HALIFAX, THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2002
STANDING COMMITTEE ON COMMUNITY SERVICES
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Ms. Mary Ann McGrath
MADAM CHAIRMAN (Ms. Maureen MacDonald): I think I will call the committee to order, and we will get started because we all have caucus and the House. My name is Maureen MacDonald, and I'm the MLA for Halifax Needham and the vice-chairman of this committee. I understand our chairman is caught in traffic and will be here as soon as she can make it. We're going to proceed, and she can join us whenever she makes it. We will start by having introductions of the members around the table and then we will hear from our guests, our presenters today. Perhaps we will start with Mr. Hendsbee.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Good morning. If you would like to make introductions of yourselves and then your presentation.
MR. TONY MARTIN: Good morning. My name is Tony Martin, CEO and Deputy Head of the Nova Scotia Sport and Recreation Commission, and I have with me Mike Arthur, the Director of our Community Development Program, and perhaps the key guy in the development of our physical activity strategy for the province.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to join you today and to speak about the programs and services of the Sport and Recreation Commission. We certainly welcome the opportunity to promote those activities that we're involved in. Clearly, we think there's great benefit in people having heard of the kind of good work that we do. We are quite proud. We're a very small unit that, we think, carries on significant good work across this province in the realm of sport and recreation.
1
We do not have a high-tech presentation today; it's rather low-tech, and Mike will be throwing up some slides for us. I just wanted to go through a brief outline, as was requested in the letter, of some of the issues we face, some of the programs and services we offer, and relate to some of the challenges. We will put particular emphasis on physical activity and children and youth, which is our PACY Program. We will do an overview of our mission and goals, and of our organization, our key programs and services. We will speak a little bit to the challenges. We will provide you with some facts and stats around how active our children and youth are. And, finally, we will finish with some discussion around the physical activity initiative and the PACY project.
[9:10 a.m. Ms. Mary Ann McGrath took the Chair.]
In terms of the SRC, the purpose is really quite simple, to try to enhance the quality of life of Nova Scotians through sport and recreation programs and services. Of late there would be significant emphasis as well, not on enhancing the quality of life, but on influencing the choices of Nova Scotians, the health benefits to Nova Scotians of being more physically active. We know that the lifestyles of Nova Scotians - it's been documented time and time again - are creating great problems for our health care system, and we believe that much of what we do contributes positively to the quality of life but also to the health of Nova Scotians.
Let me just say, first, who are we? We are a small organization of 15 professionals, 6 support staff. We have a number of grant-funded staff as well that we are able to achieve through partnerships and funding. We support a sport and recreation system in this province that is primarily volunteer-run. The province could not carry on sport or recreation if it weren't for the number of community volunteers who prop up this system. We deal with 80 provincial organizations that are sport and recreation organizations. We deal, as well, at the community level, through six regional offices, and we do much of our work through partnerships with municipal recreation departments and community sport and recreation organizations.
The key elements of how this organization operates have been the same since 1972 when there was a Department of Culture and Recreation in the province, the first one in the country to set up a separate department. The elements are around partnering, collaborative action, leveraging government dollars many times over, and community development. Our goals, as well as our key, core business areas, are around increasing participation in structured and unstructured opportunities for sport, recreation and fitness. Facilities are another major area of what we're involved in. Clearly, to provide opportunities for sport and recreation activities, we need facilities for both structured and unstructured activity. Part of our core function is to try to increase the availability and sustainability of that physical infrastructure.
This whole system has some professional leadership but a great deal of volunteer leadership, and we need to continue to try to develop that so that those leaders are available in our communities to promote these sport and recreation activities. In conjunction with that, a big part of what we do is working with communities, with a community development approach, to help them determine what their needs are and where they want to go, and to try to find ways to provide programs and services that satisfy those needs.
[9:15 a.m.]
I've been with the Sport and Recreation Commission for five years. I had been involved in both sport and recreation and thought I had a sense of what this small government operation was involved in, but it wasn't until I took on the role that I realized the breadth and the magnitude of the programs and services, and the number of Nova Scotians that we touch. There are 250,000 Nova Scotians registered between our provincial sport organizations and our various recreation organizations in their membership and activities. So to impact over one-quarter of the residents just through that piece is quite significant. Here is just sort of an overview of some of the other kinds of programs and activities that again we are involved in.
Clearly, in the area of sport, we have supports to athletes - everything from funding programs for elite athletes and our Olympic Trust Fund, which is supporting. We have in our province an amazing level of success for a small province and for the resources we have. We have Karen Furneaux who is a world champion in kayaking. We have probably the strongest kayaking and canoeing program in the country. Obviously, at the Canada Games, our team swept the medals in canoe/kayaking. It's a centre for development nationally, with national team coaches and stuff here and we have tremendous success there. We have Colleen Jones, the former world champion in curling. To have world champions in a small province like this, and Canada doesn't have very many of them let me assure you, and we have a disproportionate share of them and we're very proud of that.
We look at athlete development through the whole mix. We need to provide supports for the whole continuum, from the participation perspective where kids are involved in sport for the values and the fun that sport provides, right through to providing opportunities for Nova Scotians to make us proud on the world stage. The Canada Games, we've just come back with the Centennial Cup from the Canada Games. Some of you may have seen them in your communities. That represents the most significant improvement by a team, one games over the other. As well, our mission staff, the inaugural award to mission staff for their contribution and for just the way they handled themselves at the game, the Nova Scotia team was the winner of that.
Our Canada Games Program is quite unique in that we have a Canada Games management group and, because of the resources that we have, we've gone to a situation where we've engaged the volunteer community in managing with us the Canada Games.
Most provincial jurisdictions will have half of their operation shut down to be involved in games and it is something that is on the one hand very time-consuming and trying. As well, it's one of those things that is a very nice perk, to be able to be involved in something as exciting as Canada Games. The point of the matter with our situation, we are the only jurisdiction in the country that puts the Chef de mission, which is the head of the games contingent, out to the community to allow for someone in sport to come forward and take on that role. That may not seem a significant thing, but we're the only jurisdiction in the country that does that. We believe our volunteers have the capacity to take on roles such as that and they've proven us right over the last three games where the proof has been in the pudding. So our Canada Games is something that clearly we're very proud of.
Coaching development, we have a coaching NCCP in this province where we have 2,500 coaches every year, new coaches that come into the system. We have about 25,000 coaches on our registry and that's to create a certification program and, rest assured, that that's not all of the individuals who are coaching. As we all know, with our children and our grandchildren, there are a lot of individuals who are spending time out on the turf or out on basketball courts and other sport activities who do not have certification; a lot of parents involved.
As I indicated before, we have over 50 provincial sport organizations. We provide them with block funding which is a basic level of funding to help them support. There are very significant criteria established that they've all worked with us on developing so that they are all gauged. The amount of funding we have is not near what it should be, you know, without question, but the resources that are there, there's a very strategic process put in place to try to treat them all fairly and ensure that the dollars they get are against a whole set of pre-established criteria that they know of and are working toward.
We have been very fortunate in this province. 3M Fair and Safe Play, we partnered with 3M for a program - we have perhaps the best fastball/softball player in the world in Mark Smith, who happened to work with our justice system and who happens to have just a tremendous capacity to deal with groups of individuals, whether they be kids in a Primary classroom or groups of teachers or corporate individuals. He is an advocate and has been over the past few years our spokesperson for the Fair and Safe Play program. He has talked to thousands of kids in schools across this province espousing the values of fair and safe play, and we've taken this program where some schools have, in fact, declared themselves Fair and Safe Play Schools, where they try to incorporate it into their curriculum and try to work it into activities throughout the day and throughout their school year. So this is a program that we see all of the negatives of sport often in the paper or through the various media that get covered, the negatives of reactions to situations, but we're trying to instill in kids at a very young age the value of participation and the benefits of taking a fair and safe approach to that.
We're also involved and we were leaders in this province in getting the National Sport Centre-Atlantic Canada, and that's a partnership with the four Atlantic Provinces. It's a virtual centre where we're attempting to provide supports to elite athletes. It's one of the positive things in that we've been able to leverage our investment, tenfold probably, and we have benefitted significantly in terms of supports. The other supports come from Sport Canada, the Coaching Association of Canada, and the Canadian Olympic Association. They've all put significant dollars into these centres, and our youth and our athletes have benefitted.
Abuse and harassment are one of the issues we're dealing with. We're trying to deal with that across government; although it's several years ago, most will remember the Sheldon Kennedy incident, where there was abuse of a hockey player in sport. That brought to the fore the fact that we need to ensure we're able, and in a proactive manner, to deal with this. We do that through our Fair and Safe Play program, but when there are issues of abuse and harassment, we need to ensure that they are dealt with appropriately. We're spending significant time in trying to address the protocols and the capacity to deal with that. Clearly, over the past year, Minister MacDonald and other ministers responsible for sport and recreation in the country have collaborated with the federal sport minister to create a national sport policy, and this is the first time that such a piece has been put together. It's a significant advancement in terms of collaborative action on sport and creating opportunities for bilateral arrangements between jurisdictions.
