Health — Issue No. 15 — Wednesday, October 18, 2006 (HTML)

2006 Legislative Session: Second Session, 38th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH
MINUTES AND HANSARD

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
HEALTH



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		260
	B. Granger
	M. McMahen
	J. Tazelaar
	T. Mohr
	K. Smith
	J. Bortolussi
	S. Helgason
	R. Sam
	G. Stump
	H. Angelo
	D. Tenale
	L. Solomon
	T. Bates
	G. Fedor
	J. World
	J. Burgar
	N. Gale

Chair:	* Ralph Sultan (West Vancouver–Capilano L)
Deputy Chair:	David Cubberley (Saanich South NDP)
Members:	Dave S. Hayer (Surrey-Tynehead L) Daniel Jarvis (North Vancouver–Seymour L) John Nuraney (Burnaby-Willingdon L) * Valerie Roddick (Delta South L) * Katherine Whittred (North Vancouver–Lonsdale L) * Katrine Conroy (West Kootenay–Boundary NDP) * Michael Sather (Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows NDP) * Charlie Wyse (Cariboo South NDP) * denotes member present


Witnesses:	Hugo Angelo Tatjana Bates (Interior Health Authority) Jesse Bortolussi Jack Burgar (Columneetza Secondary School) Dr. Glenn Fedor Nancy Gale (Cariboo-Chilcotin Child Development Association) Brody Granger Sarah Helgason Monica McMahen Teara Mohr Raymond Sam Kallie Smith Loni Solomon Garrett Stump Jamie Tazelaar Darren Tenale Jim World

R. Sultan (Chair): I would like to call this meeting to order and turn it over to Deputy Chair Charlie Wyse.

C. Wyse: First off, I wish on behalf of the committee to acknowledge our presence here on traditional Shuswap territory. At the same time, I also wish to recognize two other first nations communities: the Chilcotin as well as the Carrier Nations.

Very quickly, the group of elected officials that are here, along with some staff from the Legislature, is a collection of representatives of both political parties.

For those of you that may not be aware of me personally, I happen to be the MLA for part of our area here in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. My constituency is called Cariboo South. I belong to the New Democratic Party. We are members of the official opposition. Other members here of this group belong to that particular party.

The majority of the members of this group belong to the Liberal Party, which is the governing party here in British Columbia. There are collectively 79 of us that have been elected from across the province to look after the business of British Columbians. That Legislature — the 79 — has assigned us here the task of getting input on the important health issue of obesity in children.

We believed that it was very important that we got input from the students from around the province. We have in the past visited schools in West Vancouver and Victoria. Starting yesterday we were in a school in Vancouver in the morning. In the afternoon we were at a school in Campbell River. We flew to Fort St. John and met with students in Fort St. John this morning. And we're closing off, meeting with students here in the Greater Williams Lake area this afternoon.

On behalf of the committee, and not to put any less importance on the adults that later on are going to make presentations to us, we want to recognize the very important contributions that have been made by students throughout British Columbia.

So that you are aware of what will happen to the information that you give to us, you will be asked to identify yourself by name. You'll be recorded in a permanent record in Victoria so that later on, 50 years from now, you can actually go back and pull out the information that you have presented to this group today.

More importantly, from my point of view now, that information that you present to us is in actual fact going to form part of our report that we make back to the Legislature by the end of November of this year. That report will consist of recommendations that we make to the entire Legislature on how we believe improvements can be made on this very important issue of obesity and how it's affecting our youth.

I was given an extraordinary privilege today by my colleagues. I'm not the usual Deputy Chair, but because this is my home turf, they made me the Deputy Chair so that I have this particular honour of recognizing you. On your behalf, I would like to welcome all of us here to the Cariboo-Chilcotin area, and I would ask that you give them a warm Cariboo-Chilcotin welcome to our home turf.

R. Sultan (Chair): And a very capable MLA you have serving you in Cariboo-Chilcotin as well.

Charlie could have done this as well as I, but I think we should introduce ourselves across the table, maybe starting with Katrine on my far left.

K. Conroy: Hi. I'm Katrine Conroy. I'm the MLA for West Kootenay–Boundary. That's over in the Kootenays. I actually live in Castlegar.

It's just a real pleasure to be here today. I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

K. Whittred: I'm Katherine Whittred, and I'm the MLA for North Vancouver–Lonsdale. That's directly on the north side of Burrard Inlet from downtown Vancouver.

I've been admiring your school. It is just a wonderful design, and you are lucky to have such a wonderful learning environment.

C. Wyse: I'm Charlie Wyse. I live in Williams Lake, and it's sure nice being home.

I spent several years of my life in Williams Lake trying to build a fibreboard mill out there near the power plant back in the early '90s. We did not succeed, but the good thing was that I got to know many citizens and business people and politicians here in Williams Lake. It was a wonderful experience that I've never forgotten.

V. Roddick: I'm Valerie Roddick. I'm the MLA for Delta South, which is the Ladner-Tsawwassen area, just outside of Vancouver, where you catch the ferry to go to Vancouver Island.

It's wonderful to be here again. I was just here a very few weeks ago with the agriculture planning group, meeting with a lot of people and farmers and ranchers from around here. So it's really nice to be back here. Thanks very much.

M. Sather: I'm Michael Sather. I'm the MLA for Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows, which is in the Fraser Val-

ley, just outside of Vancouver. It's a great pleasure to be here, and I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say on the subject.

R. Sultan (Chair): We are going to hear from students, primarily and firstly, this afternoon. After the students have had their say, we are going to hear from other officials such as the Interior Health Authority, which runs our health system.

Before we get to the students giving us their individual presentations, I would like to remind everybody, including those who may not have an opportunity to talk to us today, that there are several different ways they can communicate their views on this important issue of childhood obesity.

I would like to mention that we have a website, myhealthyspace.ca — all one word. On that website you'll find a very amusing video — we think it's funny anyway; I laugh every time I look at it — making fun a little bit about this healthy eating stuff. If you then watch that video, you can roll from there into a blog and submit to us your individual opinions — just two or three lines summarizing what you think on various issues.

There is also a questionnaire that we would urge you to fill out, and finally, we have a poster contest. The winning poster from all of British Columbia will become the cover of our report. So there are many ways to participate.

The other item that I almost forgot — how could I do that? — is to introduce the other people who make this whole process work, beginning with what we might call our informal leader, Kate Ryan-Lloyd, our Committee Clerk, who's sitting on my left. Kate runs the process and keeps us on the rails and within the rules of the Legislature, which are quite prescribed. This is an official activity of the British Columbia Legislature. We just don't make it up as we go along. We have to obey whatever Kate tells us to do.

We have Jonathan Fershau, who is our research analyst, over there in the blue shirt. We have Carla Shore, in the blue sweater there at the back table, handling media liaison. We also have today a capable staff of what we call Hansard Services, Mike Leblond and Andrew Costa, behind all that machinery. They will assist in the preparation of the written transcript, as well as the streaming audio of this meeting live over the Internet.

With that out of the way, we can now turn to the main purpose of the meeting, which is to hear from the youth of Williams Lake on the issue of childhood obesity.

B. Granger: Thank you. Hi, I'm Brody Granger. I'm the student council president here at WLSS. We got together over the last couple of days to discuss and brainstorm a few of the problems and the possible solutions to obesity within the youth.

Obesity is a serious and complex problem, not only for today's adults but especially for the youth. As obesity stems from a number of different causes, there's no single solution for the problem. Over the next several minutes we will hear causes and solutions for problems rooted in education, nutrition, media, activity, lifestyle, parental influence and school cafeteria.

Firstly, for education I'll turn the floor over to our education expert, Monica McMahen.

M. McMahen: I'm going to start with PE classes. My name is Monica McMahen. I'm the vice-president of the student council here at Williams Lake Secondary.

R. Sultan (Chair): I wonder if I could interrupt. Could all the witnesses tell us what grade they're in?

M. McMahen: PE classes do not achieve what they are intended to do. The curriculum does not set strict enough rules, and many of the activities we do in PE are simply time fillers.

An example of this is a game that I played in PE class for almost a month every day last year called elimination volleyball, in which everyone in the PE class just simply goes onto the volleyball court, and they play a game of volleyball. If the ball hits the ground, whoever's fault it was that the ball hit the ground is then eliminated. People that are good at volleyball stay on the longest and get better, and those who aren't good at it are simply eliminated and have no chance to get better.

There are also a lot of people on the court, so it's not hard to get the ball. You don't have to get much exercise, so it doesn't help at all, which is what PE is supposed to do.

A recent study was done, and at the point where 40 percent of your day was being taken up by PE was the point where, finally…. It was so much of the day that the amount of time you lost in school work, the PE was no longer covering it. It shows us that we should really have a lot of our day taken up by doing PE and be doing it every day, because it helps our brain that much. A healthy body does mean a healthy mind.

Another thing is that when you look at young children, you see them running around and how much they love to run around. As we grow up, we don't like to run around. Why do we lose that? Why do we no longer love to run around? Somehow, when we grow up, we lose that love.

Also, after the summer or at the beginning of a semester teachers just assume that students are at the same level they were at the end of the last semester, when usually, in between PE semesters they don't do anything. They lose their skills and their fitness.

I think the program needs to be continuously building, not only during semesters but during the years, especially when you get to high school. Between grades 8, 9 and 10 you do the same things. You don't do anything that's harder or you don't learn more. You just learn the same things over and over.

On the subject of education, I think we need to be educated when we're younger — we are educated in planning 10, but often that's much too late, so maybe a lot younger — and educated in the right things, like how to read a label or what to look for on a label. A lot of people think they know what they are looking for, but it's false. They really don't know exactly what they should be looking for.

Another option is possibly educating people in their PE class about how to keep fit and what nutritional value keeping fit needs. Some solutions would include something we do in this school, which is a fit run — once a week we do a run — and maybe doing activities that are not always in teams.

