Health Committee on May 27th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome, everybody, to meeting number 146 of the Standing Committee on Health.

We're pleased to welcome Mr. Peterson today to talk about his motion. We're looking forward to his opening remarks.

We have only 30 minutes for this part, so Mr. Peterson, the less you have in your opening statement, the more chance we have to ask you questions, but you have 10 minutes if you want them, starting now.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate that the question round is usually where more lucid information is gathered, so I'll just make a brief statement.

First of all, I'll just thank the committee for undertaking this study. I know at this time of year, when it comes to committee schedules, there is not a shortage of work to be done, so I appreciate the effort that this committee has made to ensure that what I think is an important study will be undertaken.

I'll give a bit of the background of why I thought this would be an important private member's motion to bring to the House. I gave my speech in the House, as of course you do when you're moving a private member's motion, and I'm not going to reiterate all of that. That's available, of course, for the public record.

Just from a personal standpoint, I am now the father of two young boys and I am abundantly aware of how it's becoming increasingly difficult to get children—not just my children, but the cohort of their friends and their peers—to be as physically active as perhaps those of my generation were in our youth.

I had the good fortune of being the son of a phys. ed. teacher when I was growing up, so I grew up with, I think, a keen awareness of the importance of physical activity, the importance of play and the importance of just being active as a child. At the time, you don't appreciate it and you don't necessarily even realize what's going on. In hindsight and as I looked back and as I undertook the research I did to bring this motion forward, I realized how important that was in my development as a child and in my college years, and in the development of my peers, and how fortunate I was to have that environment and that upbringing.

My father, unfortunately, passed away the year of the election, 2015, just before I was elected, so he never got to see me become a member of Parliament, but a small part of me dedicates this motion to his legacy. That's why it's important from a personal level that I'm doing this, but it's also important on a universal and a national level.

As I spoke to stakeholder groups across the country, and even in my local community—we all have great recreation and physical activity groups in our local communities—I heard the acceptance that the level of physical activity of youth is such a key determinant of future outcomes and is so important, yet everyone agreed with me that we're not doing enough.

There seems to be a consensus that more needs to be done and that this is an important undertaking and that it's an important goal to have children and youth physically active, yet we're not getting to where we should be in this area.

I then of course continued on my research, and the Participaction report card happened to come out just a few months before I introduced the private member's motion late last year, I believe. We're failing, and the metrics are right there in black and white. I don't need to go over them. I know that Participaction will also be here on this study, I think later today or tomorrow, and they can obviously speak much more eloquently about those results.

It's clear to any objective observer that we're not doing enough and we're failing our children. As the research starts to evolve, pointing to the importance of mental health in our children and what role physical activity plays in ensuring mentally healthy children as well as physical health, I think it becomes even doubly more important than it was even in our understanding 10 or 15 years ago.

Physical activity was always seen to be important to have healthy bones, healthy muscles, a healthy weight and in reducing physical impairments like diabetes and things like that, but now we're becoming more and more aware of the important role physical activity in youth has on mental health and resilience to bullying and the ability to handle stressful situations.

All this stuff, it seems to me, would be a very positive solution and a way of ensuring that our next generation of children is healthy and capable and strong and resilient, and I don't think, as a federal government—or frankly, as provincial governments or even at the municipal level, that we're doing enough to make sure that we have all around healthy children.

I think some of the solutions are right in front of us. I know I'm going to have a lot of questions—and I can expand on a lot of this—but the ultimate goal of this private member's motion was just to promote and support physical activity of young Canadians, and it's as simple as that. What recommendations—concrete, specific, precise recommendations—can this committee make to the federal government in an effort to ensure that goal is reached?

The goal is simply that every child should be physically active. It's as simple as that.

The question is simple. The answer, obviously, is more complex.

That's where I come from on this motion.

As I said, I have two young boys. We encourage them to be physically active, but they also spend more time than I would like on screens. When I was a child, that wasn't a thing. We would watch TV every now and then, but we didn't have access to content 24 hours a day on things you can hold in your hand wherever you are. I don't think we, as a society, have even begun to realize the detrimental effects of that upbringing. We need anything we can do as a federal government to ensure a healthier lifestyle, such as guidelines or whatever we can do to promote physical activity, because when they're physically active, they're not on tablets and iPads and streaming Netflix. They're doing things that presumably are more productive for them and more beneficial to their development.

There's another thing I'd like to point out. There's also a disparity that struck me between young girls and young boys. Boys are not nearly active enough, but young girls are even less so. I would imagine there are a myriad of reasons for that, but I don't think it's at all fair, first of all, to not encourage all young people to be healthy and active, and when there is that disparity between genders, it's doubly unfair. As a federal government, we need to do what we can to ensure that young girls are as active as young boys and have the same opportunities and motivation to be active.

