Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House and speak to Motion No. 206, brought forward by my colleague, the member for Newmarket—Aurora.
The government is on the right track in helping young Canadians become more physically active. However, children are not active enough, and they are getting less and less active as they get older. According to a report conducted by the Region of Peel's public health department, 32% of students in grades 7 to 12 are overweight or obese, and a staggering 41% of grade 9 students score in the low-fit category of cardiovascular fitness.
I would like to take this opportunity to applaud all of the wonderful residents of Brampton who teach, coach and encourage our youth to lead a healthy and active lifestyle. In particular, I would like to thank David Laing and Kevin Montgomery, who lead the BikeBrampton group. The Region of Peel and the City of Brampton have partnered with BikeBrampton on events to encourage cycling, such as Bike the Creek, which has seen significant participant growth over the past four years. I would like to commend the entire team of the Union Street YMCA in Brampton, and in particular the general manager, Ivan Rabinovich, for his tremendous efforts in helping keep the youth moving.
While almost half of the children aged five to 11 are active for about an hour a day, that falls to about a quarter of youth by the time they are 12 to 17 years of age. Children in homes with lower incomes are also less active and are at higher risk of being at unhealthy weights.
According to the WHO, physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death, because it is linked to a number of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. People who are physically active live longer, healthier lives. Active people are more productive and more likely to avoid illness and injury.
Canadians need to move more and sit less. Therefore, what are we doing to address this problem? Earlier this year, federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for sport, physical activity and recreation released a new common vision, “Let's Get Moving”, to address physical activity and reduce sedentary living. Let's Get Moving was implemented in part by the principles and objectives under the “Global Action Plan on Physical Activity”, also released this year, by the World Health Organization. Let's Get Moving is an important new and collective way forward for government to help guide and address physical inactivity and chronic disease prevention in Canada. This work represented an important milestone for governments and was the culmination of three years of work by officials, including federal, provincial and territorial health officials, the non-governmental sector and indigenous organizations. This vision presents further opportunities to showcase the collective leadership of our government internationally as we support Canadians to move more and sit less.
This government is also supporting Canadian youth physical activity through many great programs and research initiatives. Through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR, this government is investing in research to better understand the linkages between physical activity and health outcomes in youth, including diabetes and cardiovascular health.
Over the past five years, CIHR has invested over $26 million in research related to physical activity and health, including over $9 million in 2017-18 alone. For instance, CIHR is investing in the work led by Drs. Mélanie Henderson and Matthias Friedrich at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre in Montreal. The doctors there are studying the links between lifestyle choices, such as physical activity or sedentary behaviour, and the development of cardiovascular disease in children with type 1 diabetes.
The physical design of spaces and places also plays a major role in helping Canadians move more every day. Why do spaces and places matter? The design of neighbourhoods can influence our health. The rise of urban sprawl is a concern, as it has been linked to such things as driving more and eating less nutritious foods.
The relationship between the built environment, healthy living, people's behaviour and health status is complex. Indeed, in her 2017 report, the chief public health officer of Canada chose to highlight this topic because of the tremendous potential that changing the built environment has for helping Canadians make the healthy choice.
Our government has invested in several projects that focus on making changes to the built environment. In St. Thomas, Ontario, Southwestern Public Health is working to re-design their community so that people can walk, rather than drive, more easily and more safely. Another great example is the Canadian Cancer Society's Trottibus initiative. With this walking school bus, elementary school children have fun walking to school, under the supervision of adults who monitor their safety.
Canadians will also soon be even more motivated to get moving. Budget 2018 announced $25 million in funding over five years for Participaction to get Canadians moving more and sitting less. Participaction has committed to match our federal investment over the course of the five years of the “let's get moving” initiative through a combination of public and private sources, for a total investment of $50 million.
The organization will partner with municipalities, indigenous communities, schools, sport and recreation organizations, and community groups to involve Canadians in moving more, and sitting less. Participaction will communicate with Canadians to drive participation in community events across Canada, and implement a national multimedia campaign. Indeed, members might have seen a billboard or heard recently of Participaction's “better campaign', which encourages Canadians to get moving because “everything gets better” when people are active. The campaign shines a light on ways in which everything, such as thinking, mood and relationships to sleeping, can improve with physical activity.
However, Participaction is only one of many partners. No one organization, including government, can work in isolation to tackle the problem of physical inactivity in this country.
It is recognized that through active engagement and partnerships, we can make progress to support and sustain behavioural change that will positively impact health. All segments of society, communities, academia, the charitable and not-for-profit sector and the private sector, must work together if we are to be successful in getting Canadians to move more and sit less.
A great example of federal, provincial and territorial partnerships is when ministers of health across the country endorsed “A Declaration on Prevention and Promotion” in 2010, presenting a shared vision for working together and with others to make the promotion of health and the prevention of disease, disability and injury a priority for action. The same set of ministers endorsed “Curbing Childhood Obesity: A Federal, Provincial and Territorial Framework for Action to Promote Healthy Weights” to make curbing childhood obesity a collective priority in Canada. Another example is the partnerships to develop and now to implement “let's get moving” initiative on physical activity and sedentary living that I mentioned earlier.
The Government of Canada, through its community-based programming, has invested millions of dollars to prevent chronic disease and to promote healthy living by partnering with the private sector, the not-for-profit sector, organizations within and outside the health sector, and other levels of government. Everyone has a role to play.
In conclusion, it is clear that our government can be proud of all the work it is doing together with its partners to promote physical activity in children and youth. However, the statistics are clear. There is still much more work to be done so that Canadians choose to move more and sit less. We need to ensure that all of the efforts around physical activity across the country are optimally addressing physical activity in Canada's youth.