Active Transportation and Recreation as an Essential Service Summit
Executive Summary
Following the Province’s release of the all-party Healthy Kids – Healthy Futures Task Force Report in the summer of 2005, the Physical Activity Coalition of Manitoba (PACM) established a Task Group/Committee to explore ways and means for PACM, their members and network to support implementation of the Task Force’s recommendations regarding increasing physical activity in Manitoba. There was a need identified to host a third summit to address the importance of recreation and active transportation being recognized as essential services in health of active communities.
The Manitoba Physical Activity Summit III was held at the Sports for Life Centre on April 15th and 16th 2010. The Summit heard from two nationally respected keynote speakers Brian Johnston is a visionary for Recreation in Canada who played a pivotal role in facilitating the discussions around the new governance model and mandate of the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association. Cara Fisher coordinator of Built Environment and Active Transportation Initiatives for the British Columbia Parks and Recreation Association. We also wanted to learn from some of Manitoba’s leaders with regards to local examples. We invited Ron Epp from the town of Altona a Kevin Nixion Active Transportation Coordinator for the City of Winnipeg and Jackie Avent with Resource Conservation. We were thrilled to have these three successful panelist/presenters representing the urban, rural and school perspectives on promising practices.
We felt that by bringing together individuals from a myriad of organizations, agencies and communities who have an invested interest in recreation, physical activity, active transportation, education, leisure, sport and health living for Manitobans that we would get the input we required to put together some very valuable recommendations.
Not only were we able to come up with some great ideas for highlighting the value and benefits of recreation leadership, active transportation and recreation infrastructure but the recommendations have led to the development of strategies that will promote and support recreation these in communities of all sizes.
Through the building of partnerships and strategic alliances with recreation, sport, active transportation, physical activity and healthy living organizations, agencies and government departments We feel that there is a lot of room for growth in these areas.
PACM feels that by promoting and supporting recreation and active transportation through the development of the necessary tools it will contributes to the holistic approach to health and well being of individuals, families and communities.
Our hope was to educate and inspire community leaders and key stakeholders within a recreation and health promotion capacity to create opportunities to improve the quality of community environments that supports active lifestyles.
We believe that the Summit helped to identify the commonalities between recreation and active transportation and how they accommodate each other’s mandate, impact programs, facilities, infrastructure and budgets. Most importantly, the tools that communities will need in order to adopt and implement active transportation initiatives.
Summit Recommendations
The following is a list of the recommendations compiled by the Summit Committee.
1. That a communication strategy be developed that targets Municipal Governments to emphasize the importance of Recreation and Active transportation as essential to quality of life in Manitoba.
2. To allow for the development of communication resources to allow PACM to distribute with key messages surrounding recreation and active transportation. To include: web and hard copy resources.
3. To rejuvenate the Provincial Recreation policy to include emphasis on Recreation as an Essential Service and Active Transportation.
4. To develop a program for community funding targeting planning for Active Transportation.
5. To allow for the partnering with non traditional Physical Activity Partners such as the Manitoba Professional Planners Institute MPPI and the Canadian Public Works Association CPA, to host an event for public works engineers and planners on active transportation using a peer to peer format.
6. To develop and endorse bikeable and walkable community audit tools for use in all Manitoba communities.
7. To investigate the development of a walkable and or bikeable community designation program to recognize communities that reach a specific level of proficiency.
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