Quickly, again in terms of our recreation, active living, we will talk more about the PACY strategy. Again, provincial recreation and organizations, outdoor organizations, everything from canoe organizations to snowmobile organizations to orienteering, we have a number of organizations that have focused on more the recreational pursuits than the pure sport. We are spending a fair amount of time looking at researching and trying to stay abreast of trends and share that information with organizations, municipalities and our recreation organization partners.
We do a lot of the work through our partnerships in terms of volunteer development right across the province. Volunteer leadership development, there are a number of modules, in particular Recreation Nova Scotia, one of our umbrella organizations we partner with, that provide modules right across this province on various aspects of volunteer leadership. We work with the fitness leaders organization, this is an organization that has several hundred members who are individuals focused on providing fitness opportunities, whether they be in the form of aerobics classes or various programs that may deal with either youth or seniors, or any sector of our population.
There's a whole outdoor recreation thrust that we have. There are partnerships with the Ecology Action Centre to look at active and safe routes to schools, where we're working with a number of schools trying to deal with the issue that most parents won't let their kids walk to school or go to school because they're concerned about safety. So what we're
attempting to do is work with schools to identify safe routes to get kids more active. These are all things that we take for granted - most of us would have jumped the fence and went through a backyard because we knew all our neighbours, the safe routes were almost assured. But it is a huge issue and as we talk to parents, it's one of the most significant issues that we deal with.
These are ways that we can get our kids more active without cost. Active transportation, one of the problems we have in this province is safe areas for kids to bike, in our larger urban centres to have bike paths or in any of our urban centres I guess, to have bike paths and we have some work that we're doing in that area. Certainly Wolfville is an example of a community that has embraced this and is creating bicycle paths through their community and stuff. There's a lot of work being done by a lot of communities and a lot of work trying to influence both municipal and provincial infrastructure development to be mindful of this and incorporate this.
We have the Outdoor Leadership Development Program, a NSOLD Program, which is seven different modules and we have several hundred people who would go through that a year and that's on a whole series of outdoor-related expertise. This program has been running now for 20 years and it's one that has created the outdoor leadership base in the province that we need.
We have 250,000 visits to our beaches in the summer, and we have I believe 13 beaches that are guarded beaches, that through Nova Scotia Lifeguard Services that's something that we partner with the Lifesaving Society to advance. This program, obviously, is a very significant program for the province and most of the beaches are provincially run beaches, but we also partner with several municipalities to provide that leadership.
A big area for us is trail development. Most of you will know in your constituencies that the Sport and Recreation Commission has partnered with many different community organizations to advance trail development in this province. We are blessed with probably the most significant abandoned rail line in North America.
MR. PAUL MACEWAN: Prince Edward Island wouldn't agree with that.
MR. MARTIN: Well, Prince Edward Island - I'm glad you brought that up - the government of Prince Edward Island built the trail, completely; their difficulty now is maintaining it and dealing with it. The strategy we've taken in Nova Scotia is we will work with communities. Communities will build the trail and they will then take responsibility for maintaining it because it's their trail. I think that the P.E.I. example is one that we consciously said that - well certainly P.E.I. didn't have the 1,200 kilometres of abandoned rail line that we have as well. It's almost impossible to think that we would be able to do that from a provincial perspective, but clearly, a very positive initiative in this province regardless
has been the community involvement in trail development in creating opportunities and certainly a tremendous base for community pride in terms of these trails.
[9:30 a.m.]
Quickly, recreation facility development is a key area. Part of that trail development falls under there, as well. We have a capital grant program, which is called our RFD program. Most of you will be familiar with that. Certainly, people in your communities would be because there's not likely a ballfield or a rink or a facility in this province that hasn't been touched by that program at some point or another and, in many situations, several times. One of the situations we face in this province is most of our major facilities were built at least 25 years ago. Many of them suffer from very little preventative maintenance and deferred maintenance. So we're in a situation where we, over the last number of years, have done a lot of work in terms of trying to create audits of these facilities and a planned approach to bringing them back to an appropriate level of maintenance. So that's been a large program for us.
We have the Little Red Schoolhouse Program that's been rolled into a small community capital grants program. That program's been around since . . .
MR. MACEWAN: The honourable A. Garnet Brown.
MR. MARTIN: Yes, indeed, I will grant you that.
MR. MACEWAN: He was the inventor of it.
MR. MARTIN: Yes, which came from the conversion of little red school houses to community halls. This has been an invaluable program to help community groups with small grants where you have a seniors group that needs $1,000 to help them do an immediate repair on a roof or a furnace or something like this. While it's small in the size of the allotment that we have for that, it's crucial, I think, in communities around this province in times of great need. We also are very heavy into planning assistance for facility development. The key is if we get the planning done right at the outset, then we're going to get facilities that suit community needs and we put a strong emphasis on that.
We do a lot of this through our regional services and we have, as I say, six regions in this province that we have regional offices in. They serve to provide information and much of it is the consultants role with community organizations. Certainly, they represent the SRC on issues in the community. We are also involved with hosting the economic impact of sport in this province. Most of you will know of the World Junior Hockey Championships coming here next December and January. There are all kinds of activities that are developed through Sport and Recreation where there are hosting opportunities in municipalities right across this province, with Atlantic teams coming in, invitationals with national teams coming in. Those
are all economic generators of one magnitude or another; certainly the huge magnitude of the World Junior Hockey Championships, but in those communities, they can be boons.
I look at Cape Breton and certainly we look at the Vince Ryan Hockey Tournament with 150 teams or whatever - I'm not sure of the exact number now - that is a boon to the community, not only to Glace Bay but to the whole Cape Breton industrial area. So the impact of sport from an economic perspective is often not addressed in sport and rec. Most of those community festivals that are the drivers of our tourism have as key drivers, as well, the recreation communities throughout this province. The municipal recreation departments are key players in that, as are community recreation organizations. That's the lifeblood of our tourism business. So I think that's not reflected enough to people, the impact that sport and recreation in this province has. It's not just a spending, but there are economic gains for the province as a result of that.
With regard to our challenges, physical inactivity levels of Nova Scotians - and we will talk more about that - that is, without question, one of our major challenges. We have issues around Aboriginal sport. As we know, there are problems we face across society that are further exacerbated in the Aboriginal communities, and the importance of sport and recreation to these communities, it is absolutely paramount that we work with them to do additional supports for them. There are some initiatives we are going forward with; we are working with the Nova Scotia Aboriginal Sport and Recreational Circle and we're trying to help them move forward.
The community use of schools. There have been nightmares around the use of schools. One of the things talked about earlier was our Facility Development Program. One of the problems we have is because schools were not accessible over the years, oftentimes we're getting groups coming forward wanting to build a community hall or something right across from the school. We have billions of dollars invested in facilities in this province and we need to get them open. We are working towards that, working with municipalities, we are working obviously with school boards, and with the Department of Education. We have particular issues with P3 schools - or communities do - and we're trying to work through those and serve as a conduit to try to find a resolve to those access issues. Clearly, there is much work to be done on that.
We have a number of communities across this province that have community use agreements and those community use agreements have served them well. We need to get more combinations of municipalities and school boards sitting down and carving out an arrangement, so if things are done in advance and the I's are dotted and the t's are crossed, people know what to expect and these relationships will be more positive.
We have issues around safety in our arenas. We all know of the Springhill collapse last year and, subsequent to that, we have entered a partnership with Sexton Campus of Dalhousie University, where we have engaged graduate engineering students involved with
assessment of arena structures to look primarily at snow loading, and the roofs in terms of their capacities. I will say that we carried that out last summer and we are commencing again - in fact this week there is training today for the two individuals - that will start again this week. This has proven very valuable in terms of uncovering some issues for arenas that, with minor work, can move far more safely into the Building Code standards than they currently are.
What happens with a lot of these facilities - and I certainly am no engineer or don't understand all the technology - but when they simplified it for me, many of these structures that were built in the 1970s, the resistance with the surface for snow load initially is very low because of the newness of the materials. As those materials age there is a greater capacity to hold snow than initially, so they have to be reviewed in light of that. A number of very important faults have been discovered through this process and brought to the attention, and we're working with the organizations to resolve them.
Volunteerism. We depend so much on this piece - volunteerism. The latest stats say that there are more people volunteering, but for shorter chunks of time; so, in fact, the net effect is we have less volunteers. Part of that is the management of them, the support of them, the additional training and development kinds of things that need to be put in place, and again I just remind you of the fact that we're an organization with 15 professional staff and are maxed-out in terms of dealing with the thousands of volunteers.