If you do a team activity, a lot of the time a student doesn't always get passed to, because maybe they're not the coolest and people don't like them, or they're not the best. Then they don't get any better; they don't improve. So maybe more single-person activities, like hiking or biking, would be good in a PE class and gradually adding on activities as you get older.

J. Tazelaar: Hi, I'm Jamie Tazelaar, and I'm a grade 12 student here. I'm going to talk about nutrition.

Nutrition is a science that studies the relationship between diet, a state of health and disease. Unfortunately, it seems that our society is having more problems with diet and more obesity health problems. It seems that we are uneducated about nutrition and what is good for us and what is bad for us. We don't understand how to read labels and know what are good carbs versus bad carbs and what are good sugars versus bad sugars.

It seems that we have a lack of people going out in the community telling us about nutrition. Sometimes that's hard, because we don't always know what's right for us. We think we're doing something right, but it turns out that we're not.

Another big part of nutrition is eating three balanced meals a day. It does not include junk food or fast food. A body needs fuel. We get this fuel from proper, recommended nutrition — from three balanced meals a day. A lot of times we find ourselves skipping meals or just grabbing something that's easy and that doesn't take time to prep or cook. When we do this, we're damaging our bodies and giving them junk or waste that does not give us any fuel and often makes us lazy and sluggish, which leads to inactivity.

A solution for all these problems is that we need proper education about nutrition, what's right for our bodies and how skipping a meal or grabbing a quick fix is unhealthy in what it's doing to our bodies. How is it damaging our bodies?

In my household I know what's right because nutrition is a big part. But not in everyone's household is nutrition a big part in their family. I think we need to be a bit more educated about what's right and what we are putting into our bodies. What comes out of that is what our physical appearance is going to be, whether we're obese or not obese.

The fact is that we're young, and we have a chance to change our unhealthy eating habits and make them proper, productive healthy eating habits.

T. Mohr: Hi. I'm Teara Mohr, and I'm in grade 12 here at WLSS. I'm going to tell you what I think about obesity as a result of the media and general activity.

Day after day we turn on our TVs and see the skinny celebrities and their luxurious lifestyles. We see healthy girls posing in fast-food ads. It seems these famous people eat whatever they want, whenever they want and remain in perfect shape. But media is misleading because the people used in the ads are not the ones consuming the harmful products.

In an attempt to have the ideal body type, girls will starve themselves, eating only what is absolutely necessary. When they fail, they binge to feel better. In the end, more harm is done than good.

The ideal body type for a female is petite and skinny with a perfect complexion. For a male ideal body type, they want to be large and bulky with defined muscles. Both these trends are not easily attained and in some cases are impossible. Each person has his or her own specific body type, and it may not be the skinny, petite girl.

If it is at all possible, a change in media and images we see on TV would have an extremely huge effect on the amount of overweight, obese children eating themselves out of the depression of having the body type and appearance they have. We need to be able to build up esteem for the people that don't look like everyone on TV. I find there are not a lot of things that really display that kind of message.

As more trends are introduced involving video games and computers, people are choosing more and more to stay inside and avoid physical activity. It is not that people knowingly choose not to exercise. The problem is that there's no motivation.

I believe we as a nation need to find a drastic solution. People are told again and again about the harmful things they're doing to their bodies by living this unhealthy lifestyle. But have we taken it far enough? Do they know how they're damaging their heart, their liver and their organs, or how many years they're taking off their lives?

I think we need to take it further and show them pictures. The solution is not to stop trying. People are

killing their children with the example they are setting. Do they realize this? Kids need physical activity every day. We need to supply our country with knowledge and a choice. How will they choose to live? We need to make physical activity a trend.

K. Smith: My name is Kallie Smith, and I am in grade 10. I'm the secretary of student council this year.

Nowadays both parents are working, and this is taking a toll on children's health. For example, parents do not have time to pack or ensure that their children have a nutritious lunch for school. So what they do is give their children money that is often used in the cafeteria or vending machines, which is not exactly the most healthy choice.

Also, parents normally do not have time to play or take their children to the park, which shows how fitness can be both fun and good for you. For this reason, they give their children electronic games to make up for the lack of attention they are paying their children. When they do this, all the children do is play the games for hours on end.

Finally, parents do not have any time to make a nutritious dinner, so fast food is often a quick and easy solution.

On a different level, families that are not financially stable often have no choice but to buy the less expensive fast food because it's the only thing that may be available to them.

Our next expert is Jesse Bortolussi in the field of school food programs, such as the cafeteria.

J. Bortolussi: Hi. I am Jesse Bortolussi. I'm in student council this year, and I'll be talking about the cafeteria and other things.

The cafeteria in our school isn't really doing so well. The unhealthy food looks very appealing to students, which isn't good because the bad food will lead to bad choices in the future, which will lead to obesity.

There is healthy food in the cafeteria, but it's not really that appealing. It sort of looks blah. It's there, it's healthy, but students don't really choose it because it doesn't really look that good to eat. If there is something that looks great to eat, it's really too expensive.

I heard a student today say that she wanted to buy a good sandwich, but it was $4. So she took the french fries that were $1 or $2. I'm not really too sure what the cost was, but it was very low. I think we should change that and make healthy food appealing and lower the prices so that a student may choose them instead of buying fries or chips.

Also, with drinks, water and other healthy liquids are at high prices. I think we should lower those prices so that students will buy more water, which is very healthy. I think if we just lowered the prices of healthy food, students would choose them much more than a bag of chips and french fries. Thank you.

I'll be speaking briefly on aspects of rural versus urban health and obesity. As you might well know, especially you living in Williams Lake, it's a very open space and very many people live out in the wings, in the boonies — like 150. All too often you hop in the car, and you drive to your destination. You can compare that to the city where your destination is only a walk or maybe a couple of bus rides away. It makes a big difference in the amount of exercise you get on a day-to-day basis.

Health education in more rural areas tends to be not as extensive as it is in urban areas. A quick solution to this would obviously be — like the expert Monica said — education at a younger age but, also, education for adults on how to properly nourish their children.

Also, private and public health organizations, whether they be commercial or residential — say, a jogging group or a gym — are not as apparent in rural areas as they are in urban areas. To curb this, government grants should entice companies to start up gyms and fitness clubs — something that would appeal to youth and that would try to curb this youth obesity trend we're seeing these days.

Thanks for listening to all our ideas today, and thank you for coming to our town.

R. Sultan (Chair): Thank you. That was exceptionally helpful and interesting.

I think we do have an opportunity now for an open-mike session. We have our roving handler here, Jonathan, who would be willing to put on anyone else in the audience who would like to make any comments or perhaps even ask questions.

We would like to focus at this stage, because we appreciate that many of you are probably under some bus scheduling time pressures…. If we could front-end our inquiry to the students, and then later on we can talk to the others in the community. So students first, if possible. Are there any other students in the audience who would like to make any comment?

S. Helgason: Hi, I'm Sarah Helgason, and I'm co-vice-president of the student council. I'm in grade 12.

I think a huge factor in the education system is the embarrassment factor. If you're embarrassed once in PE class in grade 8, it affects you until grade 12, and you feel like you can't play sports. It'll affect you in buying a gym pass because it'll happen in the gym, and you'll carry that throughout your whole life. I think the embarrassment factor and teamwork and a lot of things that Monica said are important.

M. McMahen: I already talked, but just one more thing is that I heard that recently a school in our district did a thing where they put water in the vending machine 25 cents cheaper than pop or juice. It sold way more than it normally would, just proving that if students are buying something to drink and they're all the same price, they're going to go: "Oh, I'll buy juice because it tastes better." But if it's cheaper, they'll go, "Oh, I might as well buy water," because they don't care that much and it's that much cheaper. So that would be a good thing.

I would like to invite members of the panel, starting with Deputy Chair Charlie Wyse, to ask questions of the students.

C. Wyse: I've got four or five different questions, and I'd like to ask four or five of the presenters that have spoken to us, but that would be far too much time.

C. Wyse: At this moment I'm going to narrow it down to two of you, and if I can squeeze some time in at the end, I'm going to come back.

I'm giving you that bit of a heads-up, Monica. You, I believe, had talked about phys ed, and you were the individual describing a game around volleyball, if I'm remembering correctly. My question is along this line: how do you involve kids who are not the athletic type in PE to get more exercise, without forcing them into team sports? I'd like to hear what your point would be.

M. McMahen: We do fit runs once a week, and they do a fit run. I mean, everyone's expected to do a fit run, so they'll do it. If you do something that isn't a team sport but everyone's just expected to do by themselves, they will participate, because it's not only so much the participating. It's often just having others work with them as a team. I think, yeah, doing more single activities.

C. Wyse: Jesse, the question that I have for you…. You made the presentation, Jesse, basically around that general area of the cafeteria and some difficulties that you were perceiving for obesity in children.

The question I'd like to ask you now: how do you get kids to choose the healthy food options in the cafeteria instead of the usual things like pizza and the burgers with fries and the things that you mentioned? I know you identified cost as being a factor. I didn't miss that part, but setting that part aside — and I know how important it is — do you have any other suggestions for us so we could encourage the healthier choices?

J. Bortolussi: Yes. I think we should have healthy foods be a little bit more filling. Usually it's just a couple of carrot sticks and some dip. I think it should be something more, maybe like a huge salad, and it's really colourful and at a low price. The stuff that's in packages could maybe be in a little bit more colourful packages, except for being in plastic wrap. But to be a little bit more colourful — that will catch the eyes of hungry students like us

C. Wyse: Ralph, I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues, and I'll come back to it if I can get squeezed in.

M. Sather: I think this is perhaps the first time we've had the opportunity to hear from first nations students about this subject. I was just wondering if any of you'd like to comment on what it's like for you in terms of this issue of obesity and what kinds of challenges you see or what you experience. Would anybody want to comment on that?

