Mr. Speaker, the motion speaks to obesity, which has become a national problem in Canada. It talks about the long-term health risks, which we all know, and it talks about supporting, promoting and funding organizations and individuals who are involved in the physical well-being of Canadians.
This is something that is motherhood, and we obviously support it.
However, I want to say that if we are going to talk about funding people and organizations involved in physical activity—because we know there are two things that can deal with obesity: one is obviously eating properly and eating well and the second is daily physical exercise—we need to have very clear standards for those organizations and very clear certification for the people who would be doing training or actually directing the physical activity programs, because this is not a case where someone can say, “I am fit and, therefore, I am capable of helping other people be fit”.
The whole concept of kinesiology, which is the art of exercise and how exercise works, is something that needs to be certificated. It is very important because an individual could be hurt by people if they give the wrong exercises to do, if we were to let just anybody hang out a shingle.
In principle, this is a very good idea. However, I think there need to be some very clear accountability structures, certification structures and training structures attached to something like this.
There is no one answer. We know that diet is one good way, how we eat, et cetera, and we know that physical activity is a second. Just dealing with physical activity and not dealing with the whole issue of how we eat and what we eat that tends to increase the amount of obesity, is something I wanted to talk about.
It would have been an interesting if the motion had in it the whole concept of food, how we eat and what we eat.
We know that many people in Canada today eat a lot of processed foods. With both adults in the family working, they are unable to come home and put a meal on the table as they used to in the old days. They bring home processed foods that they can quickly cook, foods that can be cooked in the microwave in five minutes, et cetera, and one of the reasons processed foods are a vehicle for eating poorly is that they contain high amounts of sodium and trans fats.
Now, the government has the ability to ensure—and has been advised since 2007 to do so by advisory panels—that we have the minimum levels of trans fats and sodium shown on the labels, because Canadians eat twice the normal sodium levels and there is a fair amount of foods that contain trans fats. It would be simple thing to mandate the industry. It is a great piece of health promotion and disease prevention. I understand the Minister of Health made a speech to the Canadian Medical Association in the summer, talking about the interest of the current government in health promotion and disease prevention.
This is like falling off a log. The health department wants to do this, the advisory committees to the minister have wanted to do it since 2007 and it still has not been done.
I would have liked to see both prongs dealt with.
There is a saying that for every problem there is a simple and neat solution. That is wrong. Simple and neat does not always answer the problems of complexity. Especially in disease and health, we know that complex factors create illness and complex factors create health.
However, we really have to be concerned. That is why we are supporting the principle of this particular motion. Children ages 2 to 17 in this country have an obesity rate of 26%, which is up from 15% in 1979; youth ages 12 to 17 have an even higher rate of 29%; and first nations' children have an obesity rate of 41%. We have all these children who will be growing up to be an adult generation with type 2 diabetes, heart disease and risk of stroke. We know that these children are not going to live as long as their parents. The whole idea of progress in health is to ensure that we have people in future generations who are going to live longer than we did.
This is a really sad indictment on what is happening in Canada. High cholesterol is a huge problem because of eating a lot of trans fats. These are some of the things we have to talk about.
What is most concerning, though, about the increasing rate of obesity in Canada, is that not just the rates are increasing but actually the type of obesity. We are finding more people with morbidly rated obesity, people who are so large that they are at imminent risk of getting disease. It is one thing to be 10 to 15 pounds overweight; it is one thing to say “I could lose up to 10% of my weight”. However, we are seeing morbidly obese people now, morbidly obese children. I know it is a combination of poor eating and lack of activity. Of course, we well know that progress has led us to this point where kids sit around and play computer games and watch TV and do everything except go outside and play.
We know that we have worked with the provinces to talk about one hour of quality physical activity in the schools every day. In 1980, I was chair of the council on health promotion and disease prevention of the British Columbia Medical Association. In 1980, we were asking for the Province of British Columbia to bring in one hour of quality daily physical activity to the schools. It only happened about five years ago, which is a long time, and that is a whole generation of people and kids who did not get the benefit of having that opportunity not to be obese.
We notice, for reasons we do not understand, that in the Atlantic provinces the obesity rates are higher than anywhere else in Canada. Obviously, in the north the obesity rates are higher than everywhere else in Canada because of the high populations of Inuit aboriginal people where we see 41% obesity in children.
We studied obesity in the parliamentary health committee about eight years ago. We came up with beautiful recommendations and nothing has happened. So there has to be political will. A very good friend of mine who is a public health physician asked me one day if I knew what is the biggest determinant of health. I asked what. He said the biggest determinant of health is political will. When there is not the political will to do the things that must be done to make Canadians healthy or to improve their health, it is not going to happen.
As I said, this is a good motion. One cannot not support the motion. It is a very supportable motion. However, it only deals with one problem. It deals with the physical activity problem and it does not deal with the problem that is in the government's grasp. There is no need for legislation. The Governor in Council can just say it is going to do this, that this is a policy and then mandate the levels of salt and trans fats in our foods. Let us educate. The Canada food guide goes out to parents. Parents often do not know how to interpret it. They have to go and read labels in the stores, and most of them do not understand what the labels are really saying because the labels say “x calories per”, and they do not know how many grams are in it and they have to do the math. People want simple labelling, so they can reach onto shelves and get the food they need for their children without looking at whether those children are going to be obese or be put at risk for high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
The problem here as well is a very real one in terms of the delivery of medicare. We know that obesity results in economic costs of approximately $7.1 billion a year. If we could halve that and take $3 billion to put into promotion and disease prevention at the front end of the health care system, just imagine what a difference that would make.
This is a motion that is supportable. I would have liked to see some teeth in it. I would have liked to see it come up with certification and ensuring that people who are going to be delivering kinesiology and exercise programs are qualified and know what they are doing. However, I find that I cannot not support this. I support the motion.