Recreation facility development. We have population shifts, we have changes. We have a facility stock that I mentioned which is, at best, mostly 25 years of age with much deferred maintenance and some of these buildings we can't revive, we can't bring back to an acceptable standard. So there's much that needs to be done there. There's much that needs to be done still on trail development and working with these trail organizations and there's much that needs to be done in terms of, if we want our kids, if we want Nova Scotians to change their lifestyles, we have to work with them.
The beauty of sport and recreation is you don't have organizations that typically come and expect you to do something for them. They want you to come and work with them and provide a portion - not provide the facility, but provide a portion - to help motivate them to their goal. Most of the facilities we fund now, our fee program is defined as, our funding level can be up to one-third of the cost of a facility, and in most instances now we're probably one-fifth, one-sixth, one-tenth of the actual cost because communities are doing more of the work and there's more involved and our resources are limited.
Abuse and harassment. I have spoken of the situation there. Until we get a situation where every child who wants to participate in sport and recreation in this province can do so without fear of any abuse or harassment issue, then we have work to do. So we have to be constantly mindful of that and trying to incorporate very positive things about sport and recreation in our training and development of coaches and leaders in sport.
Provincial sport organizations, typically these are one-person organizations. Originally their focus was technical development. Every sport hired someone and they were out across the province doing various sessions, workshop sessions, to try to train individuals around their particular sport. As the membership grew somewhat, what happened is a number of individuals soon became slaves to the organization and the membership and the administrivia that comes with trying to communicate with that membership. Our difficulty is that we're not getting enough of the technical leadership out there in the communities to help those community volunteers do their work.
Trails. One of the big challenges is the CP rail line and we know this is in the queue for Cabinet, and hopefully this thing will be signed off where there are significant opportunities, particularly in the Annapolis Valley around the CP rail line, which a number of communities are just waiting for the green light so that they can go forward and take responsibility for development.
The next slide, in terms of our challenges, physical inactivity is our greatest challenge. If you look at the situation, that's probably our greatest challenge in the country, but certainly our challenge is that 62 per cent of Nova Scotians are not active enough for health benefits.
MR. MACEWAN: I see in Saskatchewan it's 69 per cent. So our government must be doing more than Saskatchewan's is doing.
MR. MARTIN: Well, in fact, that brings to bear a point that, you know, Saskatchewan probably puts the most money into sport and recreation in the country per capita, but it's how you use that money and how you structure your organization. This data is the latest data and part of what we're trying to deal with and talk a little bit later is to get accurate and consistent data on physical inactivity because there tends to be a lot of fluctuation in these numbers, especially the numbers for Saskatchewan.
When we look at this, the 62 per cent, no matter how we cut it, even if there's a fluctuation of 5 per cent or 10 per cent, over 50 per cent of our population is not active enough for health benefits. That's an alarming situation and with ours, which has consistently been around just less than two-thirds, we have major problems and we have to put a major focus on that and, as I've indicated, it's our greatest challenge. Since the 1980s - and this is the irony - inactivity has decreased but, you know, that would have been the ParticipACTION and the awareness.
[9:45 a.m.]
There is a tremendous increased awareness of the value of participation. We see it everywhere. From the media perspective, I think it has done a tremendous job in making people aware of the magnitude of this problem. We see something on obesity probably every
second day. We see something on physical inactivity. We look at chronic disease and most of it is pointing back, if you read any of these articles, that one key element of almost all of the strategies that are recommended is physical activity. If we get people more active, then we will have an impact, and so that's certainly where we're putting a focus.
Certainly again, as indicated, we're at greater risk for chronic disease and premature death; what we're looking at is the potential for some types of cancer, type two diabetes, heart disease. The impact, as our generation went through, probably inactivity commenced at 15, 18, or whatever. We have many kids now at the age of nine or 10 who are not active and many before that and, you know, the implication is they're stuck in front of a television. They're stuck on a computer. They're with their Game Boy, or whatever, and the focus isn't on activity.
Whereas, for whatever reason, speaking to my own youth, as soon as school was over, you were outside and you were playing road hockey, or you were playing some kind of activity on the local field and the neighbourhood gang just gathered for that kind of activity. We don't have that now. I mean it's a rarity to see a road hockey game. You couldn't drive through a street 20 years ago without stopping for road hockey and that type of thing and it's just not . . .
MR. MACEWAN: We have them up my way. It depends on where you go.
MR. MARTIN: You know I would agree. I was up in Cape Breton several weeks ago, in New Waterford, and I was amazed. That's a very positive thing that they've held onto some of those traditions. I think some of that's in terms of the comfort level with the community and sense of community in terms of those activities happening, but clearly that unstructured play, activity, or low organized kind of activity that just the local kids got together, we've not done a good job in retaining that for sure.
One of the problems we have is women are less active then men. It's a particular problem with kids in terms of young girls are far less active than young boys. It's alarming some of the additional statistics on that. We expect this, but it's also a concern and that is that inactivity increases with age, or people become less active as they get older. I know there are some great examples to the contrary, but that's the norm. Public awareness, you know, I think that physical activity, the public awareness level is really rising as people are now sort of getting bombarded with the implications of our sedentary lifestyle. The key for us is let's move them to action, and part of the facts show that there's probably greater opportunity to move people to unstructured activity than to the structured activity.
Just a quick slide on perceived barriers to physical activity, comparing Canadian data and Nova Scotia data, you know, obviously Nova Scotians feel there are less programs and facilities than the Canadian data shows, and I guess the right type of facilities are indicated as - there's a gap there. Lack of skill in adults is an interesting one as well. It comes back to
the basics; if we don't teach kids in school the basics of sport and physical activity in the early years, then this skill issue comes to play. Just as an example - that is not just a Nova Scotian issue - there's a statistic and I don't know the exact percentage, but they took a representative sampling of a graduating class of B.C. girls coming out of Grade 12. They asked them to perform just a typical throwing motion, and of that class, something like 70 per cent of the class couldn't perform the proper throwing motion.
If you take that, that throwing motion, it is not just for softball or whatever, but that's a tennis motion, that's a badminton motion, that's perhaps a volleyball-serving motion, so if you can't do that properly, then you get to the point of the lack of skill and the confidence that comes with having some basic skill level. That individual will not be comfortable in trying any of those sports, or will feel quite awkward with it. So part of it is the importance of providing those skills in the early years.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Tony, can I ask you to explain the numbering system, how you derive those numbers? Are they percentages of something? Just so we know what the chart is meant to mean.
MR. MIKE ARTHUR: Perhaps I can help out there. This is based on a telephone survey, and people were read a series of these statements. They were asked to what extent they agreed with the statements. They said, is there a lack of programs and facilities in your community? Twenty-eight per cent of Nova Scotians said strongly agreed or agreed with that statement, versus 17 per cent of Canadians.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: So it's a perception.
MR. ARTHUR: It is an opinion - that's what Tony said - perceived. In some cases, perception is reality; if that's what they believe, then it's a barrier.
MR. MACEWAN: That would mean that 72 per cent would feel confident about participating for item number one, which is not bad. I thought it was 62 per cent according to the chart, but now it has advanced to 72 per cent. That's a gain.
MR. MARTIN: Well that's probably 72 per cent of those who were active. We will move on, unless there are any further questions on that.
Just some facts. I guess from our perspective, we've looked at the whole issue of physical inactivity. With our limited resources, our primary focus, we believe, should be on children. We think that we need to change the values of kids in terms of the value of physical activity, the value of being active, the value of a healthy lifestyle. So our focus will be there. Part of the reason obesity rates are increasing, as I've indicated there is incredible data on that, and the linkage to type two diabetes, and there's a disease that we know that it's diet and
physical activity that are the two key elements to resolve that, to basically eradicate that, if we could deal with that, particularly with kids.
We know that inactivity among youth in particular is increasing, and that is troubling. That 13 to 18 or 20 group is a tough nut to crack. Only 25 per cent of children and youth walk or bike to school on a regular basis. That's an alarming fact. I'm promoting this, and I'm probably as guilty as many. If people took my license for driving my kids to school - and it's probably less than a kilometre, but it's two parents working, the situation where you're on the run or you're picking them up. Again, there's the safety issue, in terms of having appropriate routes to school. So it all links. Fifteen per cent of high school students elect to take physical education.
MR. MACEWAN: That's amazing. When I was in high school, that was the most popular subject there was.
MR. MARTIN: It just reflects the fact that we have to change what we're doing in terms of that, because obviously it's not appealing to kids now. Part of it is in terms of most of them looking at university prep and how their time is best spent, and what courses are going to create the optimum benefit for them as they look at university entrance.