R. Sam: Hi, I am Raymond Sam, in grade 11. Monica, where she's saying add more single activities…. I don't think that's the proper way. They don't build confidence to work as a team.

I play sports such as hockey and soccer, and I get along with my team. If they can have a superior that's willing to work with them and get them to feel more confident, they will participate more than usual. Kids in, like, grade 8 or something are often shy coming into this high school that they never came to before — kids bigger than them. Get people on their team bigger than them that can work with them. If you do that, they will participate sometimes.

M. Sather: The Chair was asking: are there any other first nations students who wanted to comment?

G. Stump: I'm Garrett Stump. I'm in grade 12 this year. I think most of the natives say they don't join any sports because they come from residential schools — on the res. Out there the teachers don't really make them do any sports during school, like for PE. They just let them choose what they want to do, and it's usually one sport — the one they're really good at, like floor hockey. Then they come in town, and they can't really do anything. They like to have to do what the teacher says.

I'm a wrestling coach. I go there for the natives because a lot of them don't fit in. They come from the res and feel too scared to talk to other people about how to learn to wrestle and everything, so I and my dad go there, and we help out the natives to learn more and get along with everyone else to do sports.

V. Roddick: I would like to just follow up on that. When you said — just to clarify — residential, is that a reserve school? It's an actual first nations school on the reserve?

V. Roddick: You'd like to see more interaction, would you — in the sports line, possibly — between the youngsters in the reserve schools and the other junior schools before you hit senior schools?

G. Stump: Yeah, because I went to Anahim school for a while. Then I came in town, and I was too scared to do anything. I didn't know anybody. I didn't know any of the sports they were doing. Most of the work I didn't even know, because we were on reservation and we didn't learn all the proper work. I came in town with a new school, and I had a hard time.

V. Roddick: Thank you very much, because that's really important. I know when I was travelling with the Health Committee a few years ago looking at first nations health and trying to blend it, this came up — that it wasn't mentioned, so to speak. The fact that you mention this in the school system, as well, then it's something we should really be seriously thinking about, so thank you very much for that.

H. Angelo: Hello. My name is Hugo Angelo, and I'm in grade 12 this year. I'm from a different background than most students from here because I'm from Sweden. I just have an opinion about the cafeteria.

At home we get free food from the taxes. I just think that they shouldn't offer unhealthy food at all, like french fries or burgers or chicken nuggets and so on. If you have an option of something unhealthy, like french fries instead of carrots, you choose french fries because they're better. If you don't have that option, you're still hungry, so you would eat something healthy. That's my opinion. I don't know if people would spend a lot of money on something that's healthy, but it's a thought. I think that was all.

C. Wyse: What I'm going to take the opportunity to…. At the beginning of our introductions I acknowledged the welcome we received from the traditional Shuswap territory. Before I turn it back over to Ralph, I would like to just draw attention to how important it is for us to hear input from our first nations communities. That's a part of why are we are here.

In addition to the presentations that we have already received, if there are other individuals who would like to share some thoughts with us as this unfolds, I would ask that they make some type of motion. We'll make sure we come back. I would ask very much if you would see your way to share your insights with my colleagues so that your wisdom can be shared amongst all British Columbians. Take that to first nations groups so that there is some input for us on this aspect. I'll leave that.

K. Conroy: Don't forget, too, that if you're not comfortable speaking in a group like this, you can also get on the website. Your principal back there has got the card that's got the website on it that you can write in to. It's really good to do that too.

Brody, you were talking about accessibility to venues in the area, and you said it was expensive. I just wondered if sports outside of school…. Is it expensive to participate in sports inside the school? Also, is it expensive in the community centre or wherever it is that you go outside the school in the community?

B. Granger: I think anywhere you go there are costs associated with sports. A big part of it in a rural area is the transportation costs. Being down on the coast, you have a lot of communities and a lot of teams all in one area. They can travel and play against each other for a lot cheaper than it is to put on a three-hour or eight-hour bus ride to go down to play a few hockey games or rugby games or whatever. Is that what you were asking?

K. Conroy: I was wondering: is the cost of participating prohibitive for a lot of people in the region? I understand that transportation is prohibitive. You've made that clear. I see that in a lot of rural areas. I'm just wondering about the actual costs of participating.

B. Granger: A lot of the coaches in this area are very accommodating to their athletes if there is a financial problem, especially within school. That student won't have any trouble finding financial assistance to participate in sports.

M. McMahen: I believe that in our community there is a program for children who cannot afford to, say, play soccer or do that. They could go to that group and get grants to do those sports that they would like to do.

Teara, we've heard from many, many students. I was very taken by your presentation because you're the first person that has talked about the role of the media and the role of imaging and, really, the place that role models have in this whole subject.

Beyond commenting on that, I would like to hear from you or perhaps from some of the others. How far do you think governments should go in terms of, I guess, defining what is an appropriate advertisement? I completely concur with your remarks. I am unsure of what we do to solve the problem, so I'm wondering what you would have to say about that.

T. Mohr: It's hard to say what a government could do when it comes to advertising, because it's all about the media. No matter where you go, you're going to see the images that people want to see and what's the trend

of the time — right? Everyone wants to be really skinny and really tiny right now, and it's frustrating for people who are a little bit bigger. It's hard to lose the weight. You get discouraged, and typically it goes right back on.

Hmm, it's hard to say. Maybe just seeing more positive advertising, like the new Dove commercials where there are bigger women and bigger people in them. It's kind of like positive thinking. If we can create a better body image for how a real person actually looks, and not have a starved girl that you see as appealing…. I don't know.

I think it'd just have a really positive effect on overweight people, because they can accept themselves. You're not going to lose weight if you have low self-esteem. I just think to have more confidence and to see something that's a little more pleasing to yourself would be a good thing.

R. Sultan (Chair): I wonder if could ask a question of our first nations students present here today. The first nations students here today have a special role to play, because you are among the very few that this committee will be talking to. Yet the problems of health among the first nations are serious and, I think, demand and cry out for special government attention. We really cannot accept a continuation of some of the health statistics we are seeing among the first nations. It's a tragedy.

My question is whether or not what a senior government official told us informally last night could possibly be true. He drew the analogy…. Most of us are Europeans here at the front table — European origin.

He observed that our ancestors have had six or seven generations, perhaps, to modify our genetic makeup, the way our bodies operate, away from essentially a hunter-gatherer, fishing-and-hunting type of diet to one that is very heavily dependent now on processed, manufactured foods and everything that we are talking about, whereas the Europeans came to British Columbia a couple of generations ago, and the first nations people — whether by choice or not — were almost required to adopt a similar diet and abandon their old ways. We have asked their genetic code, as it were, to do in a couple of generations what took us six or seven generations, and it's very, very difficult.

He gives us kind of a biological explanation of some of the difficulties we're having, and his solution, perhaps, would be to try and encourage, in part at least, a return to more traditional diets among first nations people to give them more of a period of adaptation to the modern manufactured food process that we depend upon.

Is this just some idle speculation? Is it possible there's some truth in what this government official was telling us informally last night? Do you have any opinions?

D. Tenale: Hello. My name is Darren Tenale. I graduated last year. There is some truth behind it, that some of the communities lived more on their natural meat — like moose, deer, whatever they can go out and hunt — or on fishing.

I think that the schools nowadays should have more open meals to everyone — maybe have a cook come in and make some meals from the native communities in schools, because I think they are very vulnerable in grade 8 when they come up from reservations and everything. They're really open to everything. The first thing they see is unhealthy food, and they go for it.

They think that's all there is, but I think if you bring in food from the communities or a cook from the community to have some traditional foods here — not every day, but maybe at least once a week — they would be open to that. They would have their food here, and they would feel more comfortable in school.

R. Sam: At my old school in Dog Creek they had pretty much our traditional food that we eat at least once or twice a week. Like Darren said, it would be great. At least once or twice a week should be all right for the kids that come straight out of the res to high school in town. Even I wish we still had Indian tacos or moose stew in here.

L. Solomon: Hi, my name is Loni Solomon, and I'm in grade 11. I think there's kind of a problem where there's nothing to do. There's kind of the sports at noon. There's not a lot of after-school activities for native people. There's a lot of volleyball and all that, but when you come off the res, it's kind of more ball hockey — from where I grew up kind of thing. I grew up around ball hockey, so it's kind of like that.

You have not a lot of activities, so it's kind of food and activities. If more people knew about it, they'd try to come out and wouldn't be shy so much. If new people came up to them and if they knew more of their friends joined, they'd join. It's kind of like that.

I went out because all my friends are into it, so I can enjoy it with them. It was not really that hard for me to do, even though it was my first day here and I was kind of shy. I didn't get into anything. Seeing all my friends and seeing what they did and joining them, it felt good. I ended up liking it and joining a lot of things that they had joined, like after-school activities.

I think there would be a lot of good things, too, about school activities because there's not a whole lot around here. Maybe you can find something — I don't know.

R. Sultan (Chair): Thank you for those very helpful responses. Now I'll go back to our panel.

V. Roddick: I just was wondering, Brody: the urban-rural seems to be an issue, whether it's agriculture, which is rural, versus urban divide. Just out of interest, in this sort of area how many schools are there? Would you, as you say, have to travel to go and

play different games, or would you want gyms and fitness clubs, possibly, to be encouraged to be in more rural areas? Why wouldn't you utilize this school or however many other schools there are — even reserve schools, possibly — to have games and work out in? Utilize some of the existing….

B. Granger: That's a really good idea. You just have to encourage that within the district.

Like we addressed earlier, the reserve schools would do well to play sports at an elementary level with in-town schools here. Within town, at a high school level the competition gets a little bit more difficult. I know at the elementary level, the level of competition is good. There's no lack of competition in the district, but at the high school level, there's just Columneetza and WL, so we do have to travel to 100 Mile or Prince George or Quesnel to play any sports against teams that we like to compete against.

