Health Committee on Feb. 14th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Dr. Warshawski.

Next is Mr. van Koeverden, please, for five minutes.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first question is for Participaction.

Representing the Minister of Health, I'm on my way to some FPT meetings around the Canada Games on Prince Edward Island, and one of the things we're focused on with our provincial and territorial ministerial counterparts is physical activity. Does Participaction have any significant bilateral agreements with provinces and territories? If not, would those potentially help implement ambitions like daily physical activity in schools?

[Elio Antunes]

We currently have funding relationships with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Saskatchewan. We did have a long-standing relationship with the B.C. Ministry of Health, but that has ended and was not renewed; there was a change of government there a few years ago.

Yes, we do have a couple. We work with all of the provincial and territorial governments from a collaboration and sharing of information standpoint, but from a funding relationship perspective, it's those two right now. As an organization, we need to be very careful, because they also fund provincial organizations. We want to make sure that any type of funding we get at a provincial government level does not take away from some of our partner organizations, because, as I've said, we're very under-resourced as a whole. That's one of the balancing acts, if you will, that we always have to be mindful of.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thanks. That's very helpful.

For Dr. Warshawski on Zoom, how do the nature of marketing and the profit margins or the business of sweet, salty and fatty foods prey on our most prevalent biases towards those foods? I'm asking you a bit of an anthropological question, I suppose, because as humans we have an evolutionary bias towards those foods. How do those big companies, such as chips, chocolate and sweet beverage companies, prey on that?

[Dr. Tom Warshawski]

I also have an evolutionary bias, so I believe in evolutionary medicine.

I would say that the food industry doesn't set out to harm anyone. What it does is engineer food products that are attractive. They're savoury and they're sweet. We have an evolutionary bias to want to maximize caloric intake. We have an attracted mouth feel to fat products and salt, because through most of human history, those substances weren't readily available.

There's a great book by Moss called Salt Sugar Fat, which talks about how the food industry engineers. Again, this is good business. They have focus groups. They try different formulations of, say, potato chips, and they market the ones with just the right amount of salt, sugar and fat and a great mouth feel that makes people say, “This is great”. I'm actually a chipaholic. I can't resist those products, so I try not to have them in the house, except for weekends. It works. I've done very well.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

I hear you. I like chips too, and I've noticed with the rising cost of food, bags of chips are still $1.50 in my grocery store. They haven't become much more expensive.

I'm going to move on to Canadian Tire Jumpstart.

Dr. Di Buono, you mentioned the Community Sport for All initiative. Could you highlight some specific examples of interventions that have helped achieve some of the goals set out by the organization through the CSAI?

[Dr. Marco Di Buono]

We may need to extend the meeting by a couple of hours.

In our case, we were a beneficiary of close to $7 million of Community Sport for All funding, which we matched. We were able to reach almost 2,000 organizations across the country.

Some examples of that are programming in the Calgary area that uses skateboarding as a tool to help young indigenous youth overcome the intergenerational trauma of residential schools. There's programming for indigenous girls and young women in the Lower Mainland. It's a fantastic group called All My Relations that uses basketball as a tool to support indigenous culture and to improve physical activity and recreation.

I mentioned newcomer programs earlier. We have them all across the country, whether they're hockey for newcomer youth or programming like the Free Play society in Edmonton, which has a trauma-informed approach to welcoming newcomer families, as well as the kids, into their facilities.

The list goes on and on. Sport as a tool with an intersectional lens has the power to help kids reach their full potential. This past year, thanks to the support we received, we did that for over 440,000 youth across Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Dr. Di Buono, for getting that two hours into a minute and a half. That was very well done.

We'll go to Dr. Kitchen, please, for five minutes.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.

I apologize to you, Mr. Antunes. Maybe I missed this. The 2020 report card that you put out states that Canadian children and youth's physical activity is a D+. My understanding is it's a D now, which makes me say that there's another report in 2022, perhaps. I've not seen that.

I'm wondering if there is one. If you could either table it or share it with us, I'd appreciate it.

[Elio Antunes]

Yes, we have a 2022 report card. I provided it to the clerk, but it hasn't been distributed yet. We can certainly do that after the meeting.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you very much. It's much appreciated.

On that note, I am aware that Participaction was given $4.6 million for the community challenge. I also understand, Dr. Di Buono, that Jumpstart got $6.8 million. I happen to have had a look at the budget. When I look at the community challenge report, you talked about the 800 available grants of $5,000. Doing the quick math, that's $4 million.

Are the administration charges to do this $600,000?

[Elio Antunes]

Yes, with this particular funding program, the intent was to provide as much of that funding to local organizations for programming, so we were limited, I believe, to 15% for administrative, operational and programming costs. Out of the $4.6 million that ParticipACTION received, $4 million will be going directly to the hands of local organizations.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

Dr. Di Buono, what would your administration costs be?