The average Canadian child is sedentary for three to five hours per day, in front of a television alone. Our kids are less active than the average. We have much work to be done there. Mike, I understand this is parents responding on behalf of their children; obviously some parents have some concerns about excessive cost.
With 25 per cent of Nova Scotia children living in poverty, that represents a problem. One of the things that has unfortunately happened with sport is that sport has become a very expensive opportunity for children. To be involved in any minor sport system or to be involved in many recreation programs, whether they be dance or any active kind of recreation program, it typically has a significant price tag, even if it's a municipal-run program let alone some of the others.
There is a move afoot, partnered with Sport Nova Scotia to create the KidSport Fund, which is a tremendous initiative to try to create supports and opportunities for parents to gain access for their kids or have that supported.
MR. MACEWAN: They do great work. Could you explain just what that involves, in a sentence or two?
MR. MARTIN: KidSport?
MR. MACEWAN: Yes. The others here may not know about it.
MR. MARTIN: KidSport is basically a program that's been designed to try to provide resources so that parents can call, and if they don't have the resources - they want their kid to be involved in minor hockey or minor soccer or any minor sport - they can call, and until the funds are depleted - typically, I think over the last year it was over $100,000 that was distributed. I want to say that Sport Nova Scotia and some of the great sport leaders, Fabian Joseph is one who was one of the KidSport captains, if you will, and does a tremendous job in terms of trying to help.
It's primarily a committee that is made up of individuals from the Sport Nova Scotia board plus others from the community who run fundraisers all over this province, in terms of trying to generate the dollars. The funds are depleted quite rapidly after the fact. It's one piece that's trying to address this.
MR. MACEWAN: Thank you.
MR. MARTIN: You're welcome. The program issues, again, it's probably the sense that there's not enough options and programs or availability. One of the issues we have in this province, you will all know that soccer has just blossomed in this province over the last 5 to 10 years. We have 25,000 Nova Scotians registered with Soccer Nova Scotia, and there are far more than that out there playing. The difficulty, particularly in metro, many of the leagues in metro have to cap their membership because there just aren't enough fields available.
That's an unfortunate situation that we face, and yet it's something that's being addressed. A number of things are happening in terms of looking at turf fields. As an example, from my previous life at Dalhousie, where we built the Wickwire Field, if you go there any night of the week you will see - on Tuesday night you will see minor soccer - several hundred kids every hour playing on that field. That's phenomenal. So we need to do more from that perspective.
PACY research - in terms of some of the stats I mentioned before, we have some difficulty with the data. A lot of it was data that was being gathered, parents' perceptions of their kids' level of activity. The difficulty with that is the parents probably couldn't tell you what they did themselves in the past week let alone what their kids did. In fact, we knew those organized activities. If my daughters are playing soccer on Wednesday night from 6:00 to 7:30, I know that, it's sort of locked in the schedule. But we had very little sense, or parents had little sense of how active their kids were through the day and being able to recall this.
We embarked upon trying to come up with some benchmark research for Nova Scotia that more accurately reflected just how active kids were. We have a piece of research. Mike has been instrumental in working with universities - Acadia, Dalhousie, St. F.X. and UCCB - as partners on this project. Really, what we did was we used these devices here, it's called
an accelerometer. Kids wear these devices for a week, and while they have them on, every movement is logged into this. Then this data is fed into a computer which then prints out how active they were in 15-minute increments or 5-minute increments. So you clearly get a true sense of how active kids were. We have used this in conjunction with a questionnaire.
[10:00 a.m.]
MR. ARTHUR: Mike, do you want to throw a slide up there? Yes, just to give you an example of what it looks like. This is the data for one child who was in junior high. This was when we did the pilot project and it's over seven consecutive days and these are the minutes of physical activity they got: the blue is the moderate activity that they obtained on day one, the grey is the hard and the green is the very hard. So if the standard is 60 minutes of moderate activity, you can see with the blue this was a very active child over the course of seven days. Now the standard that Health Canada has just come out with is saying that it's 60 minutes of moderate on a per-day basis, but also 30 minutes of vigorous. So if we apply that standard to this child, even though she was active moderately, she may not have met the standard on vigorous activity. This is one subject, and we've got about 1,800 data sets on kids in Grades 3, 7 and 11, and they're just doing the crunching now to come up to what percentage of kids meet that standard of 60 to 90 minutes a day.
MR. MARTIN: The important point on that is this is what we consider to be a pretty active kid. One of the issues is this obesity situation. Even with kids being active, because of their diet, because of their eating patterns and what they're eating, they're still putting on weight. So to deal with this issue, initially, the discussions were around 60 minutes of moderate activity a day would do it, but now the push is towards 60 minutes of moderate and then 30 minutes of more intense activity to deal with that situation, as well - I'm just about at the end here.
Subsequent to that we created a basic working group, and Minister MacDonald last June created this group and gave them the mandate to come up with a physical activity strategy for the province. There were representatives from the government departments, Education, Health, Community Services and the Youth Secretariat, and then from non-governments, Recreation Nova Scotia - one of our key partners - the Heart and Stroke Foundation, UCCB Wellness Centre, and in Yarmouth we wanted to get municipal recreation and we had a representative of theirs, St. F.X. and Dalhousie Universities' input, a phys.ed. teacher to help us from that perspective, a coach who was selected and identified through Sport Nova Scotia as a rep, and then the Capital District Health Authority.
There was $500,000 received to go forward to put with this in the 2001-02 budget. It would be focused on the strategy. What we intended to do in year one was to try to identify - well, part of it was to create a vision statement initially, and then the key areas. These documents have been on our Web site. There was a consultation process across the province and this document was used as the basis for that consultation. It dealt with a vision and the
proposed goals for the framework and, as indicated in there, the proposed goals were around education and trying to create a greater awareness of the value of this, to creating opportunities for all.
We've talked about some of that and you can see in terms of the proposed goals on Page 5 that one of the goals would be around girls and young women, to try to address particularly the disproportionate number of young women - in particular, girls - who are not active, that we need to address leadership and then that we needed to do it, government and community commitment, and not just one element was going to deal with this. From that perspective, incorporated with that is that schools, municipalities, sport and recreation, cultural organizations, health-serving organizations, media, provincial government departments, corporate and unions all needed to work together, and we needed to continue to do research to support that and to ensure that we're moving in the right direction.
As well, the initial funding. A lot of this is around community capacity building and community-based funding. We have here a copy of our SRC Times that identifies a number of the projects that were funded in year one, which we're sort of highlighting. We're trying to find some best practices and initiatives that will be most successful at the community level, that we can share with other community groups and try to use to advance this piece. So those are there for your review.
I guess with that, that would conclude my brief presentation. I thank you for your time and certainly welcome any comments or questions.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Tony. Mr. Hendsbee, do you have questions?
MR. DAVID HENDSBEE: I do, but I will wait.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Oh, all right. I will start with Paul MacEwan.
MR. MACEWAN: If you want me to speak for an hour?
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Not here, please.
MR. MACEWAN: I will only go for a minute or two. I'm very glad to see this presentation this morning. This department, or commission as it is now, was originally a branch of the Department of Education. It was set up as a department of government in 1973 as the Nova Scotia Department of Recreation under the honourable A. Garnet Brown, the father of the department. Now, it's not a department anymore, but that's another story. I'm very glad to hear what they're doing and I'm very glad to hear the Little Red Schoolhouse Program is still intact and functioning. I don't know if there are any questions I wanted to ask them, Madam Chairman. They certainly did a very good presentation, in my view, and I
thank them. Very comprehensive approach. I was going to challenge the fact that 250,000 people visited our beaches and how they counted them down to 250,000, but if they don't want to get into that, I won't either.
MR. MARTIN: They count them. They spot them.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Wilson.
MR. MACEWAN: They may get repeaters.
MR. MARTIN: That includes repeaters, yes.
MR. DAVID WILSON: Tony, it's a fascinating presentation that you've made. You've touched on so many topics that we don't have enough time actually to go into everything that we should go into here. But one of the things that interested me most and you did repeat several times is that if you take a look at what sports organizations make available to youth in this province, in some cases - and this seemed to be a message of yours - it's just not affordable for Nova Scotian children to take part in a lot of organized sports in this province. Is that a major problem that you see in regard to the physical activity that they now receive?
MR. MARTIN: I think it's not affordable, and I think I qualified that by saying that 25 per cent of children in Nova Scotia live in poverty; likely those children or the parents of those children will have difficulty dealing with any fees. I think there is an element of difficulty with participation in sport and costs. Clearly, our facilities - if it's ice hockey, they're paying $100 an hour, likely.
MR. MACEWAN: Or more.