C. Wyse: You're being exceptionally gracious with me, and I've been able to squeeze in a question. Again, just so you've got a bit of a heads-up, and I have no idea why, when you were making your presentation, this question popped into my mind from what you said. So here it comes at you: do you think banning all advertising to kids would reduce the bad food choices that many kids make?

J. Tazelaar: Not necessarily. Banning all food advertising would not stop students making unhealthy choices, because you do have a choice. You choose what you want to eat. But I do think that adding education in there and saying, "Oh, a bag of chips or vegetable cut up in slices" — you know, seeing what you're putting into your body if you eat the bag of chips and what you're putting into your body if you eat the cut-up vegetables. Obviously, you're going to be getting more energy from the cut-up vegetables than you are from the chips and also from the carbs. Yeah. Take the…of what's really in them.

K. Conroy: Did you as students find those cigarette ads where they had those godawful pictures of the rotting lungs and stuff like that…? Do you think that stops youth from smoking? Does that help? Yeah? You're all shaking your heads. Okay.

R. Sultan (Chair): I think we have time for one more question from Michael Sather.

M. Sather: I'm just wondering. How many students, roughly, do you think, work in a paid job other than going to school, and how many hours a week would you say they're working? Would it be, like, a quarter of the students, a half? Less than that — a tenth?

M. Sather: Is that fairly common, or is that quite unusual for a student to work?

J. Tazelaar: It's pretty common, actually. A lot of kids work part-time jobs and work about 18 or 19 hours a week, working mostly weekends, of course, and one or two days during the week after school for a few hours.

M. McMahen: I would guess that about 80 to 90 percent of grade 12 students have a part-time job, at least. For grade 8s, it's nowhere near as close, but some of them do, definitely. Yeah, like Jamie says, it's probably 18 hours a week.

R. Sultan (Chair): Katherine Whittred would like to have the opportunity to ask the final, final question of our students.

One of the things that we've heard today, and we've actually heard it in other high schools in a whole variety of ways, is that students say: "We need more activity in schools, and we need more education around nutrition." Now, when schools hear that — your principal's at the back, and so on — they throw up their hands, and they say: "Ah, there you are, unloading stuff on the schools once again."

My question to you is: if we're going to have more activity and we're going to have training about nutrition, where do we take it from? Do we take it from English class or chemistry or…? So where are we going to take that from? How would you solve that dilemma? Please don't say from history class, because that was my subject.

B. Granger: Anyway, history class…. Education should be really started in the primary grades — grade 2, grade 3 — and up to grade 7. That's when the kids are most open to hearing what kinds of food they should be eating and what kind of effect it has on their bodies. It is important to make it a part of your high school physical education class, but a big emphasis is on the younger grades.

R. Sultan (Chair): Well, thank you. The Deputy Chairman had some additional remarks, but I think this concludes the formal, student part of the presentation. We would like to thank you all very, very much for your contribution.

C. Wyse: As a number of you are likely going to have to go, there is something I'd like to share with you

on behalf of the committee here. We knowingly decided the importance of hearing from students on this issue. This is the sixth time we've met with students that we have obtained information. If we hadn't met with you and you hadn't been willing to meet and share your ideas with us, we would have been much less informed in order to make our recommendations.

Now, here in the Greater Williams Lake area they recognized a problem that I have — I happen to be old relative to you — in getting the information. Because there maybe hasn't been as much of a response for this other thing called the computer or something — a blog, and I'm not even certain I know what a blog is — there is a feeling here amongst the local media that my age has been in the road of collecting information. So I'm going to ask us here to collectively bridge something.

Amongst your friends, if you think that this has been worthwhile and beneficial…. I'm going to ask you to encourage your friends to get the information in to us, as Katrine has talked about, through written submissions, e-mails, the blog, and so on, so that information does become available to us.

Taking the opportunity, we chose Williams Lake specifically to take advantage of the makeup of our communities — first nations, for example — in further input in that area — information that is going to have a significant influence on the recommendations that are going to be made to the Legislature in British Columbia.

We sincerely aren't concerned about what the local media says. What we are more concerned about is you continuing to work with us to get us the information we need so that our job can be done more effectively. On behalf of us, if you wouldn't mind taking that out amongst the Williams Lake area, we would appreciate it.

R. Sultan (Chair): Insofar as the students are concerned, I don't know if I should say class dismissed. You're welcome to stay, of course.

We're going to move on to the second phase of the consultation, and that is to hear from Tatjana Bates of Interior Health; then Dr. Glenn Fedor of the eating disorders committee; Jim World; and finally, Jack Burgar, who is a basketball coach at Columneetza Secondary School.

R. Sultan (Chair): Our first presenter for this phase is Tatjana Bates of Interior Health Authority.

T. Bates: Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I apologize in advance. I do not do well sitting still. My name is Tatjana Bates, and I'm the community nutritionist for Williams Lake and surrounding areas.

The majority of my work is focused on promoting healthy growth and development of children and the school food and nutrition policy project, and helping to create more food-secure communities. The solution to promoting healthy weights is often presented as a straight and forward one: we should eat better, and we should exercise more. Through research, we hear a lot about the associations or causes of obesity being linked to too much screen time, too much computer time, eating too much sugar or too much fat, not enough physical activity, or irresponsible advertising targeted towards children through the media.

However, if I were to target one root cause of obesity, I would zero in on food insecurity and poverty. Food is a determinant of health. If basic foods are not available and accessible to everyone in our community, then food insecurity exists. Certain groups in our community have challenges in the affordability and accessibility to healthy foods.

Those are our Canadian members that are living in isolated communities — the first nations communities being an example. They struggle with the high expense of travel, the limited local food available to them and also that they're forced to buy food from local stores in their small communities, and that is very expensive. Canadian data demonstrate that there's increasing risk in obesity among groups with low socioeconomic status citizens who are left to do more with less.

An obese child may look overnourished, but in fact they are undernourished. Undernourishment has a profound impact on the child's ability to grow, learn and function, and their experiences during childhood will follow them throughout their lifetime.

If I may give a local example. When I was working with the diabetes program, we were asked to go to a grade 3 class and do a puppet show because a student in the class had type 1 diabetes. We did this puppet show to help the classmates take better care of their fellow classmate with diabetes.

After the puppet show I was then capitalizing on the moment to do my motivational speech about the importance of eating breakfast and eating healthy snacks. This little boy put up his hand, and he said: "I don't get breakfast in the morning because we can't afford it. My mom is on welfare." I was just shocked. I didn't know what to say, and I didn't want to single out this little boy. So I scrambled, and I said to the little boy: "I think your mother is doing the very best that she can do to feed and provide food for your family."

I myself am one of those children who have gone to school without breakfast as well. Also, for lunch every day we had one food group, and that was starch, because that filled us up. I wonder how I'm sitting here before you today, for what I've been through in a food-insecure family. I look back, and I go: "What made the difference for me?" What made the difference was that I had supports in place to help me believe that what I thought really mattered and that I could make a difference in my community. Also, an appropriate student loan enabled me to be where I am today.

The critical question is: are our environments and socioeconomic systems enabling families to choose high-nutrient foods, be active and participate in their community in a meaningful way?

In 2000 Health Canada provided some funding for our local community to do some research. It was spearheaded by the Child Poverty Action Committee, which has been around since 1996. I sit on that committee as well. This project identified nine barriers that blocked people living with less from becoming full, active members of their community.

The number-one reason and barrier was the cost of living versus income — the rising costs of food and housing, and they're not able to cope; limited transportation in order to access these wonderful programs that we may have; and also, expensive recreation, just to name a few.

The Cost of Eating in B.C. report also demonstrates that there is very little money left for food. Of families that struggle, 44 percent of their income is spent on food, due to many of these reasons. The average family will spend 15 percent of their income on food. Also, new stats indicate that one in four children in B.C. still lives in poverty.

In regards to our physical environment, research reveals that inadequate urban designs alone can lead to decreased activity and limited access to services. If there's nowhere to walk safely or to play, then that will definitely limit activity.

It's only inevitable that there's a shift of food choices towards energy-dense foods and low-nutrient foods, because they're a heck of a lot cheaper than your average-nutrient foods. For example, a dollar will get you an apple, and it will also get you a bag of chips. Whereas a bag of chips will give you 300 calories, an apple will give you approximately 90 calories. Which one would you choose if you were a student and you were really hungry?

In summary, food security programs and policies targeting low socioeconomic populations have been shown to be effective in decreasing obesity. We see that in food policy councils, our own school district nutrition, our healthy living policies and school policies as well.

Experts agree that what is needed are profound changes to our environment. To improve and promote healthy eating for the whole population, there must be an infrastructure in place and a collaborative effort at all levels of government and community to address the underlying causes of food insecurity. Governments need to strive to create an environment that makes the healthy choice the easy choice for all British Columbians.

R. Sultan (Chair): Tatjana, perhaps we would have some questions from the panel — if you're willing to answer.

M. Sather: Tatjana, what do you think are the most achievable of the food security initiatives or programs — if you could name one or two — that we should focus on? We'd like to have the best bang for the buck, as it were.

T. Bates: Food policy councils like the one in Kamloops are very big and very active in looking at many aspects about how to provide more local food — a food gleaning project to prevent wastage of food, maximize resources and get it to the people who need it.

Policy is very powerful. An example of policy in our own school district 27 is that we do have a healthy schools and community committee right now. We're now in the draft stages of adopting policy at our school district level so that all schools may benefit from having healthier foods available to the students.

I think the biggest issue is this availability to the students. Students will eat really tasty foods that fill them up — and we've proven that over and over — if we can make it more affordable for them, as we've heard the students speak.

We need to give more credit to our students sometimes. They love good food; we all love good food. If fries and no-nutrient foods are around and they're hungry, they're simply going to buy them. It's a very simple equation sometimes.