[Dr. Marco Di Buono]

Virtually nil. We are in the unique position of having all of our administrative expenses covered by Canadian Tire Corporation. In the interest of making sure that money got out as quickly possible, we used a small portion to bring one staff member on so that we could expedite the delivery of funding. We have since rolled that staff member into our general ledger and have included that in our general administrative expenses that the corporation covers generously.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you very much. That's much appreciated.

A lot of what you have talked about dealt with the organizations involved in getting the funding out to specialized groups. That is a challenge. One group that I'm very passionate about is the Special Olympics and the tremendous work they do with athletes with intellectual disabilities, including our children and youth with those aspects.

As you indicated, we look the value of sport in increasing their confidence, self-esteem, knowledge, camaraderie and friendships. These are all on top of the physical activity that's there. The Special Olympics basically get $6.6 million per year across the country to do this.

Have you partnered with the Special Olympics at all, or looked at that? Either one of you can comment.

[Dr. Marco Di Buono]

I can certainly speak to that.

We have funded, and continue to fund, many of the Special Olympics chapters across the country in specific programming. We have provided some grants to many of the chapters to help the younger participants travel to some of the national events that have, thankfully, resumed after the pandemic. It is an ongoing relationship we have across the country. I couldn't tell you specifically the amount, but I would be happy to provide that information to the clerk after the meeting.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Antunes, is it yes or no?

[Elio Antunes]

Specifically to the Community Sport for All initiative, those applications are in our hands now, and we're assessing them. That money will be going out the door within the next few weeks, so I can't tell you exactly what we have funded, but certainly we have a long-standing relationship with the Special Olympics. I would not be surprised if they were part of the funding pool.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you. I appreciate it, because it encourages me that if they had taken the steps to apply, the application would at least be considered. I do appreciate that, so thank you.

[Elio Antunes]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Dr. Kitchen.

The last round of questions for today's meeting will come from Dr. Hanley for five minutes, please.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you. I have to begin again with Dr. Warshawski.

As a little chipaholic, I wanted to also point out a book by David Kessler that substantially changed my perspective. It's called The End of Overeating, but it refers to that toxic combination of sugar, salt and fat.

We know we need fat and salt in our diets, absolutely. I don't think we need sugar, though. Is there any health benefit, apart from perhaps the pain-relieving properties in early childhood, that it could be used for? Is there any health benefit to sugar or refined carbohydrates?

[Dr. Tom Warshawski]

I'm not aware of any benefit other than the fact that it's a quick source of energy, and that can be debated, I'm sure. Adam van Koeverden can talk about what's best to fuel your body through sports. If we did talk about it from an evolutionary point of view, for most of human evolution, it has really important to get calories in as quickly as possible. That's why we probably developed a taste for it, not because of the utility of it. In fact, there's some conjecture that sugars may fuel cancer growth and other things, not to mention its effect on promoting type 2 diabetes, hypertension and things like that.

I would say no, but small amounts of sugar are important. You want to have some fun. It adds flavour to things. In moderation, sugar is fine. The problem is that in the modern food environment, 66% of processed foods have added sugar. That's not necessary and that's not helpful.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Yes. Thank you. That's a great way to describe it. I think we need to get better at how we communicate the adverse effect of refined carbohydrates in our communications and our food policy and our labelling and all of that.

I want to turn to you, Mr. Di Buono. You would know that in Whitehorse not long ago, we participated in the opening of an accessible and beautiful playground that was funded through Jumpstart. We know how important playgrounds are, in addition to other fora for physical activity, but each of these comes with a cost. What can we do as a federal government to help remove financial barriers? Can we be doing more?

Maybe we have a chance at the end of this meeting to talk about how we enhance accessibility, particularly recognizing rural Canada, winter conditions, equity-deserving groups, and the indigenous and racialized minorities. What are some of the top things we could be doing to enhance accessibility?

[Dr. Marco Di Buono]

That's an excellent question.

My short answer is that we really engage communities and get them to provide input on what their needs are and that we not make assumptions.

As an example, when we approached the community in Whitehorse, we asked for their input in the design, the location and the size of the play space we wanted to offer. They had alternatives. They could have considered multisport courts. They could have considered skate parks and so on.

Really, we've advocated that everything we do from a sport, physical activity and recreational lens has to be from the ground up. It has to involve the children and youth. My plea to this committee is to ensure that we hear their voices before we implement any policy, before we create any change and before we mandate any kind of systemic changes to the way in which we try to address all of these important topics.

We need to listen to their voices. They are smarter, they are more articulate, and they are more knowledgeable about their needs than we give them credit for. We have been very successful at listening to those voices to create significant and tangible positive change for those children.