MR. MARTIN: That's probably the average across the province, so if kids are on the ice twice a week, that would be average because there are some lower rates in some of the smaller communities. When you factor that in, there's got to be a fee of a couple hundred dollars or whatever, and in tough times there are difficulties for parents to deal with that.
Now, hockey's numbers have been on the rise again in the last while, which is very positive, and I think it is because they've addressed a lot of issues in their sport. Part of this, as well, is sport has to be fun for kids. We can talk about getting them there, but we have to keep them there. We have to work with sport to ensure that the experience that these kids have is a very positive one and one that they want to come back to twice a week. But in terms of the capacity of Nova Scotians in general to deal with sport, I think that they still can. I think that there is an element and it's probably a growing element - if the percentage living in poverty is growing, then there's probably a growing element of children and parents that have difficulty dealing with fees for sport.
That's not sport's fault. That's just a fact. Sport is only charging . There are no profit sport organizations there. Those are all non-profit. They're trying to keep the costs minimal and they're doing incredible fundraising to keep the costs down. Many of the minor hockey programs around the province run bingos and run different kinds of activities. I'm sure you're familiar with that in Glace Bay and how much the minor sport system contributes back. But it's just facilities. It's just cost. As soon as they get into anything organized, any travel. Then again, one of the issues we have is something that can be problematic when you get to the point where kids are looking to be on rep teams. With the costs associated with travelling with rep teams and to be representing a team or travelling team, then that is certainly going to be a fact.
The resources available is a factor and we have examples where certain teams will cover the costs of some kids that don't have the resources, but a lot of parents are struggling. Middle class parents are struggling. If their son or daughter is lucky enough to be an elite athlete participating on a rep team, they're going to have some difficulties. Their whole summer or their whole winter is driven by motel rooms and staying with relatives and that type of thing as they travel around the province or travel around the region. So as you go into the system further it becomes more of an issue, I would suspect.
MR. WILSON: You also mentioned facilities several times. You know and I know that the first budget to always be cut is the recreation budget, right? Have you found that to be your experience?
MR. MARTIN: Well, I think it's one of the services, unfortunately, that's still seen as a frill. It's something that's not an essential service. I think that's what's wrong.
MR. WILSON: But isn't that what all of your surveys, all of your statistics that you have are now showing you, that that is not the right path to follow?
MR. MARTIN: Well, I think if we believe that facilities and Sport and Recreation budgets are positive contributors to active lifestyles and healthy lifestyles then, yes, that's a problem. If you go on that premise, then you have to at least provide a reasonable level of funding for it and you have to see it as a priority within the other sort of issues that you're dealing with. I think that's a primary problem that we have at this juncture. Your observation is correct that in most municipalities, or in many municipalities, I should say, because there are some great examples of municipalities that have bought into this and have done a tremendous job. As well, we in the province, I think that we're moving in the right direction. There are many, many more sitting around tables who I think believe that this is an important part of what we do and what the provincial government should be involved in. So I think there is some impact. But the proof isn't in the pudding. We don't have the resources we need, but, hopefully, we're moving in the right direction.
MR. WILSON: Well I have lots more that I could ask, but I won't use up all of the time. But I'm glad that you did mention the Vince Ryan Tournament in Glace Bay because not only the physical activity part, but the economic part, that it contributes towards the economy. Just for the record, the provincial government this year withdrew its funding from the Vince Ryan Tournament. So maybe that doesn't go hand in hand with everything, but I think it was $6,000 that was withdrawn from the tournament this year, that was given on a yearly basis but is no longer given.
MR. HENDSBEE: The tournament still survived without it.
MR. WILSON: Without the government.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: And you didn't mention the Black basketball tournament that occurred last weekend and all of the great basketball players on the St. F.X. team who have brought so much recognition really to basketball in the province - as well as Saint Mary's and Dalhousie, but I think St. F.X. in particular. You indicated in one of the slides that only 15 per cent of high school students choose to do phys. ed. in high school. We've just recently had the report about how poorly the province is doing, and the Minister of Education has indicated reluctance, I would say, to look at physical education in high school as a mandatory part of the curriculum. What's your view on that?
[10:15 a.m.]
MR. MACEWAN: It was mandatory. It was mandatory 40 years ago.
MR. MARTIN: There's a PAL program that the high school students have the opportunity to take advantage of. I guess my perspective on it is I think we have to do the right job at the elementary level, support it through junior high through their activities, and then the high school. On one level I understand. You know, we've been trying to advance this and we've talked to people who work in the system, many of whom are overtaxed, looking at the issues here and many of the issues are around the fact that parents want more science, more computer work, more kinds of focus that will prepare their child better for university education. Part of it is just not with the minister's perspective on it, I think part of it is the parental perspective on this. The value of this thing is not embraced at the level we need, and that's right across the board.
I think the way I see it being addressed - and I have had some discussions with the deputy of Education and some of his key people, and Mike deals with them on a regular basis as we have representation with our PACY group - is through the elementary and junior high. In particular, elementary, getting back to that skill development, then if we can create a value of being active, it really doesn't matter. If we can do that and re-enforce it to junior high and
if kids find a way as they go into high school to do it - ideally it's in the high school and ideally the best results are if you have it there and everyone has access to it. My sense is to focus initially if we can get elementary and junior high. I don't want to write off a group of people, but I think we need to look at what's happening in that high school program and perhaps try to find something that's more relevant and better fits the interests of these youth. That's one of the problems that we have with sport, and with everything from guiding to sport activities and to other recreational pursuits.
We have tremendous involvement in minor hockey. We have 10,000 to 15,000 kids in minor hockey, but by the time we get to the 16-year-olds to the 19-year-olds we might have 1,000 participants. So we've lost them at that level and that's the same level that you're talking about - the high school years. Similarly, if you look at the Guiding movement and some of those other kinds of great programs that we have that promote, as part of their operational framework, an active, healthy lifestyle, their drop-off rates are very comparable to what's happening in sports. It's how do we tackle this youth in the high school years - and I'm not sure making phys. ed. mandatory resolves that - at least until we have a better handle of how we should tackle that problem. I fully believe that we need to do more and commit more, and we're working towards more of a focus on elementary and junior high.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: You also made reference to the access to schools - community use of schools, and specifically P3, getting into the P3 schools. I know for the four years that I've been in the Legislature we have been attempting to get this issue dealt with. I think any MLA who has a P3 school in their riding are continually inundated with complaints from constituents about the lack of access for recreational purposes. I would like to understand why it's taking so long to get a resolution to access to P3 schools. Is it a compensation issue? Is it a liability issue? What is the barrier to getting a resolution? This has been on the books now for four years that I am aware of.
MR. MARTIN: It's an Education issue. I can give you an observation on it but . . .
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: You're not at the table.
MR. MARTIN: . . . I'm not at their table. I think part of it is - and I was part of the group that tried to craft this thing initially, in terms of looking after community interest. Let me assure you that from the outset we were trying to look at creating community-use agreements, trying to ensure that these schools were available, the 3,500 hours, that magical number that has been put into the document. The intent was, if you had 3,500 hours for school use, that would allow for even the busiest of school schedules to be accommodated plus considerable community access. The difficulty is the interpretation of that 3,500 hours. We thought it was solid, it had gone through government legal services to craft the definition of 3,500 hours and to work on that, and it has been the subsequent interpretation by some of the P3 partners as to what that 3,500 hours meant. Their legal interpretation is different and that's really the crux of it. Until that gets resolved, that is the piece that has been of the
greatest concern and then there are some others around what charges can be put in place. Some of that stuff is a fallout of the fact that it was anticipated that the 3,500 hours piece would resolve the issue. I can't really speak any more to that because I know that the Department of Education is currently trying to resolve that with the P3 partners.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you. The last thing I would like to raise with you, just building on this question around your research and trying to identify what the problems are. You know, there is already fairly extensive literature on these issues and particularly around the determinacy of health and poverty as it relates to inactivity and social exclusion and what have you. Just speaking from my own experience, MLA, North End of Halifax, I have very large housing developments in my constituency; Mulgrave Park, specifically, as one. The playground in there is a disgrace. This is a property that is owned and operated by the Province of Nova Scotia, Department of Community Services. The tenants association, the community, conducted a survey two years ago using the small amount of money they get from health promotion grants, those CHIP grants, and went door-to-door, identified the community priorities being recreation for children, a half decent playground, a youth centre, a place where kids could play basketball.