C. Wyse: I have a question. At another of our hearings I asked our support staff to provide for us the various supports that the health authorities have for nutrition, and that information will be brought forward. However, I think it might help the committee understand the complexity…. What is the geographical area that you are expected to cover, and how much time do you have in order to cover this area?

I would point out to the committee, for example, that there are 13 first nations communities in Cariboo South. That is in my riding. It would take me approximately eight hours of driving across this riding at 100 kilometres per hour, and I simply would have only driven the highways.

T. Bates: Right. I do have a large area, and I am familiar with working in many isolated communities, even by floatplane, and up north as well. What we need to do to capitalize on that or to create change is to work together across the sectors provincially. We do have a lot of support provincially in this area of nutrition, according to the provincial health targets right now. You're well aware of what they are.

I think we just need to share what's working. We need to rely on base practice research. We need to listen to our target group on what their barriers are. I believe in not wasting money and in putting it where it should go to be most effective. I'm sure we all share

that. But we need to figure out what our target audience needs and how we could work more effectively and collaborate together. We can do that, as you know, through policy.

I'm saying that although we have a large geographical area, and we do have unique needs due to that, we are just going to work together the best we can to share what's working well and get to know our population as best we can.

For example, in first nations communities, if we promote growing food, even to the point of promoting breastfeeding…. I can't even explain in words how crucial that is, because that gives a baby the best chance in life to be the healthiest — to prevent obesity, to prevent diabetes and to save money. Even those types of initiatives — changing our environment and creating breast-friendly environments — can go a long way.

K. Whittred: You began to address my question in your final statement there. I was going to ask you…. You've spoken of the challenges of vulnerable populations and the barriers they face in terms of trying to put a healthy, nutritious meal on the table. I wanted to discover what kinds of programs exist in the community or programs you could imagine that are going to address that at a real grass-roots level. You started with that when you talked about the breastfeeding program. Are there other examples that you could give?

T. Bates: We need to work in the home, as well, through our programs and initiatives — educating parents and families — and in our schools, which we're doing with the school policy. And we need to work at the environmental level, like the urban design. What are our walkways like? Are they safe out there? We need to….

K. Whittred: Programs that would address this at the sort of grass-roots level.

T. Bates: That's right. We have community kitchens and community gardens. We have a good food box program. What's interesting about our good food box program is that we're trying to satellite it out west into our smaller communities. It has really grown fast in our community, and the food is now going out to some of our first nations communities, and they're buying the good food box.

We only have so much manpower to handle this. That's the downfall of these grass-roots programs. We hope that they're sustainable, that we can keep them growing, because as the need grows…. There are only so many of us.

Therefore, we need some support on how to keep these programs that are working and very effective. How do we keep them going and sustainable? That's our big challenge right now.

R. Sultan (Chair): Okay, Tatjana. We have three other presenters to get through before we have to get on our charter flight, so we do have a bit of a time constraint. I'm sure we could have a discussion for another hour or so very valuably. But we will thank you for your presentation and move on.

G. Fedor: Thank you for allowing me to talk today. Actually, I have many hats, as Charlie knows. I've worked with Charlie in the past in many capacities.

I have a written submission. As the subject, sort of the title, of this public hearing suggests, you wanted some ideas. I've got lots of ideas. Some of them will be controversial, so I'll be interested in some of the questions afterwards.

Just to let you know, I've been a family physician in Williams Lake for the last 25 years. I'm one of these rare full-service physicians. I treat kids, the elderly. I do emergency work. I was on call last night and got three hours of sleep, so hopefully I won't fall asleep on you here.

I've been a sessional physician in mental health for children, youth and adults for the last 14 years. I've been treating eating disorders for 25 years. I've been a soccer coach for about ten years. I've been a hockey trainer — still do a bit of that. I'm also the president of the medical staff here in Williams Lake, and probably a few more things I can't remember.

What I want to focus on is that obesity is a chronic disease and should not be viewed as a social stigma where people are portrayed as lazy and stupid. Obesity is complicated by the social phenomenon of dieting. Dieting leaves a person with unrealistic weight-loss expectations and implausible body-image goals, leading to a sense of failure.

The burden of responsibility for the obese state has always been totally with the individual. I think what we need to do is emphasize that obesity is a disease that partially results from the effects of a changing environment on an inherited gene pool. The burden of responsibility can now be shared with families, friends, health professionals and governments.

Because of the social stigma, the overweight person will often distance themselves from their problems. Overweight youth are ostracized, rejected and humiliated by others. They often respond by eating. Youth will try to seek external solutions by dieting and avoiding active living.

The emotional issues of weight loss and weight gain must be addressed. Obesity is not as simple as eating less and exercising more. We don't help alcoholics by saying: "You drink too much. Just drink less." What makes us think that this kind of model will work with childhood obesity? I think our communities need to help our youth feel worthy, facilitate acceptance and allow an environment in which we can change. We must allow our youth to take care of one's self.

I've often said that all change begins with education — something like learning quality assurance years ago. But I've also learned in my work with eating disorders

that if you just provide information and scare tactics, this will not create change. In fact, there have been studies that suggest if you go out to schools and just provide information on eating disorders, you can actually increase the incidence of eating disorders.

What we do know is that the readiness to change can be influenced by education. There are these models of change that talk about the stages of precontemplation, contemplation, action, maintenance. What we need to do is start where the person is at and assist them through this cycle of change.

We now know that we need the appropriate government policies that will allow changes in lifestyle to take place. Interventions at a family and school level need to be matched by a change in socio-cultural context so that benefits can be sustained. This requires a coordinated effort between health professionals, the media, sports groups, city planners and politicians.

Environments that encourage healthy eating and active living can be created by implementing the following suggestions. I came up with a lot of ideas — some I've thought up; some I've maybe borrowed a bit. I wanted to list a whole bunch and see what comes of it.

Number one was that we all know a low socioeconomic status is associated with obesity. We need to promote the sports program subsidies so that cost is never an impediment to participation. I was lucky enough to go on the website and listen to some of the previous submissions. There were even sports programs that I wasn't familiar with…. I think a lot of the public isn't aware of these subsidies, or maybe they're not promoted, and people are shy to use them. It's almost like food banks. Initially, people were hesitant to visit there as well.

One of the things I've said for years is that emotional, impulsive eaters need stress management skills. Emotional eating often starts at birth. Crying babies are fed, but are all crying babies hungry? We need to learn to divorce emotion from food. When you think of it, at birthday parties we have food. At funerals we have food. What are the few times that families discuss their emotional problems? At a dinner table.

Eating education days. I think what we need is having days where parents and children can be involved together in healthy eating behaviour. Teach the dangers of skipping meals, inactivity after meals. We know children often have to be exposed to a food 12 times before they can learn to enjoy it. Just because your child says he won't eat broccoli doesn't mean you abandon that once they try it.

Promote shop-smart tours. We have them for adults. I'm not too sure if we have them for kids. I've never seen them for kids. One thing we need to teach our kids is that there are no bad foods or good foods. Some are more nutritious than others, and others have different caloric values. Labelling food as good or bad, healthy or junk creates a morality issue. Is a person bad or good if they eat certain foods?

Physical education is mandatory up to certain grades in school, but I believe nutrition and cooking classes should be mandatory as well. We know that families that sit down to meals have less trouble with obesity, and their children do better academically. We need to discourage eating behaviours that take us away from the table. All restaurants should have sit-down eating areas.

Discourage 24-hour fast-food eating. You know, you can drive through McDonald's at three o'clock in the morning and sit in your car or wander around town at three o'clock in the morning and eat when you should be sleeping.

School cafeterias should have adequate facilities to encourage healthy, relaxed eating. I understand there are some schools being built that don't have adequate cafeterias.

We know that we should not over-focus on healthy eating, healthy activity and healthy weight. My work with eating disorders shows that this can create body image disturbances and eating disorders. If that's our whole focus, I think we can create problems.

We need to be active as a family. I often say: "Don't send your child to sporting activities. Take your child and participate. Be a coach." Most associations will even pay you to take coaching courses. An active parent, we know, means an active child. We should exercise for fun but never exercise to lose weight.

A big one. I think we need safe neighbourhoods — adequate sidewalks, trails, lighting, community patrols. It has to be safe to play outdoors. Parents need to have these fears addressed. I live in a neighbourhood where half of it doesn't have any sidewalks. We pay the highest taxes in the city, and we don't even have a playground. All the city wanted to do was build a Wal-Mart.

We need to increase community access to dietitians and nutritionists and let them effectively collaborate with other health professionals. We do have a community nutritionist, but she's limited in what she can say. The people who need nutritional counselling often can't pay for it. Hospitals aren't adequately staffed with nutritionists.

One thing I thought was that we need to take a snapshot of a child's life. Create self-awareness and effectiveness. What is that child really doing today? Do we know what these children do every day? Do they come and tell us what is happening? We really don't know what is going on in their lives.

We need to dispel these myths that fad diets work. Apparently, amazon.com has over 8,000 diet books available. We know that 95 percent of people who lose weight with a diet will only gain it back. Diets do not work.

Genetics and inheritance does account for about 25 percent to 30 percent of obesity. I think they've identified over 200 genes dealing with obesity. The rest is behavioral, cultural and social. That's where we can attack some of the things.

Poor sleep patterns can contribute to obesity. We need to encourage routines that contribute to healthy sleep patterns. Looking at members of the panel, I'm

sure most of you are aware that the TV and radio stations went off at midnight or even before midnight. You can stay awake all night long — listen to the radio, watch TV, eat all night. You don't need to sleep anymore. You can sleep during the day.

Most importantly, I think one of the biggest things is that we need to make our youth media literate. They need to understand and be very critical about how advertisers want us to be unhappy with what we have or who we are.