You can go across a bunch of different subsectors and cultures—there are different numbers in all cultures throughout Canada—but I think we need to bring everybody up to a level that ensures healthy children for the future. The benefits are indisputable.

With that, I'm happy to be in your hands, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thanks very much.

When I first heard this motion, the thought came to my mind of going into a high school and seeing the kids all lined up, sitting on the floor as far as you could see, on both sides, banging away on their iPhones. Twenty years ago they'd have been outside doing something.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Ouellette, I want to thank you for helping to put this whole thing together. This was your notion, and I give you full marks for it. I'm glad you're here.

Ms. Damoff, you're first. You're going to split your time with Mr. Ouellette, I understand.

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

I am. Thank you, Chair.

Kyle, I want to thank you for bringing this motion forward. I was honoured to second it. It's something I feel strongly about as well. It's not just about kids playing sports. It's about them being active every single day, incorporating that physical activity into their daily activities.

This is Bike to Work and School Week. We don't see the number of kids that should be biking and walking to school or to go to their friends' places. I think one of the reasons for that—or one that I hear all the time—is that parents don't feel their kids are safe because of a lack of sidewalks or bike lanes.

Our government has invested billions of dollars into infrastructure projects. Within one of the streams, municipalities can apply for active transportation infrastructure, which means cycling and walking infrastructure. Many have done so. Do you think the government could do a better job of promoting that stream and letting municipalities know that it's available for them to apply for? We know that investment in active transportation infrastructure is one of the cheapest returns for the dollar that a municipality can make. Some are doing it, but others aren't.

Do you think we could do a better job of that?

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

To answer bluntly, yes. I don't think we're doing enough to create awareness. I'm not even necessarily convinced that we're doing enough in the number of investments available for that. It seems to me that the federal government could play a role in ensuring the physical infrastructure is there to promote a healthy lifestyle.

You don't want to get into education; that's obviously provincial. There's a lot of municipal infrastructure as well, but I don't think the federal government, generally speaking, is doing enough to make people aware that there are investment dollars for infrastructure or to make those infrastructure dollars available.

That's a concrete example of how the federal government can play a role in promoting the physical activity of youth—investment in infrastructure.

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

The PTIF funding includes active transportation, but when I talk to other MPs and the people at Canada Bikes and Canada Walks, I find that people aren't applying for it.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

No, and part of it is just that as individual MPs, we all need to make our constituent groups, our stakeholders, aware of what's out there as well. I know we all do our best efforts to do that, but I think there just needs to be more promotion, perhaps.

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

Okay.

Robert, do you want the rest of my time?

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Could I just add to that?

If you look at comparisons, you'll see that Japan is very interesting. They don't build a school more than four kilometres away from where the students live who are going there. Everybody in Japan walks to school. They're walking 20 minutes a day from home, so there and back means 40 minutes a day on average, just without anything else.

There isn't that concept in Canada. I mean, I know there are geographic and weather differences between Japan and Canada. I'm not going to suggest that we should walk 10 miles in the snow to school, uphill both ways, but maybe one day a month we could have the walking school bus sort of concept, whereby the person who lives the farthest away stops and knocks on the next person's door, and then they knock on the next person's door. By the time the group of students gets to school, there are 15 or 20 all walking the three- or four-kilometre walk together. Then they've done exercise for a day and they promote the awareness. That's safe as well. I think something like that needs to be undertaken.

The other issue I found, too, is that we don't let our children play outside as much as we used to. People say it's unsafe. Perhaps it is, but I think we have to make a distinction between risky and unsafe. There's risk involved in everything, right? This is the funny thing, the ironic part of this whole thing. If you talk to people from Diabetes Canada, who are doing good work raising awareness of the prevalence of diabetes, you'll hear there's I think a one in nine or one in 10 chance of contracting diabetes as a result of a sedentary lifestyle.

The risk of getting kidnapped is less than one in 13 million, I think, in Canada, if you just look at it from a strictly odds perspective. You think you're safe; you're keeping your children inside because you think you're protecting them, when in fact you're probably doing more harm than you possibly could doing otherwise, and it's much more foreseeable harm. That's a cultural thing, and an attitudinal change is needed.

It's changed since I was in about my teenage years. I noticed it because there were a few incidences of kidnapping locally in my neighbourhood, which made people aware of it, and people just kept their children inside.

