Presentation to HOC Standing Committee on Health
Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention
Barbara Kaminsky, Chair, BC Alliance for Healthy Living
Mary Collins, Director, BC Alliance for Healthy Living Secretariat
Presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health
Consultations on Healthy Living
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Madam Chair and Committee Members,
On behalf of the BC Alliance for Healthy Living (BCAHL), we would like to thank you for the opportunity to share our experience and views on what can be done to promote healthy living in Canada.
BCAHL is an Alliance of nine provincial organizations who have been working together since 2003, to address the common risk factors and health inequities which contribute significantly to chronic disease.
While our work has focused specifically on British Columbia – our experience in overseeing $25 million of initiatives to address these risk factors and our involvement in policies to reduce health inequities have provided us with a wealth of knowledge which we believe has applicability to Canada as a whole. We have provided copies of a number of our reports to the Committee which we would recommend for your consideration.
In the limited time available today, we would like to highlight three areas:
1. In order to effectively change social norms around healthy living, we need a holistic and comprehensive approach – we call it a “whole of society” approach. No one sector can do it alone – we need to align our priorities and work on a common agenda to see real results.
Within governments at all levels – there also needs to be a “whole of government” approach. Whether to redress the underlying social and economic determinants of health, or enact specific policies or actions, the Health Ministry alone cannot do it all. We need accountability requirements for all departments to address the health and health equity impacts of their policies and programs as well as commitments from the Prime Minister, Premiers and Mayors to put this issue at the top of their agendas. Only in this way will move towards a healthier Canada which will also be a wealthier and more productive Canada.
2. As you well know, whether you will be healthy or not in many cases depends less on the healthcare system, and more upon your economic and social circumstances. Without focusing on these determinants of health including income security, food security, housing, early childhood development, a healthy built environment among others, we will never really redress the health inequities which continue to plague us and the ever increasing levels of chronic disease with their attendant costs to the healthcare system – currently estimated at $93 billion a year.
3. Finally we need to focus in specific policies and actions which can assist Canadians in changing behaviours and engaging in healthier lifestyles.
We would like to share with you several examples where we believe the Federal Government can play an important role in making this shift.
We would focus our suggestions on the issue which is of growing concern in Canada and elsewhere – the increasing levels of unhealthy weights among both adults and children.
As you have heard from others, currently ¼ of 2-17 year olds in Canada are overweight or obese and it is estimated that 70% of 35-44 year old will be in this category in 20 years if nothing changes. Although the problem is complex, there is a fairly broad consensus on some of the actions necessary to curb it – and to make progress on this issue, we need to start shifting the physical and socio-cultural environments that shape our consumption and activity patterns.
In our experience this requires a combination of carrots and sticks – regulation, taxation as well as health promoting actions which focus on access, education and skills development required for Canadians to engage in healthy living.
A priority is to ensure Canadians have nutritious food and the ability to make good choices about what we eat. Children in particular need healthy food in order to achieve optimal development, to succeed in school and to develop life long healthy habits.
The Federal Government can play an important role by restricting the marketing to children of unhealthy foods and beverages including:
- banning television advertising of unhealthy food and beverages during programming viewed by children aged 12 and under
- banning or restricting unhealthy food at grocery store checkouts
- banning the use of celebrities or cartoon characters to promote a product to children
- banning all sponsorship or marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages within school settings
If this can be achieved in cooperation with industry that would be great – but if not – we would recommend a strong regulatory regime be introduced at the federal level much as has been done for tobacco.
Information is key to decision-making – and in order to make healthy choices, consumers need to have clear information about what they are buying.
We recommend strengthening the requirements for clear and consistent front of package labeling of the contents of packaged foods –providing appropriate information on sugar, fat and sodium and clearly relating these to servings. As well, we need to gradually reduce the acceptable levels of sodium and sugars in many of our foods. While we are pleased that some industry groups have made a start in this direction –there is still much work to be done.
We have been particularly concerned with the overconsumption of sugar sweetened beverages among young people. One of BCAHL’s initiatives, SipSmart! BC enabled over 6,213 school children in BC to learn about the sugar content of what they were drinking and encouraged them and their families to make more appropriate choices. This program is now being expanded to other jurisdictions across Canada with the support of the Childhood Obesity Foundation, CDPAC and a CLASP grant.
Education is important but in this case easy access is also a concern. When sugary drinks are often the cheapest and most convenient option, it is no wonder they have been consistently linked with overweight in children.
Taxation is never a popular choice, but with respect to the challenges we are facing with childhood obesity, we believe an increased tax applied to non nutritive foods and beverages could limit overconsumption in the same way that tobacco taxes reduced smoking rates.
Of course physical activity must play a larger part in the lives of our children and adults – and governments both through the tax system and in other ways can play an important role in supporting measures to promote and facilitate families of all income levels to be able to engage in physical activity. In particular we suggest the Federal Government should support other levels of government in ensuring that there is the appropriate physical recreational infrastructure to meet the physical activity needs into the next generation.
Finally we would like to congratulate Health Canada on its recent health promotion campaign to raise awareness of the links between sugar sweetened beverages and childhood obesity. But much more needs to be done.
We urge the Federal Government to take a leadership role in working with the provinces, the private sector and the not for profit sector in a “joined up” approach to promote, support and inspire the next generation of Canadians to live not only long lives – but healthy ones as well.
Finally while we know that tobacco is not the main focus of the work of the Committee at this point, we, like many of the other groups which have presented to you, would like to urge that you support the continuation of the Federal Tobacco Reduction Strategy which is scheduled to complete at the end of this fiscal year. While we have made great progress in reducing smoking there is still much to be done — particularly with specific target groups such as youth which we have worked with in our BCAHL initiatives.
We would be pleased to share the results of our work which may help to guide future activities in tobacco reduction.
Thank you and we look forward to your questions.
To listen to the audio recording of the Committee Hearing visit the House of Commons website – click on Meeting 51 February 17 2011 “Healthy Living”