Most of all, I have an old saying I've said to many people over the years. Losing weight will not make you feel good, but feeling good will let your body weight go to where it should be genetically.

R. Sultan (Chair): Yes, we have a limited amount of time for some questions of Dr. Fedor.

M. Sather: Certainly a somewhat different presentation than we've had. As you say, some of the ideas are a little bit at odds with some of the things we've heard. I think we had a psychologist also give a similar presentation yesterday — similar in some senses — talking about the emotional aspect of the issue and how…. Actually, a number of youth have mentioned, too, that if you're not feeling good about yourself, you're going to eat to soothe yourself and so on.

I don't really have a question per se, but I just wanted to comment on your presentation. I think it adds a significant piece to the puzzle, if you will. And the 25 percent to 30 percent of obesity that is genetically inherited — I think it's important to know that as well. I mean, I could eat like a horse, and I'm just a thin guy. Other people don't have to eat that much, and they just put it on. So there definitely is a factor there.

As you pointed out, there is much more that we can work with, so I encourage you and any other health care professionals to carry on in this vein to help us with this issue.

G. Fedor: One comment I was going to make, but I didn't put it in my submission, was that one tea biscuit is equal to 40 calories. If you consistently eat just one extra tea biscuit a day, you'll gain three pounds extra in a year, 30 pounds in ten years and 120 pounds in 40 years of lifetime. One extra tea biscuit.

This often dispels the myth that people are overweight because they vastly overeat and they're gorging themselves. We know now that there are a lot of people out there who will develop long-term obesity problems by eating small amounts of extra just slightly over their requirements.

C. Wyse: Mine is not a question. It's an observation that I think I would like to share with you on behalf of the group. Your presentation — I think it might have been referred to earlier — actually covers across the four or five general areas that we have been collecting information on in our search, trying to come up with some recommendations around this problem.

Frankly, it is one of the presentations I've been part of that has covered right across those areas. There's information contained in here that — for me, anyway — is absolutely new in the discussions. That will assist me in helping to put together recommendations for the Legislature. I want to thank you very much.

G. Fedor: One second. I did want to make one comment. I was fortunate to have a bit of time, when you e-mailed me my invitation here, to go to the website and review some of the previous submissions. One thing that did worry me…. I am a proud supporter of the BCMA, but there was a presentation where they were talking about, twice a year, weighing and measuring our youth in schools. It does disturb me a bit, especially if kids are lining up to be weighed and viewed in front of each other.

If they know that's going to happen, are they going to not show up at school that day to avoid being weighed? It would almost be like having everyone stand up and say: "Are you a Catholic? Are you a Christian? Are you Jewish, or are you Muslim? I don't think we would allow that.

My biggest thing about that is the social stigma behind obesity. It's sort of like the social stigma of alcoholism. If we can change that, we can tackle the problem. If we don't change it, we can't.

Now we have two remaining presentations, Jim World and Jack Burgar. I would like to leave some time for windup comments by Deputy Chair Charlie Wyse.

J. World: Good afternoon. My name is Jim World. I'm not in grade 11. From 1970 to 2004 I worked in the public school system, primarily in secondary, and most of that time was spent in the area of counselling. Most of my remarks will be made as they pertain to the school system from my observations over those 34 years. Because I don't have a lot of experience in elementary, I'll restrict my remarks to secondary schools.

At secondary schools we certainly have a role and a responsibility when it comes to issues of nutrition as they pertain to adolescent obesity. We'll look a little bit at what happened in the past, a little bit of what's going on now, and then maybe take a quick look at where things might be going in the future.

When we look at the past, unfortunately, we have to acknowledge the responsibility of the various levels of governance that unwittingly assisted the secondary school system in actually contributing to adolescent obesity. I guess it started about the mid-'80s and into the '90s. There started to be some real restrictions in funding to schools as the federal government downloaded things to the provincial government, the provincial government to the ministry, the ministry to boards and the boards to schools.

While it was a line item in everybody else's budget, when it actually hit the school level, it began to impact programs, primarily athletic programs. I think Jack will probably have something more to say about those. So the schools were faced with a rather difficult decision. We didn't have the money anymore. We just had a restricted amount of money to run school programs, sports programs.

We had to decide: do we shut these programs down because we know that we can't afford them? Do we go out and try to do our own fundraising? We tried to do that, but you can only sell so many raffle tickets and so many chocolate-covered almonds before the market is pretty much saturated, and everybody else is looking for that money as well.

Do we go to a fee-for-service program, if you've got the money? That question was asked earlier by somebody. They were asking about how much money it costs individual students to participate in programs. It's a considerable sum. We thought that we really can't do that, because ethically it's not something we could do.

It was about that time, unfortunately, that Coke and Pepsi got into the business of recognizing a market opportunity. They would come to schools. They came to our school, and they offered us a deal. "If you become a Coke school or a Pepsi school, we'll give you $10,000 up front. We'll put in a nice sign for you, we'll install all these machines and provide you with all this product, and you can pretty much guarantee yourselves X amount of revenue." So we sold our souls.

At the school I worked in, we became a Pepsi school. We did make a bucketload of money. At least we made a fair amount of money, enough to replace the money that was missing from those athletic programs. So we sold bad food to kids who may or may not participate in sports programs so that we could have other kids participate in sports programs. It was kind of an ironic twist, but that was happening in the past. I don't think anybody is particularly happy about that, but that's just the way it was at the time.

Currently, as Tatjana mentioned, the boards and the school district are making an effort to do away with that source of fundraising and making some healthier choices. With the implementation of PACs in schools, who had the ability to then start to raise funds for schools, we have in essence changed our funding from caffeine and sugar to legalized gambling, unfortunately, to support our sports programs. However, it's still a bit of an ethical problem, but that is what has been happening in the past in terms of how we probably contributed to adolescent obesity.

In our school cafeteria you can pretty much get a litre of Pepsi and slurp that down in ten minutes between periods and carry on. We really haven't done a very good job of taking care of that whole nutrition thing, because we've had other things that we were also thinking of. They may not have been the most critical factor in adolescent obesity, but it's certainly a contributing factor.

The other thing that happened in the past is that in the year 2000, PE 11 was removed from the mandatory curriculum. There were debates all across the education community as to whether or not people thought that was a good idea or a bad idea. How much that has contributed to adolescent obesity…. I don't think the research has been done, but it's a contributory factor.

Currently what's going on in the secondary schools is that nutrition is being taught. It is part of the grades 8, 9 and 10 PE curriculums. Right in the IRPs for physical education are units in personal health and nutrition. It is being done.

If we had more time, I would have asked Monica, who was talking about PE and that sort of thing, if in her experience in grades 8, 9 and 10 she actually got lessons in nutrition. Having been a PE teacher for part of my teaching career, I know that was generally part of the curriculum. You did it and got it over with and got on with all the fun and games.

It is being done, and there are other places within the school system…. I know that when the grade 8 students entered our school, the counselling department would do a session with students in the grade 8 program. They got to know us, and we got to know them. Part of what we would talk about is nutrition. So that part is being done.

Right across the curriculum in PE, nutrition is being talked about, and we continue to teach PE 8, 9 and 10. Every student who goes through the public secondary school system — grade 8, 9, 10 — is getting at least one semester of PE per year. So those things are still going on. Students are still getting activities. Students are having the opportunity to be exposed to information on nutrition.

Even though we are doing some of those kinds of things, I have to question just how effective those things are. It comes down to two issues. One of them is control. We only have so much control over an adolescent's life. They're in our schools for about six hours a day. What we can control is the physical activity, and encourage them to participate in PE, and we can control what foods are available and being sold in the school.

What we can't control is what happens in the other 18 hours of their lives. We can't control what they bring into school, in terms of their own bag lunches. When students are of an age that they can have vehicles, they can leave campus during lunch-hour, and it's a full-service banquet around town — any kind of food they want. We can certainly make the efforts within the school system, and I know that's going to be done in terms of what we offer, but we have to keep in mind that there's only so much control that the public secondary school system has over that kind of issue.

There's one other issue there, and it has to do with adolescent developmental psychology. I don't want to get into a whole lot of psychobabble, but there's something called the "personal fable." Most of you will recognize, with your own teenagers or having gone through your own adolescence, that there is a certain kind of denial going on there — that the teenager is

sort of bulletproof and: "We're sort of special. Nothing bad is really ever going to happen to us. We don't really connect our behaviours with consequences, even with short-term things."

With something like nutrition, which is a very long-term thing, it is a pretty hard sell sometimes to talk to an adolescent about the issues around health and have them say, "Yeah, that's fine. I'll eat healthy when I'm 20," or whatever it happens to be. It could be a hard sell because of that.

Down the road, in terms of this school district and the role that secondary schools have, we will continue to work with Tatjana and the board to ensure as best we can that healthy foods are being served in the school and that we try and absent, as much as possible, unhealthy things from the school. We'll continue to teach the established curriculum.

I know there's a willingness amongst school district officials and people working in the school system to co-sponsor community forums and those kinds of things. Those things will, hopefully, continue to take place.

I speak from some experience and some history with this. Whenever there is an issue that arises in our culture or society, in our communities — whether it's substance abuse or sexual activity or violence in families or bullying or whatever it happens to be — the community tends to gaze around the community and think: okay, whose responsibility should this be?

Unfortunately, more often than not, that gaze falls upon the school system, and we're already tasked with doing a lot of things in this system. I would encourage this group, when you're making your deliberations, to keep in mind that we do a lot of things extremely well in public secondary, but we can't continue to be doing all things for all people. Quite frankly, I think we're letting some other elements of the community off the hook if we accept that responsibility.

Finally, just speaking as a counsellor, we need to understand the relationship that exists for some teenagers between body image and eating and the emotional content of their lives. Generally, when we talk about body issues and body-image things, we talk about anorexia and bulimia and those kinds of things. But there is also a binge-eating disorder out there, compulsive overeating, and that's another contributory factor to adolescent obesity. As a counsellor, I've had to assist young people wrestle with that.