These issues have been raised. I have raised them with the Department of Community Services, with the people who manage housing, with HRM rec, with a whole host of people. It seems to me, if you look at the existing literature, the fact that the province already administers a lot of low-rental family housing and has caseloads as well, where children on social assistance get absolutely no money in those budgets for recreational purposes. Some kids in poor families, the most exercise they get is going with their moms to the food bank once a week and carrying the canned food home. So I think my question is around targeting, targeting your research, targeting your resources, and looking at what we already know in terms of what the literature tells us about places that are important to put the focus in terms of doing research and then trying to provide programs that give you outcomes. As a provincial body, you would have the natural connections to the Department of Community Services, for example, and access to some of this data. So what are you doing with respect to targeting research and trying to develop very precise programs, then, that would intervene in those situations and address what are very serious problems?
MR. MARTIN: I think you bring up some very pertinent points. I would ask Mike to speak to this because he has done most of the research piece. But clearly, a stronger relationship with Community Services is one that we are working on and, through CAYAC and through relationship with the deputy and the associate deputy there, trying to look at how we can link better with their organization.
With regard to the research and some of the response or feedback around particular targeting, I know there has been an indication that the targeting has been more from a general perspective in terms of girls as opposed to, you know, we will put the particular focus there. There is obviously an indication that we need to do something around families that don't
have the appropriate resources to be able to take advantage and be active and lead active, healthy lifestyles. There have certainly been a number of discussions around that and it is hopefully something that we will include in the strategy that's coming forward. Mike, I don't know if you want to add anything further to that.
MR. ARTHUR: Well, in the consultations as we went around the province and asked about these issues, we were continually told that the focus needs to be on those kids who are inactive. There are kids who are very active and, okay, let's keep that going, but in terms of inactive, there are certain groups. Lower socio-economic groups, Native kids, and kids with disabilities were mentioned. So in a couple of ways we have to respond: by providing some universal programs that all kids can have access to, but in some instances we will, I think, have to target initiatives at particular groups.
There are a number of issues going on around the province around girls, and that's proving to be very successful for a whole variety of reasons around body image and self-consciousness. There is some demand for girls to have separate opportunities on their own, without boys present, and those are proving to be very successful. So there are some success stories. The whole area of housing, as you pointed out, and we did have the Department of Community Services on our working group and trying to do a whole lot of work there in areas of policy. When housing developments are built by the province, what standards are in place to ensure that there are playgrounds that meet standards, youth centres, and walking trails in these places for the kids? That's an area we have to get into. It's part of the strategy that's recommended, but until it's approved, we can't sort of get into any of the details on that.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: In fact, just one final point, the Metropolitan Regional Housing Authority offered recreation programs in the summer and used to hire kids in the local community to do the day trips and basketball camps or whatever. That money was cut two years ago by the housing authority and those programs just disappeared in my community. So, you know, it's a real concern that we're going backwards instead of forward, and the kind of information you give us then it's almost predictable that that occurs.
MR. MARTIN: That's a concern we share, and it's a resource issue we all share and have to grapple with.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Pye.
[10:30 a.m.]
MR. JERRY PYE: Tony, I guess I first recognized there was a real, serious problem when about a year ago I attended one of Sport Nova Scotia's dinners and there was the little KidSport brochure that indicated that 44,000 children in Nova Scotia were too poor to be actively involved in sports. So it struck me as such an important issue that I came back to my
office and I called Stats Canada and I asked them for a definition of children and they told me a child is a person between the ages of zero and 14. I said how many children live in Nova Scotia and they said approximately 176,000 children live in Nova Scotia. So your number is exactly right, 25 per cent - actually it's 26 per cent, but 25 per cent is relatively very close.
I have to say that it was quite striking because being actively involved in minor sport and minor baseball myself, as a coach in Dartmouth for a number of years, the two most active sports that encouraged a number of young people to be involved were, of course, baseball and hockey, and over periods of time that became so expensive that young people drifted out of that and went into soccer. There were more people to actually be actively involved in soccer and the cost of being involved in soccer was much cheaper.
So families tried in all their efforts to make sure that their children were actively involved in some sort of sport, but as time went on and more people became impoverished whereby we have, you know, 25 per cent of our population in poverty, that includes families as well and they're struggling. So they don't actively participate in sports and that reflects down to their children as well. I think that therein lies a serious problem as well and when I listened to the Voluntary Planning report that was presented in 1999 and I saw that 50 per cent of Nova Scotians earn an income of less than $20,000 a year, we knew very well that there's another factor that comes into play as to why people don't participate actively in sport and so on, and it costs.
Normally community organizations and agencies used to be able to participate in fundraising and bring dollars in to help offset those particular costs and for those people who could least afford to be involved in the sport, they often ponied up with the money to allow them to participate. However, along came gaming in Nova Scotia and as a result of that, VLTs and casinos, took away casino nights and other bingo nights and so on and so forth that would normally fundraise for recreational activities and now there's a competing interest. So there's very little money going back in and the community finds itself at a loss as to how to generate those revenues. I'm sure you're aware of the competing interests as well.
I'm wondering, since 1967 when, in fact, Canada first authorized its lottery called the Olympic Lottery, to pay off the debt of the Montreal Olympics and to help sport, that there was a percentage of that going back into sport and recreation. I'm wondering what your thought is with respect to encouraging the provincial government to ante up dollars into sport and recreation from its gaming revenues and I think it's very important, particularly from the revenues on the lottery side.
Also I noticed that you had not made much mention with respect to where Sport and Recreation's role is with respect to disabled persons and I'm wondering if, in fact, there is a program designated to having disabled persons become actively involved in recreational activities. As you know, disabled people are people who for the most part lead a sedentary
life, simply because their incomes are so low that they don't have that kind of income to participate and I don't know if, in fact, there are incentive programs to enable them to participate in the overall aspects of recreational development. So I'm wondering if, in fact, you can try to enlighten me around that particular area. It's a very important issue to me.
I know that my colleague, Maureen, has spoken about her community and I represent a community that's similar or akin to the constituency of Halifax Needham and, of course, Tony, you're very much aware of the Boys and Girls Club and the Dartmouth North Community Centre, and so on, and the high volume of activity that is needed to continue to assist those individuals. So, if you can enlighten me around some of that, I would truly appreciate it.
MR. MARTIN: There are three areas there. One is around the move away from baseball and hockey to soccer, in terms of cost and that type of thing. I would agree that there's some of that. I think the other part of it is there was a lot of soul-searching done by soccer, and soccer came out with a tremendous mini-program. In my day, if you were nine-years-old and you played soccer, you played full field. Now they have cross-fields, they've adapted their sport in a significant manner, made it so that it was fun, that kids could score goals, which is a big thing for kids. So they had big nets, small fields. They could get a lot more kids playing. So they did a lot of that.
I would concur that there are some of the financial elements, but part of this, and a big part, is we have to ensure that the activities that we get our kids involved in are fun. We challenge sport, we are working with sport to try to, in many respects, revise what they're doing. Baseball in the old days, if you were there for an activity, it's one of the most sedentary activities. You're standing around waiting, especially if you weren't a very good player like myself. I was out in right field waiting for a fly ball that never came. There are those elements to . . .
MR. PYE: Bad batters.
MR. MARTIN: Yes, bad batters. We're trying to adapt it. Maybe when someone gets a hit, everybody has to run the bases instead of one, because you want to get kids active. (Laughter) That sounds a little crazy, but you have to do some things differently in order to get kids active, and you have to make things fun. I think soccer has done a good job with that. They've got miles to go as well, because that's a huge part of getting this population active. It's a huge part of getting Canadians active.
The second point about the lottery piece, when I came into this position I went right back through the legislation and I was hoping to find something that said, that money should go to support sport and recreation. To my chagrin, there was not that documented case. In fact, it was provided to the provincial jurisdictions with the indication that they had the right to use it as they so desired, but there was a caveat that they had hoped that it would be used
to support the intentions of the original lottery, which was around enhancing sport and recreation.
Most jurisdictions did not provide the resources directly to support sport and recreation, or a significant portion of them. Saskatchewan and Manitoba are two provinces that probably led the way in terms of how much of a commitment they have made. Their budgets for somewhat comparable-sized provinces far exceed what we have available. That having been said, the interpretation can be that any dollars, because the monies go to general revenues, that this government puts into sport and recreation activity or sport and recreation services are lottery dollars. Of course you could say that about any dollars in health or whatever, until you consume the $100-plus million that comes in.
If you want me to say that we should have more money, I certainly believe that. I say that to Cabinet when I get a chance. I say that to the Treasury and Policy Board. As was mentioned earlier, Saskatchewan's improvements have not been any better than ours to this juncture. It may be that their dollars are now going to show benefits, and they may have significant improvements over the next four or five years out because of some of the initiatives that they've taken in the past little while with the resources beyond what we have.
