Mr. Speaker, I again thank my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca for his question.
Of course, like him, I think that our young people should do more activities, be more active; they should spend less time in front of the television or the computer playing video games. Juvenile obesity is a major blight on society today.
However, I do not agree with him that this should all pivot around a cross-Canada program. In the Standing Committee on Health, when we were discussing the issue of juvenile obesity, we asked our colleagues from all the other parties to acknowledge the efforts being made by Quebec and the provinces in this area, since people’s health, sports, physical education and education are provincial matters.
We asked them to recognize this jurisdiction but unfortunately they did not do so. We asked them for this because the Government of Quebec has already implemented a program to try and energize our young people again, to give them more opportunities to take part in sports, to have more sports recreation.
Instead of creating two or three competing programs, it would have been much more logical—and it is still a lot more logical—to give the money to the government that has already put a program in place. This way we could have given the program more force, power and effectiveness. The problem of inactivity among young people, and in all age brackets, exists. In my opinion, the whole population should move more, because movement is what prevents illness. More funding should be given to the government that has responsibility. And in this case I consider that it is the governments of Quebec and the provinces that are responsible.