The adolescent culture can be nasty, especially in the girl culture. I don't want to single girls out, and if girls were here right now, they'd probably agree with me. The whole issue of body image is a difficult one to wrestle with. The dynamics of the adolescent culture are also something we have to wrestle with.

Thank you for your time. If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them.

K. Whittred: I have one. This is sort of the gathering of retired teachers today, I think.

I agree with virtually everything you said, and I completely understand the whole cycle of the funding process that you describe.

If you were in our chairs, how would you fund these programs? You know, we've put a lot of money into education, etc. I won't give you the whole story. And I certainly understand the problem. Where do you think that money should come from?

J. World: You know, I'm not so sure it's your problem. I'm not sure that, like secondary schools, you should be accepting all the responsibility for this kind of thing. Yes, you do represent the entire cross-section of our province. But I'm not sure that you have any more than an ethical responsibility — maybe there's a financial responsibility there as well — to bail out our culture from things that it has created.

We're talking about new adolescent obesity right now. We could be talking about adolescent promiscuity or substance abuse or anything else that seems to generate itself out of what is sometimes an unhealthy culture.

I think childhood obesity is just symptomatic of something…. I'm going a little philosophical and maybe a little political as well. But these are just symptomatic things that are coming out of our culture right now. Perhaps the role of your level of governance is to continue to do what you're doing — to seek out information. I don't know that throwing a whole lot of money at this problem is going to be a solution.

The main risk factor, as Tatjana pointed, is poverty. One of the main risk factors is poverty, anyway. Whatever we can do to make our culture more healthy in terms of providing what you're already doing…. We have, with its problems, one of the better health systems in the world. We have probably one of the best education systems in the world, if you look at the results that come out of the PASA testing. So we're doing a lot of things well in our province.

It's not just government's role to step up and say: "We're going to solve this problem." Parents have to accept a lot of that responsibility. They're the primary caretakers of children in our society. Yes, we have children at risk who maybe don't have the privilege of having parents to take care of them. There's an education process that probably has to go on there. If there is some funding being targeted, it would be mostly in the area of information for parents.

I think most parents would love to be doing exactly the right thing for their children. Some parents perhaps just don't know what that right thing is. We can cover some of that information in the school system and hope that when they become parents, they'll remember that information. I'm not so sure that they will. I guess that's information, but I don't think government should say that it's our job to just do only that.

R. Sultan (Chair): It's interesting. For once somebody doesn't come running to the government saying: "You must do this." It's quite unusual, Jim.

J. World: You're a partner in it, but I don't think it's just your responsibility. You didn't create…. Well, some people might say you created part of the mess.

Going back to the funding thing, that's been multigenerational. Every stripe of government has been involved in that sort of decision-making. So I think it's just a little too easy to put it on whoever happens to be in the current government at the time.

R. Sultan (Chair): Jim, we are faced with an ever-growing list of potential speakers, so we're going to crowd in one extra at the end of this hour. Given that burgeoning time commitment not yet fulfilled, I will thank you for your presentation.

The next speaker and presenter is Jack Burgar. He's a basketball coach, Columneetza Secondary School. Where is Columneetza?

C. Wyse: Columneetza is a first nations word meaning meeting of the princely ones. Mr. Burgar is definitely one of them.

J. Burgar: I agree with some of the things that have been said by my doctor, who is here this evening — Mr. Fedor.

R. Sultan (Chair): Jack, we're going to give you 15 minutes including questions.

Mr. World covered a lot of history of what happened in our school district. We used to get subsidized for about $320,000 for athletic travel, which would cover the cost of buses and substitute costs. That works out to 20 cents a day per kid — less than $40 per day per year, less than a textbook. Now those costs are gone. I'm giving you a handout which shows you how much I spend in terms of basketball. That's not a big deal. I'm almost retired, so my philosophy of trying to make it work is sort of…. I've run out of energy.

Giving you some history, I can remember that I was part of the people that got the Pepsi program into Columneetza to make it affordable for the kids. I also got bingo licences for our school, and I also got direct-access funding. I had a school administration that also spent $25,000 of that building an entranceway to Columneetza, which didn't have my approval, but that was part of the process, I guess.

What we're looking at, if you're looking at kids participating…. Why would you care? You need to know why you have to care, because it doesn't mean anything if you don't understand what I'm getting at. Kids at the high school level, if they're involved in extracurricular, are the perfect examples of role models that you probably want. It doesn't matter if it's a band program or basketball. They're the kids that other kids look at, and they set a tone in the school — talk about school culture, etc. If you're interested in buying school culture, then you don't shortchange the 20 cents a day per kid. You just don't do that, or you'll lose a significant grip on the school. I don't mind if you do, but that's the cost of it.

You asked Mr. World: where are you going to get the money from? Well, the money in the system…. We have lots of counsellors in our school. We have lots of vice-principals. We have lots of people trying to catch kids who are trying to get out the door in terms of not wanting to be there any more, or they don't fit in or whatever.

Out of the years that I've coached basketball, I've been relatively successful. I have yet to have a kid that didn't graduate on time, didn't finish his grade 12 on time — well, maybe one kid. I haven't had a kid that I've ever cut. I never cut a kid in basketball. They all played for me when we started. I haven't had a kid that didn't go to college after basketball. I'm probably not the only program that does that, but I can be proud of my kids because they actually produce results.

It is unbelievably expensive to be part of a program that's extracurricular in the rural communities. There are formulas you have as a government that were in place — I don't know if they're still there, but they were in place at one time — that recognize the difference between a rural school district like us and how far we'd have to go to an urban school district like Prince George. There were formulas that actually paid schools to help that extracurricular cost. That money is no longer available to kids. So be it, but that's one thing you need to know.

At the same time, we lost that kind of support, we also had the province, which has a grant called the in-province travel grant, remove the funding that we would have received. It's gone. So even though you tell us, "We'd like to have people involved, like to have kids involved," behind the scenes, as a coach, I see a lot of things that go on that are redirecting funds to priorities that are obviously important. When it comes down to the crunch, it's obviously more important than kids playing school sports.

There are some solutions. I could tell you what I think would be some of the solutions. Whether or not they're agreeable, there are solutions out there that are within the system.

Let me give you an example of how frustrated I am. I'm the business ed teacher, but I'm teaching phys ed because the programs have been dropped in terms of business ed because of the school structures in our district — or certainly reduced. I've got grade 8 classes. I happen to do grade 8 PE. There are four classes of PE in that same block. I've 30-plus kids in my grade 8 PE class. I see them every second day. Every second week I'm in the gym, and for the other two weeks I'm gone. I'm either in the weight room, or if I'm lucky, I'm outside playing, which is great.

Between the wintertime these kids either go into a classroom, or they go somewhere, like to a weight room. The time I see these 30 kids…. I see them every second day. When I do get them in the gym, they're in half a gym. I've got 30 kids in half a gym. They get to play half the time so that the other kids can actually have a sports feeling.

I just sort of sit there and shake my head. I come from a business background, and if you don't support it, you don't provide time for it. If you don't support it, you don't provide money for it. It doesn't matter what you say. If you don't have the money and the time for it, you're really not supporting it. If you don't have, for example, the gym facilities…. If you don't have two gyms, for example, in a big school so that kids can actually be in the gyms….

It's funny, actually. It's not funny, but you can see the problems. We can talk about supporting, but if you don't have a process by which we can actually do it when it could be there, it's frustrating.

What would I do? I enjoy kids. Kids are awesome. What makes kids stay in school is that they have a sense of wanting to be there. It can be a student council. It can be the drama program. It can be the basketball program. If they have a sense of belonging there and wanting to be there, they will be good kids. They will probably eat better than you would expect them to because they have a reason to be there.

I should be really short about this. The reason I think sports are important is not because it's a sports program, but it brings kids from different cultures and puts them together in a situation where they have to set similar goals.

One time we had a lot of Indo-Canadians — kids that were from virtually no Canadian background, that were from parents that had come to work in the mills. These kids actually fit into our society through sports. That's how they fit in. It's still a large way in which kids do that. This school is known more for its rugby program. It's one of the best ways of bringing kids together from different backgrounds — different academic backgrounds, different economic backgrounds.

If you can have a sense of togetherness in the school, you'll stay here. You spend thousands of dollars when kids leave the school system, because they get into trouble. If you can spend some of those dollars, a smaller portion of those dollars, effectively, I think you'll have a better system.

Yeah, I think there are ways of doing it, but what do I see? Well, I see an in-province travel grant dropped, which is a few dollars. I see athletic funding that's provided for kids no longer there. I see an extra administrator being purchased, or I see two 8-to-12 schools being offered, and as a result, the inefficiencies, I feel, are costing kids programs. They're costing us money that could have been put into programs. But that's just old Burgar talking.

The kids are still worthwhile, but what is it worth to have extracurricular programs? If I was on the lower mainland, I would only have spent 20 days a year in basketball. But because I'm up here, it takes me about 40 teaching days. Over 34-plus years, that's seven years of free teaching you got from me — the equivalent of seven free years. If it was on the coast, you'd have got a free three and a half years in terms of the time I spent with your kids.

If you make me fundraise to the extent that I can't afford it personally, you'll lose that free opportunity. So 20 cents a day per kid in a rural school…. Some $320,000 sounds like a lot, but if you break it down to 8,000 kids, it's 20 cents a day. We don't have that 20 cents anymore.

That's what it's boiling down to. You're either going to pay it for social services, or you're going to pay it for kids who don't want to be here. Do you pay it for counsellors who would try to keep the kids in the system? I think the money is there, but it's not being used effectively. But that's just old Burgar talking.

