Canadian kids not getting enough exercise: report card
Posted November 19, 2016 10:50 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
EDMONTON (NEWS 1130) – Canadian kids aren’t getting enough exercise, and placing them on a team roster isn’t necessarily going to get them in shape.
The annual ParticipAction report card is out, and it says our country’s kids sit near the bottom for physical activity compared to many other countries.
The University of Alberta’s professor John Spence contributed by researching Canada’s part in the global study.
He says ‘developed’ nations got a bad report card compared to countries such as Slovenia, which has mandatory phys ed in schools.
“That’s something that we do not have in Canada and many of us has been pushing for. Physical education is a critical factor, I would argue, unless we are going to go back to making all of our children walk to school,” explains Spence.
“Children in those countries are moving around quite a lot. They’re not engaging in the organized activities but for them to engage in transportation, often times it’s more active transportations,” says Spence.
“Countries that are much more developed — like Canada, US, Australia, those countries — our children tend to engage in a lot less of that active transportation.”
He says Canadians do well when placing their kids in organized sports but, conveniences like transit keep them from daily exercise.
