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According to a new report, 33.4 per cent of children in Saskatchewan are obese.
That’s one of the findings contained in the report released Tuesday by the non-profit organization Children First Canada, which contains research from the O’Brien Institute for Public Health. P.E.I. had the lowest rate in the country at 18.4 per cent. Children First founder and lead director Sara Austin said she hopes with the pending election, candidates will speak to the report’s findings and voters will listen.
“There are eight million kids in Canada and they represent a quarter of our population and yet they cannot vote, they don’t have a say in electing the decision-makers who really influence the health and well-being of a generation of Canadians,” she said.
The National Call to Action report contains a list of the top 10 issues threatening Canada’s children, including poverty, abuse, obesity, suicide, bullying, and preventable injuries. Accidents and preventable injuries were listed as the leading cause of death for children in Canada, followed by suicide.
A communications woman with the non-profit said it used Statistics Canada numbers for the obesity data.
The numbers showed that 20,800 Saskatchewan kids aged 12 to 17 years old (33.4 per cent) self-reported being overweight or obese in 2018; that’s up from the 19,700 Saskatchewan kids who self-reported in 2017.
Newfoundland and Labrador (31.4 per cent) and Manitoba (31.2 per cent) were the next two highest regions with self-reported obesity rates.
The Statistics Canada data also shows that 11,100 fewer kids self-reported physical activity for an average of 60 minutes per day in 2018 (44,700) than in 2017 (33,600).
The report’s authors said that inactivity, poor diet and food insecurity are the main causes linked to childhood obesity in Canada.
Canada was one of the five countries with the highest teenage suicide rates, at a rate of over 10 per 100,000 teens. Austin said she was both alarmed and concerned to read Saskatchewan had some of the highest rates in the country of youth hospitalized for mental disorders, at a rate of 705 per 100,000 in 2017-18.
“We know that far too many kids are dying needlessly and we need to be intervening much earlier in early childhood and supporting them throughout adolescence so they not only survive but thrive,” she said.
According to the report’s findings, between nine and 12 per cent of Canadian children grow up in poverty, and nearly 50 per cent of Indigenous children. Saskatchewan’s child poverty rate is 10.3 per cent.
“You know most Canadians have the misconception that this is one of the best places in the world to raise a child and yet that simply isn’t true. We are far from being a world leading country for children,” Austin said.
The report makes several recommendations to whichever government is elected. Those recommendations include the appointment of an independent federal Commission for Children and Youth to raise the profile of children in Canada.
It also recommends the creation of a pan-Canadian strategy for children led by the federal government in consultation with the provinces and territories. The hope is it would tackle the listed threats to children’s health and ensure the full implementation of the Canadian Children’s Charter and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Nigel Maxwell, paNOW
— With files from 980 CJME’s Evan Radford