The reason I brought this to you today: I just want you to know how much it costs kids to play basketball at Columneetza. I just want you to know that there was at one time an in-province travel grant that I used to fill out. It's not there anymore. I also want you to know that there used to be a formula — or maybe it's still there — that would pay to have kids participate in extracurricular in rural schools. That was there from the government. I don't know if it's still there or not, but we're not getting it anymore.

What would I suggest you do? Give PAC the money. If you want to give money to anybody, don't give it to the school district. I don't trust them. It won't get to me. I'll never see it. The kids will never see it. Give it to PAC. Be careful when you give it to the school district, because it may not get where you want it to go.

If you want to do something, build another gym. Let the kids actually have space where they can go and participate. But with the obstacles you would put before me, I wouldn't be able to do the programs. Again, I'm just so old. I'm just doing it one more year.

K. Whittred: Actually, it's not a question; it's a comment. I'm going to follow up on your…. Not the grants. I think I understand the in-province travel grants. I think I know the answer to that. The other one though, I'm not sure. I don't know whether that money was actually eliminated or whether that was a targeted program and the target has been eliminated and that money still goes to the board. I think that's the case, but I'm not sure.

J. Burgar: It was based on the number of kids in a school and how far they'd have to go to the next major urban area, which is Prince George. So there were formulas.

R. Sultan (Chair): I wonder if I could ask a question, following up on Katherine's point. It's my impression — I may be wrong — that the philosophy this government has in fact is to revise the funding formula for school districts to a per-student basis with adjustments for travel costs and differences in heating and maintenance and so on, depending on what part of the province one is in.

It's my impression — again, I stand to be corrected — that the philosophy of targeting money in a micro way was more or less abandoned under the theory that the school board knows best how this chunk of money should be spent. So I assume — but, again, I stand to be corrected — that the changes you're talking about, in terms of the elimination of certain funding, took place about the time that that new funding formula went into effect for the school boards.

If that is so — and, again, I stand to be corrected; I may be wrong — would you advocate a return to micromanagement from Victoria?

J. Burgar: I would say: just give it to PAC. If you're going to give money for a specific thing, give it to the parents. Give it to the parent advisory committees that are in the school. Don't give it to the school district.

If you figure there's $14,000 or $20,000 that you want to give to a particular student body because of the numbers of kids in that school, then give it to the parent advisory committee. If they want to give it to a basketball program, that's their choice.

R. Sultan (Chair): So you're advocating setting up a funding channel through the PACs for sports activities. Is that your proposition?

J. Burgar: You've done it before. Last year you gave PAC money provincially, whatever the reason being.

V. Roddick: Re the PAC. Just to clarify, the more savvy schools, shall we say, filled out the forms right and got a lot of the moneys. What we did was equal it out to so much per student and throughout the province with every school. So that's what change took place.

Now, what I was wondering in your second suggestion was that you…. The amount varied from $20 to $40 per student, depending on how…. So on top of the existing amount that is sent out to the PACs. Is that what you're suggesting here?

J. Burgar: Last year the PAC had enough money that they gave the basketball program $2,500 — no strings attached. Virtually, it was for travel. This year I'm under the impression that they've been cut way back. There may be $750.

V. Roddick: They haven't been cut back from the dollar volume going out there, but maybe they've changed their priorities. I don't know on that.

V. Roddick: This is what I'm trying to clarify here. You're suggesting that this be a different amount of money. We already send….

J. Burgar: Or brought up to that amount. All I'm saying is that I don't know how much PAC gets, and I don't get involved in that. I don't have enough time. I'm just saying that if you want….

V. Roddick: I think it's $20-plus per student. Katherine, do you remember? It's around that figure — approximately $20 per student. That's in the urban areas.

J. Burgar: That may not be earmarked for extracurricular. It may be earmarked for….

V. Roddick: I don't think it's earmarked. I think it's just a straight dollar. That was the whole idea.

C. Wyse: I would like to acknowledge what Mr. Burgar has put in front of us for our discussions. He has raised the issue that develops when school districts are assigned responsibilities that are then not funded.

When you come into a rural area like the Cariboo, those responsibilities need to be picked up. What gets kicked out is, according to this presentation, the PE participation, the sports programs and things of that nature. I want to acknowledge Mr. Burgar for having presented that question in front of us. That's one of the items that I'm sure our committee will need to wrestle with in our report to the Legislature.

K. Conroy: Just to add to what Charlie is saying. I think it sounds like what you're saying is that it doesn't sound like what Ralph and Katherine have said. It doesn't sound like there's been a cut. But there's been a cut when you look at X number of dollars going per student.

What you're seeing are cuts to the program, because the board is looking at where they're going to make cuts. It's gone to the health programs, and it's a bit of hypocrisy for us to be going around and engaging in discussions on obesity when education programs like PE have been cut.

V. Roddick: We don't want to get into an argument, but there haven't been any cuts to education.

J. Burgar: I've just saying that I think you've got money in the system. I'm not saying there needs to be more or less. I just don't get enough.

R. Sultan (Chair): Well, Jack, I would like to thank you for highlighting a conundrum that we as a committee are going to have to deal with. Thank you for drawing it to our attention very graphically and backed up with some hard numbers.

Finally, I'm sad to say we only have a few minutes — maybe three — for Nancy Gale of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Child Development Association. Nancy, what is your message?

N. Gale: I have a couple of recommendations that I would like you to consider. We provide services to children from zero to 19. I'd like to be thinking a little bit about some of those earlier activities that could happen.

I will tell you that we have had the luxury of having a nutritionist, Tatjana Bates, as part of our team and part of the early intervention therapies. That was funded by Rotary. I think that if we're going to be doing some of that work sooner rather than later and if we are going to be doing effective early intervention — to come back to some of Katherine's comments about there being an existing system — what we need to be thinking about is adding nutritionists to our traditional roster of therapists. In addition to physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech language pathologists, we need to add nutritionists.

Many of us who work in child development centres provide universal as well as prevention and intervention programs. Many of them are directed towards children with special needs, as well as working extensively with parents. By having a nutritionist on board, it builds on an existing system of early intervention and adds that whole area of healthy eating. I suggest that we could start thinking about nutritionists as an effective part of early intervention therapies and include them as part of that roster.

The other piece — and I know Val has done some work in this. I know that she was effective in being able to provide some loan reductions for PTs and OTs in the province. I would like you to add nutritionists to that list, because the cost of becoming a nutritionist with a master's is equally expensive. We can include them in the loan reductions program, as well as providing some opportunities where we have nutritionists doing cooperative placements in rural communities — if we can get them to rural communities, and they don't sneak off to urban. Those would be some other suggestions that I would look at.

I would also ask the committee to start looking at the standards and the particular regulations in child care. It's actually section 32 and schedule D that talk about programming. I think you need to add healthy eating to programming. Start looking at those standards. Start adding active living, physical activities and healthy eating to those standards. What it would provide is some support.

To come back to the comment of one of our previous speakers, there are other parts of the system that need to be thinking about healthy eating. It doesn't just happen and wash up on the shores of schools.

One of the other things that I would ask you to consider is that in the community of Delta, which again comes back to Val's jurisdiction, they have probably been the most far advanced municipality in terms of how they're attempting to encourage active living amongst children. What they've done is waive all of the recreation fees for children up to grade 5.

We've proposed that to Williams Lake. We had something that they're scratching their heads…. I think what you could do is…. If there was something that we could be doing with the association of municipalities whereby providing some types of incentives to communities to provide that waiving of recreational fees, I think it may have some real value.

Currently what we have in Williams Lake is some work being done with low-income families, so that would be my suggestion. Finally, as a member of Big Brothers Big Sisters and sitting on their board — and some of the recommendations I heard from our first nations speakers — what I will be doing is adding recreation to the peer mentoring.

We could probably spend much time learning more from Nancy about her particular sphere of expertise, but regrettably, we have come to the end of our time for consultation. I would like to turn the floor back to Deputy Chair Charlie Wyse.

C. Wyse: Briefly, I would like to point out for the record that this is our last public forum. I'm going to be parochial. We did save the best to the last for these public forums. I would like to point out, though, that there are still opportunities for presentations through letters, through emails, through the blog on the computer. It is important.

There's one more report to be made, and I'm going to use this as an example to underline that this is a joint committee of the Legislature for making its report back to the Legislature — all 79 of us. So there is a report that I'm now going to make on behalf of my staff and Bob Simpson's staff here in Cariboo North and Cariboo South. They're also employees of the Legislature.

There are three observations that I would like to report here. In this general area there was a sensitivity for people to present to this group because they would be identified personally and there would be some personal concerns about their own appearance. That was an aspect that was also discovered by my staff.

The second thing was the trained personnel around the general area of nutrition running through two broad communities of first nations as well as with the Indo-Canadian community.

Finally, the third point is that there was confusion that existed here, and we possibly experienced it elsewhere in the province, with the announcement of the Premier's Conversation on Health. There also was confusion in this part of the province about what our actual task was.

I'm also recognizing my staff for the job they did in bringing this session together.

With that, I would like to close with thanking Williams Lake Secondary School for having hosted us and putting this on. Thanks for allowing me the honour of being here today. That was a privilege for me.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

	1)	Brody Granger
	2)	Monica McMahen
	3)	Jamie Tazelaar
	4)	Teara Mohr
	5)	Kallie Smith
	6)	Jesse Bortolussi
	7)	Sarah Helgason
	8)	Raymond Sam
	9)	Garrett Stump
	10)	Hugo Angelo
	11)	Darren Tenale
	12)	Loni Solomon

13)	Interior Health Authority	Tatjana Bates
14)	Dr. Glenn Fedor
15)	Jim World
16)	Columneetza Secondary School	Jack Burgar
17)	Cariboo Chilcotin Child Development Association	Nancy Gale

Committee Staff:	Jonathan Fershau (Committee Research Analyst) Carla Shore (Committee Consultant)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
HEALTH