Quebec children are spending less time outside, Fondation Philanthropie Outaouais is trying to change that

Tashi Farmilo

Researchers say a generation of Canadian children is losing the simple freedom to play. Fondation Philanthropie Outaouais (FPO) announced this week that it will distribute $473,000 in grants to eight Outaouais organizations to help give it back.

The numbers from Quebec alone are striking. According to a 2025 report from the Institut de la statistique du Québec, only one in five children and youth in the province is considered active in their free time. Outdoor play collapses in the colder months: while two in three toddlers play outside daily during a typical spring or summer week, that figure falls to roughly one in five once fall and winter arrive. Meanwhile, screen time is climbing. Nearly 59 per cent of toddlers aged two and a half watch shows, videos, or films at least once a day, up sharply from 39 per cent just a year earlier. The gap between income groups is particularly stark: toddlers in low-income families are nearly three times as likely to log more than two hours of daily screen time on weekdays as their more affluent peers.

The Canadian Paediatric Society made the stakes plain in a landmark 2024 position statement calling on physicians, families, and policymakers to fundamentally rethink how children spend their time. Free play, it said, is essential to children's physical, mental, and social development, and the opportunity for it has been shrinking for years. Its lead author, Dr. Émilie Beaulieu, a Quebec City paediatrician, was direct: children should be kept as safe as necessary during play, not as safe as possible. Over-caution, she argued, had become its own kind of harm.

The same statement cited evidence linking high screen time in early childhood to behavioural difficulties, speech delays, weakened executive function, and poorer academic outcomes.  The Free Play Fund is a direct response to that reality. Operating through 22 community foundations across the country, it invests in projects that help children spend less time on screens and more time outside, moving, imagining, and connecting with one another. Funded projects can take nearly any shape, from nature-based programming and land-based learning rooted in Indigenous knowledge to the redesign of underused community spaces. The only fixed requirement is that children lead.

The eight recipients selected for Phase 1 were chosen to reflect the full geography of the Outaouais rather than concentrate resources in any single area. In Gatineau, grants will go to the Centre d'animation familiale de l'Outaouais, La Maison de l'Amitié de Hull, and Les Partenaires du Secteur Aylmer. CPE La Bottine de Maniwaki will receive support in the MRC de La Vallée-de-la-Gatineau. The Municipality of Campbell's Bay will carry the initiative into the MRC de Pontiac, while Carrefour familial Papineau represents the MRC de Papineau. Both the Municipality of Chelsea and Chelsea Cooperative Nursery School will serve the MRC des Collines-de-l'Outaouais.

"FPO considers that a balanced representation of Outaouais territories is essential for ensuring a strong and inclusive regional impact," said Rock Poulin, the foundation's president. "The organizations selected reflect that."