.

Do you have any research on that? Was this done after the development of the common vision? It's quite recent, but still, it has been almost a year.

Has funding for physical activity among young people increased since then? If so, by how much? How many programs have been developed based on this vision and increased funding, if applicable?

If not, why hasn't the funding been increased?