The point of the matter is, yes, I've spent, I'm sure, a half hour to 45 minutes of your time trying to have you understand that there are many areas. We're holding this sport and recreation system together. The glue that binds us is not a very significant dollar amount, when you take into consideration the volunteer commitment and the value of that back to the province and to each of our communities. Clearly we need to find additional resources, but in terms of the whole government agenda and balancing the books and trying to be able to move forward in a positive manner, we hope that we will be part of that consideration as government turns the corner on a balanced budget and moves forward.
Rest assured that we are knocking on that door at every opportunity to indicate that it's not throwing money at anything, it's an investment. It's an investment that has returns from the point of view of economic impact in this province, but we believe it's an investment that has returns from the point of view of health of Nova Scotians. We know the implications of the Health budget on this province.
We think that we can have an impact on that. We may, perhaps, have to state our case better, and we're continually trying to refine that. The research helps to substantiate that. As we get better Nova Scotia research, that further helps us present our case so that people who make the decisions can understand it from how it impacts this province. So we're working on that. We just look. If we haven't stated it well enough yet, we will be back to try to make that difference.
Your last point was around supports for individuals who may have some handicap or whatever. We have a couple of programs that deal with that. One, in terms of sport, we have an organization that we deal with in terms of wheelchair sports and dealing with individuals with handicaps, and that organization tends to be very active. It's like any of the organizations we have in this province; the leadership is crucial.
In our communities we see, provincially, where you have driven leadership, they are able to sort of put a community or put a neighbourhood on their back and make some things happen. We see that in sport where remote communities have dominated. If you look at Clare, in terms of what happens with volleyball and the volleyball players, and the same down in Inverness and those areas, there's just been the leadership there. They've been working with kids and giving them the opportunity.
Provincially, in terms of the organization and support of it, we have one of our sport consultants that works with sport groups, trying to advance this. Are we doing enough in it? I would be the first to say no, we're not. Again, it's one of the items we have that we're trying to address. Clearly, we have a situation where two-thirds of our population, I believe, is headed for a health crisis. We have all of these other segments and target groups that we need to put some focus on, but again is part of, where do you put the resources?
We keep that on the screen, and we've done many things in terms of facilities, in terms of the planning of facilities, and trying to ensure that their needs are being looked at. You can rest assured that that's done. We partner with Recreation Nova Scotia, who is one of our organizations that does significant work, and they are doing a lot of work in terms of trying to deal with persons with disabilities. There was, previously, the Recreation Council for the Disabled. About four years ago now, Volunteer Nova Scotia, Recreation Council for the Disabled and Recreation Nova Scotia merged into one organization. They are doing work with seniors and with persons with disabilities and special target groups, and we're helping to fund initiatives in that area. Mike, I don't know if you have anything further to add on that piece.
MR. ARTHUR: The only thing is that through the Capital Grants Program, several years ago we upgraded the standards in that any facility that is funded must meet minimum accessibility requirements. That's helped a lot to increase accessibility, particularly wheelchair access.
MR. MARTIN: And through that program, we probably don't have as many as we should but we have three or four playgrounds now that have been developed, that are accessible playgrounds. They're very expensive, but we're trying to keep that in front of people when communities are planning. Let's understand, much of what we do is through partners in the community. We try to make them aware of this as an issue, so that when they
do their planning - they're building a playground and all of a sudden the cost of the playground, to make it accessible, may double. That's the unfortunate thing, but several local
organizations that decided they were going to build a playground took that information and worked towards a higher target, but have gone for it, and we've contributed. Again, it's not one-third, it's typically one-quarter or one-fifth of the cost of it. So, we're dealing with it in relation to everything else that we're dealing with, and I'm sure that doesn't give you great . . .
[10:45 a.m.]
MR. PYE: Comfort.
MR. MARTIN: Comfort.
MR. ARTHUR: There's just one thing I wanted to bring because there's been a fair amount of discussion on sport activities and things that kids get involved with or don't get involved with. I have a slide here on teenage girls and I have a similar slide on boys, but it shows you what the most popular activities are of teenage girls. You can see the range of things around walking, bicycling, swimming, jogging, basketball, social dancing, home exercise, gardening, in-line skating, would be the top 10.
MR. MACEWAN: You don't have ice skating on that list at all.
MR. ARTHUR: Well, based on self-reports by the girls, they don't list it as one of their . . .
MR. MACEWAN: When I was growing up it would have been up at the top.
MR. ARTHUR: Yes, and maybe that's something we need to change. It would be nice to see that in there, but the point is . . .
MR. MACEWAN: Young people today don't skate. I can tell you that.
MR. ARTHUR: I guess the point I wanted to make here is that there is a need for a wide range of both structured, organized activities but also unstructured activities. If you look at a lot of those activities, they're things that kids want to do and want to do on a spontaneous basis. Walking and bicycling and swimming are the top activities that they report and, yes, those can be competitively, but in a lot of cases they can be done on a non-competitive recreational basis. What we need is safe community environments for them to be able to do those, so when our lakes become polluted in areas then that reduces swimming opportunities and yet it's one of the favourite activities of kids. So, there's a need - across the scope, sport is a key part of it, but there's a whole other dimension of activities that we think the strategy needs to pay attention to as well.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. O'Donnell.
MR. CECIL O'DONNELL: Just to follow up on David Wilson's statement. I tend to agree that funding seems to be cut first on sports and recreation programs. I recall a few years back that whenever we turned the television on we were always bombarded by the flashy ads on ParticipACTION. Lately, I haven't seen that and I'm not sure whether that program has been scrapped or not. Can you tell me if this program has been scrapped and has it been replaced now by a federal program?
MR. MARTIN: No, the program is a program that was funded under Health Canada's funding. Two years ago, I believe, there was a dispute over the amount of funding and Health Canada was going to continue their funding at the level of the previous year and ParticipACTION was looking for an increase that was threefold or something like that. With the indication that they didn't think they were going to get to the level that they needed to get to, ParticipACTION decided it was going to call their bluff and close their doors. In fact, they have pretty much done that.
There were federal-provincial discussions over the last little while from both Health Canada and from Sport Canada's perspective. There is interest in trying to revive ParticipACTION or some sort of campaign that would be better focused at this time. ParticipACTION was a tremendous campaign around awareness, but the concerns were that there weren't the community programs in conjunction with them to move people to action. That's really where we think things have to be. You need to have the campaigns to increase awareness and try to push people to action but then you need to create the community capacity or the programs and services that people can become engaged in at the community level. I know there has been a lot of discussion around that and around what should be put in place to replace it so I think you will probably see, probably before the end of this fiscal year, something that's revived and sort of resurfaced in some manner or form.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Before we go to the next question, we're coming up to 11:00 a.m. but there seem to be a number of members with questions left. Does anybody object if we run a little over?
MR. MACEWAN: I have to be at a caucus meeting and so does David, but you can continue.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: We will, thank you. Mrs. Baillie.
MRS. MURIEL BAILLIE: Mr. Martin, of course, schools are considered to be an appropriate place for physical education. Maureen spoke about only 15 per cent of high school students take physical education and the saying came to my mind, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. That's my feeling there. You spoke about we have to put more emphasis on elementary students and my feeling is you have to go further than that. I think we have to get the children before they get into school. Back in my teaching days when I was teaching reading, I would ask the children or ask the parents, do you read
books, do your children see you reading books? That's a good thing, a fun thing and I think that goes back to young parents. Maureen spoke about the only walk they get is going to the food bank. Well, if they're in poverty and they're not working, I would say that young mother or father could walk that child to school and go get him, especially if it's not safe. I just wondered if you would give any thought to educating these young parents on how to help.
MR. MARTIN: It's a great point. I think one of the situations we have looked at and the earlier question about the relationship with Community Services, the early years program, is one of tremendous focus, not only in Nova Scotia but nationally, in terms of how you impact the child in those first five or six years of life. We're looking, through CAYAC, through the Children and Youth Action Committee, at how we can impact parents, whether in-home visitations, talking to them, and part of the discussion would be around the value of physical activity, the value of getting their kids active and perhaps some support materials around that. We're looking at how we might be able to create a relationship with daycares so that there would be some - right now there's no standard for the amount of physical activity kids need to have in daycare so we would like to address that and try to move to a situation where we're getting kids more active in the pre-schools or in any of those daycare programs.
So some of the kinds of things you're talking about is trying to influence - and in particular because of any screening process looks at mothers, whatever risk factors there are, but looks at trying to provide additional support to certain parents. Part of the intent would be to try to help them understand the value right from the outset, of getting their children active. So, it's something that is being looked at. It's one of the areas where people who are with Community Services, there will be some positive impacts on parents and kids around the province.
MRS. BAILLIE: Thank you. I'm glad to hear of that because I sometimes feel we are taking more and more away from the family unit. The answer is not always to throw more money at it. I'm glad to hear that.
