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Indicators
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Grades
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Quick Stats
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Recommendations for Action
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Proximity and Availability
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A
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• 93% of Canadian parents say public facilities and programs for physical activity and sport are available locally (2010 PAM).
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• Strategies that try to change how adolescents view their community and built environment may help improve their physical activity.
• Studies consistently demonstrate an association between green space and physical activity among children. There needs to be greater advocacy for green space within communities.
• Current park space in communities, including micro-parks, need to be maintained.
• Efforts should be made to improve the dissemination of information about physical activity programs so that more parents and their children will be aware of what is available in their own community.
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Usage of Facilities, Programs, Parks and Playgrounds
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C
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• 61% of Canadian parents say their kids use public facilities and programs for physical activity sometimes, often or very often, which is not significantly different from 2005 (2010 PAM).
• 69% of children and youth use parks and outdoor spaces at least sometimes (2010 PAM).
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Community Programming
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B+
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• 93% of Canadian parents say public facilities and programs for physical activity and sport are available locally (2010 PAM).
• 91% of municipalities report that they offer physical activity programs or scheduling specifically for children. This is up slightly from 2000 and 2004 (2009 SPACC).
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Perceptions of Safety and Maintenance
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B
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• 66% of Canadians 15 years and older report that there are many safe places in their communities to walk, such as sidewalks and walking trails (2009 PAM
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• Develop/expand a well-connected series of sidewalks, paths, trails and linear parks to permit safe commuting from place to place and for unstructured activities.
• Ensure school playgrounds are safe (and in some cases, supervised) during the after-school period.
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Municipal Policies and Regulations
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D-
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• Only 16% of Canadian municipalities have a formal transportation master plan. This differs drastically by municipality size: 7% of communities with at least 1,000 residents and less than 10,000 report having a master transportation plan. By contrast, 60% of communities with more than 100,000 residents have such a plan (2009 SPACC).
Only a small number of municipalities (fewer than 20%) require safe walking and biking routes under any of the following conditions: (1) development of new areas, (2) reconstruction of roads, and (3) retrofitting of existing communities (2009 SPACC).
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• Municipalities should make policies from a physical activity point of view. For example, when making environmental policies, think about the impact this will have on physical activity and consider this in the policy change.
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| Nature and the Outdoors |
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• 64% of parents say their kids play outdoors in the after-school period (2010 PAM).
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• Health promotion strategies of any kind should consider the addition of an outdoor element.
• Learn from and model the “Leave No Child Inside” initiatives going on around the world and in Canada
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