Health committee  I am familiar with it, and it's a type of proactive nature that you'd really like to see. There's a foundation, a very wealthy foundation, that stepped forward, like Saskatoon District Health did, and said we're not waiting for the other sectors to come on board and bicker about who should be looking after this and we're not trying to run away from the table.

Health committee  My recommendation listed encapsulates what I think would be needed in sections of your report.

Health committee  It's funded through the Canadian Institute for Health Information through the health information road map initiative. A portion of the necessary funding is there to do the survey once, starting this February for two years, collecting 2,500 samples per year. Many efforts under way to try to get ongoing funding for the survey are being driven from many sectors, thus far unsuccessfully.

Health committee  And it's not just heights and weights that we need. Increasingly, we're understanding that those measures can tell erroneous tales in the absence of understanding the physical activity or the baseline fitness level or the waist circumference of the individual. So we need a more robust mechanism to do this.

Health committee  I'd like to make two very quick points. First, easy is seductive but destructive. We need to get that across to people. We've socialized the “I can't cook my dinner” thing to be the norm, but you know, people were tired in the past, when they actually did stuff physically all day, and they didn't have Lunchables and so on.

Health committee  Those are very good points. I certainly couldn't agree more that the issue is incredibly complex, and perhaps nothing could be more complex. It's not discrete, like wearing a seat belt or even smoking, and so on, because it's fundamental to all parts of lives. So the intervention needs to be at the individual level, the family level, the community level, the school level, and all levels of government.

Health committee  And I don't think there's anyone in the area who wouldn't support mandatory physical education for K to 12. It comes out of every think-tank and every investigation. It's ironic that as the situation worsens, we've marginalized physical education more and more. It continues to happen to this day in the schools that my kids go to.

Health committee  I'm sure it will be wonderful for Moose Jaw to have a new multiplex facility. I would never speak against that; it's important. Unfortunately, you always get into “this versus that.” That facility will attract middle- and upper-SES kids. The same kids who play hockey will probably play indoor soccer, and their parents will use the indoor track.

Health committee  I would also suggest that the relative weight of the evidence, I think, would be the reciprocal of the way you presented it. You're concerned about having a very aggressive anti-fat campaign, which none of us are advocating. We're promoting physical activity and we have no campaign at all, so we're a long way from having something overly aggressive, I think.

Health committee  I think you raise a good point. Much research, and recently by the Canadian Medical Association, shows this disconnect between perception and reality: the problem is down the street, but it's not in my house; it's not with my kids. That's a problem to get, because parents are a key player here, and if parents don't think there's a problem; if parents think, “Well, my kid's chubby but he'll grow out of it”, or “My kids are active all the time”; if their frame of reference is incorrect and they don't think it's a problem, they're not likely to intervene with any parental change that's likely to correct a problem.

Health committee  Most is. There are some disorders that are rare that have strange clinical implications and so on. But the dramatic secular change we've seen is not related to fundamental genetic mutations or increases in Prader-Willi syndrome or some of these problems.

Health committee  I would echo that. The brand recognition for ParticipAction accelerates the whole process enormously. It has not only brand recognition but positive associations with that brand recognition, so it's legitimate. Whether it should be or not, it is, in the minds of Canadians. As I said at the start of my presentation, I think there are some non-traditional messages--education--we need to get to parents that it's very subtle things throughout the day, in addition to swimming lessons and quality physical education, that need to be done in order to get us back to the amount of movement that we did throughout most of our existence.

Health committee  I was the dean of kinesiology in Saskatoon when Saskatoon in Motion--now Saskatchewan in Motion and Manitoba in Motion--came to be. There are certainly best practices in terms of mobilizing community and making things happen, building capacity within the community. Childhood obesity in Saskatchewan is significantly greater than in Canada as an average right now, after Saskatchewan and Saskatoon in motion have been in place for several years.

Health committee  On behalf of Active Healthy Kids Canada and the pediatric exercise science community in Canada, thank you for the opportunity to be here and thank you to this committee for tackling this important issue. We look forward to working with you to help advance the resolution of this problem.