The concept now in the research, at the beginning of a study, is that some people use the term “free-range children”. We have to get back to the concept of free-range children. Tell them to go out and play and come home when the lights are on or when they need to eat dinner. That wasn't a novel concept when I was an eight-, 10- or 12-year-old. That was just my normal day. We've moved away from that in 30 years.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

It's interesting you mention that, because in Winnipeg, CFS—child and family services—has on a number of occasions, when kids have been playing outside in their backyard, intervened and said “Your children should not be alone” and attempted an intervention, so it is an issue with child welfare.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Yes.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Kyle, thank you very much for your lucid testimony. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about families that are perhaps poorer. What level of support should governments be providing in ensuring that people have access to recreation services at the municipal level and the provincial level, instead of, for instance, providing the Olympic model, which provides elite athletes with a lot more support? How much of it should be geared toward ensuring that everyone can participate in sports?

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Well, that's a very good question. It's obviously important for everybody to have equal opportunity, but we need to make a distinction between sport, recreation and activity.

Sport I look at as organized sport. Perhaps you pay a fee and join a team and there's some coaching involved, some training, some skills technique. That is great, obviously, and important, and a good way to be active, but you don't need to be in a sport to be physically active. This is what we need to move away from a little bit.

Encourage people to play outside. Encourage municipalities to say, when they're developing a subdivision, that the builder has to put a park in the middle of it. It's simple things like that. Encourage children to play outside, to be active, to be physically involved, to learn how to play, learn how to catch a ball, learn how to run. You only learn these things by doing them.

I also think that anything we can do to promote children being involved at any level is important, and anything we can do to overcome poverty as a barrier to that is important. I obviously don't have the answers as to what that could be, but certainly the income children's parents make shouldn't be a determining factor in whether they're physically active.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Okay. Thanks very much.

The time's up; sorry.

Ms. Gladu is next.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Kyle. I think your dad would be very proud that you're bringing this forward as an MP.

Certainly this is an important issue. When we're talking about trying to make sure children have more physical activity, obviously if we look at the hours in their day, there's some of the time when they're in school and there's some of the time when they're out of school. If we talk about how to increase the activity.... I liked your idea about walking to school, because there's more than one person there, and I think parents are very concerned about having their kids walk alone, with the rise we've had in people taking children.

Would you be in favour of having mandatory physical education in the schools right from kindergarten up to high school?

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Yes, from a personal standpoint, I think there should be physical education in every year of school, absolutely.

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

It's under provincial jurisdiction, but I think the federal government could make recommendations.

In terms of after-school activities, I was raised similarly to you: We were out until the street lights came on and then we went home. Kids played together, and it was okay for us to go to the park, because parents weren't concerned that we were out of sight, but I think your idea about building parks in the centres of subdivisions where people can keep an eye on their children is better.

Maybe there are other measures, such as having, I hate to say, security checks, but something like that, or having safe community centres where children would be able to play.

What do you think about that idea?

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Yes, there are probably a lot of examples of things that we're not doing that we could, and I'm sure there are people who are much more expert on it than I am. If people aren't letting their children play because they're afraid for their safety, that's a legitimate concern and it needs to be addressed in some manner, because to me that obstacle seems like one that could easily be overcome with any number of measures.

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

When it comes to activities after school, it's very expensive to play some sports, such as hockey. We had the children's fitness tax credit of $1,200 for each child, and people really enjoyed taking advantage of it. It was an incentive to get people involved in fitness.

Do you support such a measure?

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I did some research on the children's fitness tax credit as well. The finance department does its analysis, and the result was that not one more child was active because of it. That seems a little counterintuitive, but the report explains that the people who could already afford to put their children in sports were benefiting from the credit, and people who couldn't afford it still didn't have the cash, the outlay, to enrol their kids in sports.

To answer your more general question, I agree with any tax measures that will encourage children who otherwise would not be in sports to be involved in sports, and that doesn't necessarily have to be a federal government measure. A number of private sector non-profit organizations do just that.

Maybe there's a role for the federal government to play in encouraging that, by giving them the necessary tax benefits. I think of Canadian Tire, which is very active in my community in getting children to play hockey by providing free equipment to those who qualify.

I think anything the federal government can do to encourage children who otherwise would not be physically active needs to be considered.

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

Yes, I think that's good.

I come from a rural place, and a lot of times there's no bus to take home after extracurricular activities after school, and a lot of times they've cut the teachers' pay to do extracurricular activities, so the teachers have to volunteer their time.

Would you be in favour of working with the provinces and territories to try to figure out how to make sure that kids have teachers who are willing to put on extracurricular activities and that they have transportation so they can take advantage of it?

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Yes, I'm happy to support any measure that can be undertaken to promote extra physical activity. Obviously we're not foisting our will on the provinces or education boards or anything like that.

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

No, no; it would just be a friendly recommendation.

A lot of people prefer team sports, but not everyone does. How can we provide incentives for people to do individual sports, such as running?