MR. MARTIN: Just to pick up on that point, to Mike's point, of the unstructured activities. One of the things, if you look, there are a lot of families who are out walking. When I was leaving this morning, my wife was going for a walk and the two kids were with their scooters (Interruptions) They were paddling alongside her and that's one of the things that is happening. One of the things we're trying to emphasize is that beyond organized sport that there are all kinds of opportunities for parents. Oftentimes if we can get the kids active, they will get the parents active.
MRS. BAILLIE: Just one more thing. Mr. MacEwan spoke about ice skating. Today, I think children think they have to go to the rink. Maybe it's because the parents can drop them off?
MR. MACEWAN: Well, that was just for girls, Muriel. Boys do skate when they play hockey and it's a different type of skating than just skating around in circles. But that was a very popular activity among young people.
MRS. BAILLIE: Yes, I grew up with that.
MR. MACEWAN: When I was young.
MRS. BAILLIE: Yes, I grew up with that too; I love to skate, but I didn't have a rink. I think if parents could take the children to the ponds and make sure the ice is safe, and skate with them, then the children will skate - a family thing.
MR. MARTIN: Yes, and one of the things, just quickly on that, there's a whole move afoot to create, with the NHL in partnership with Go for Green organization, and we're quite significantly involved in trying to roll out what's called ice streams, which is going back to the community outdoor rinks and you will have probably heard there were a couple in metro this year, and I think we'll see a lot more of those happening. Our weather is a problem, but there are still many community organizations anxious to do this.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Chataway.
MR. JOHN CHATAWAY: Thank you, Tony and Mike, I very much appreciate the conversation we're having today because I want to be updated and I must say you have lots to say, but there are a lot of things to say about it because it's very, very important, we have to be in good physical shape. It doesn't matter what age you are, if they can possibly improve and things like this and the numbers and the facts and the figures are great.
I just have one question per se. I know when you talk about the community use of schools, I'm more familiar with the ones in Lunenburg County because I was a teacher there and the schools are very much open. Anybody can go in there at any time and do activities, and at the high school one of the most important rooms is the weight room. They not only have instruction and things like that, but all ages come out, so it's going in the right direction.
I think some of the things that you talked about, the PACY study, these kids are in Grade 3, Grade 6 and Grade 11, and when you present the facts and figures, most people will think how could I improve. So we should strive to have personal challenges and things like this. I remember being a school teacher and this is the time of year that we had track meets and kids would get so excited and they would be carrying on. If that idea could be continued on an annual basis, it's great.
One other thing just before my question, I know from some of the information I have that obesity is a problem - on Page 4 one of the things is obesity rates are increasing. You know it was not in this country, I don't believe, I think it was in the U.K., that they have an
obese tax, you know it was suggested they do that because I know this year, of course, we're very concerned about cutting down on people smoking and one of the facts and the figures out of this, people smoking as much, is that every year it costs $175 billion to handle problems in Nova Scotia with smokers and, of course, the taxes are about $105 million, but here in the facts and figures on obesity, it now costs - I don't know where exactly the figures came from, but you make your reaction if it's all wrong - $120 million a year in direct health costs from obesity and $140 in indirect costs in lost activity. So maybe we have to start thinking that obesity is not a healthy situation.
Trails. I represent Chester-St. Margaret's and I do know, and I would like your comment, the impression I get is that various associations are developing, building trails in Nova Scotia, and from what I understand there are about 15 to 18 associations in HRM that have great things to do with trails and associations. A couple of years ago it wasn't there, but they're growing all the time and five years from now it will even be better. What's your impression? I mean my impression is we have a good trails association, some challenges, but . . .
[11:00 a.m.]
MR. MARTIN: I think that right across the province we've got tremendous trails associations. We have probably two-thirds of our Trans Canada Trail, maybe more than that, completed, and it's been completed by community organizations. In metro, there is a significant trails movement and it is supported by HRM in a very significant way, I think. They see the value. They've got a master plan for trail development for the HRM and the greater area. I think there's a lot of co-operation and a lot of positives. Clearly the way to go for each segment of it is to create an organization that will take it, embrace it, build it and then manage it beyond that fact. That's where we're going with it. I think there are a lot of positives, not only in metro or St. Margarets Bay, down to your way, but right across the province.
MR. CHATAWAY: One supplemental question. Basically, I do know that some people want to bike on it and some people want to walk on it, but I think there are some challenges there. I get the impression that we're solving the challenges so our rules and regulations are basically agreed with everybody. We don't have to have two paths. We have to have one path that everybody can use with proper - some challenges, but we're getting ahead on that.
MR. MARTIN: Absolutely. There's no one who legislates how these trails are being used. They're built by communities. They're being worked through the access and right from the outset, we're trying to get multi-use trails established and are working with organizations from that perspective. It's had some heated discussions; by times you don't think you're going to get through it, but by and large, there have been positive go-forward positions.
MR. CHATAWAY: I'm glad. Thank you very much.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hendsbee.
MR. HENDSBEE: That's the last time I will ever pass up the opportunity to ask some questions first. Anyway, there are a lot of things we could talk about, but I will just go straight to the punch in regard to the questions I had. You talk about youth activities and the hope we're trying to focus more on physical activity and not just organized sport. I hope that trying to get kids away from, when they do go outside - not on their motorcycle, not on the ATV, the Ski-Doo or the jet ski or whatever the case may be - it has to be actual physical activity.
My concern in regard to the health of Canadians and our own citizens in this province is, have there been any recommendations, reports or presentations made during the Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada? Because they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I want to know if there have been any presentations made by this province to that Romanow report about the need for physical activity and perhaps some of the centres we could look at in regard to income tax concessions. Right now, if you get a weight loss program as a doctor's prescription or on the doctor's advice, it's income tax-deductible under Revenue Canada. Why not have more of our sport registration fees or membership fees in fitness centres or even the cost of athletic goods be used as medical receipts in reducing our tax implications as incentive for people to get more involved?
MR. MARTIN: Certainly in terms of presentation, the ministers responsible for sport and recreation met with Romanow in Iqaluit, probably a month ago now. There was a presentation made and it focused on the impact of sport and recreation on the health system, and on physical inactivity or physical activity, getting Canadians more active. Not only in that session but post that session I've heard Romanow on at least two or three occasions, refer to the importance of the lifestyle change and the impact of physical activity on the health care system, so the message has gone forward. Part of that was focusing on the impact of sport and recreation in terms of the health prevention focus. The discussion did not embrace the tax benefits kind of scenario you just put forward, but more to indicating that in terms of the preventative health agenda, physical activity is a huge part of it. He certainly indicated that he had a good, strong understanding of this and was open to suggestions as to how you position this. Should it be something that was inside or married with health, or something that's outside of health that pushes this thing forward? Because the preventative health agenda - the concern in terms of resources put towards it - it obviously pales by comparison to acute care.
MR. HENDSBEE: Well, Madam Chairman, there's not enough time and never enough money to deal with all the issues, particularly with this topic, but I have to run to the Trans Canada Trail Pavilion presentation on the other side of the harbour.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I have a couple of short ones, Tony, if you don't mind. I'm intrigued by this Active & Safe Routes to School program and encouraging community access to schools. If I have schools in my community that want to take advantage of these programs, who do they contact?
MR. MARTIN: They can get in touch with our office or the Ecology Action Centre. We have a staff person that we've partnered to create a position and that person is working with schools from that perspective. So if you called our office, we would be able to get you geared up.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Okay. Good. The other thing is you talked about the KidSport fund. I've been kicking an idea around in the back of my mind for awhile; I haven't had time to do anything about it, of course. Some sort of a sponsorship program - I'm one of those people whose kids are grown and there are no grandchildren to spend money on. Is there a program that would allow me to sponsor a child in a community to play a sport rather than just writing a cheque to KidSport for a few hundred dollars? I think that might be something for that group of parents in that time frame of their lives. I suspect there are quite a few of them who have the money to spend and don't have anybody to spend it on, but would be more encouraged to spend it if they could see a direct benefit to somebody.
MR. MARTIN: So you put a face with the dollars that you've invested.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Yeah. Put a face, like a spin on the Big Brother/ Big Sister.
MR. MARTIN: From my exposure to it, it's not something that has come up, but I will certainly bring it up with the appropriate officials with that program.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Obviously, if you have people coming directly to you looking for access through the KidSport program, then you have a way to identify kids, either through you or through their coaches, who could benefit from such a program. It might be a different spin on it that might lead to more funding; I don't know. I would certainly be interested in it.
MR. MARTIN: If you're interested, that's a start. Every kid, that's a world of difference for that one kid.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Well, thank you very much. It's a lot of information to chew on, but I enjoyed having you.
MR. MARTIN: Thank you very much for the opportunity.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: The meeting is adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:09 a.m.]