Health committee  It's perceived as an issue, but the research is clear—rom a physical activity perspective, anyway—that there isn't an increase in safety issues in communities. Certainly, because of media and the way it is now, we're just more aware of issues when they do happen; therefore, I thi

Health committee  Thank you for the question. Maybe I can refer back. I think you started off your comments by saying we value physical activity. I would challenge that. I would say we don't value physical activity. Just 28% of kids are meeting national physical activity guidelines. I think we un

Health committee  I can start. We're funding initiatives associated with our June community challenge, which is mobilizing community organizations to offer accessible sport and physical activity programming to local organizations. We've been able to target organizations primarily in the sport an

Health committee  I can start, but I certainly can't talk to the—

Health committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health of children and youth in this country and, more specifically, the critical role of physical activity. Ima

Canadian Heritage committee  We work with a lot of them. We have about 10,000 local organizations that we work with on an ongoing basis. The challenge is that a lot of those organizations are volunteer based. They're small organizations, and they may not have the resources to be able to go out and fill up lo

Canadian Heritage committee  There's much to do. One kind of focused opportunity, as we mentioned, is to declare June as Canada Moves month. Our idea was that we're already implementing a community engagement initiative called the ParticipACTION community better challenge, which is trying to find the most ac

Canadian Heritage committee  It's devastating. We are concerned that this will continue with YMCAs, with local sport clubs and recreation and community centres. As I mentioned, many of these organizations are dependent upon the registration fees of their programs to sustain their operations. With us not regi

Canadian Heritage committee  Certainly. My colleagues in the sport system would be better qualified to give you a more detailed response and [Technical difficulty—Editor] someone from the sport sector meet with you. Many of the national sport organizations have developed strategies to support their programm

Canadian Heritage committee  It's certainly not unique to Canada. At the same time, I think the countries that are doing well, to be very frank, have significant government support from both a policy perspective and an investment perspective. We don't have that in Canada, at least not from a policy perspecti

Canadian Heritage committee  We do. In fact, we have actually used technology as a way to communicate, as many other organizations are doing. We created the ParticipACTION app. Through the app we are delivering supports and practical strategies on what Canadians can do to be physically active. We just finis

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a comprehensive issue. As I mentioned, our sector is made up of national, provincial, territorial and municipal organizations. We all depend upon one another to support Canadians to be active and to participate in sport. If one piece of the sector falls, then the whole syste

Canadian Heritage committee  The 60-year-old Swede was at the same level of health as a 30-year-old Canadian, implying that Canadians weren't as healthy or as active as the Swedes. I would say the situation is still true. For physical activity, Canada does not rank at the bottom, but it is certainly closer

Canadian Heritage committee  That's our organization's whole wish, that we would have an increase in demand for programming. But, as I said before, I think people have been so preoccupied with keeping their jobs and the economic impact on their families' livelihoods that physical activity hasn't been top of

Canadian Heritage committee  I think there are two things we could do to support these local organizations. First is to ensure that we have some consistent messaging across the country and that's where our public education campaign recommendation comes in. Every jurisdiction has used different guidelines or