The Woodstock Sentinel

Friday December 15, 2006

As the parent of an autistic child, I feel some pressure to write this after reading the announcement in the papers that Health Minister Tony Clement has decided to fund a most basic autism program in Canada.
I’m here to say: don’t bother.
The government is once more wasting tax money by not comprehensively funding this well studied problem. If you cannot fund this decently, then it is nothing more than a bureaucratic make-work program.
The health minister has announced an $800,000.00 program. Divide this number by the amount of autistic kids in Ontario and Quebec, (an estimated 40,000) and you will get a new program that looks like $20 a year in spending on autism for each child in Ontario and Quebec. What about the other provinces? Have you people no understanding of the real difficulties facing parents? Did you not have any public consultation on this? Do any of you elected people actually know any families that are living with this?
By the time you factor in these provinces, the number becomes more like $5 per child. This is discouraging. The majority of this money will be spent on administration costs, and I challenge Clement and (Oxford MP) Dave MacKenzie to prove it will not be a waste of money.
Using the parents of autistic kids in this manner is gross, perverted and smacks of political opportunism. Keep the kids out of your silly political moves.
When MacKenzie told me about this program coming up, he did say it would be baby steps. I did not realize it would be a failure of a program before it even got started.
This is more of an appeasement measure than a real meat and potatoes program to assist parents and the kids involved. This looks like an assistance measure for a failing government, that has lost its focus and is clamouring for a revival of its fortunes.
It is terrible that these governments use these kids and long suffering parents as a ways and means to garner public opinion or to gain a vote.
Dalton McGuinty is a prime example of this. While campaigning several years ago, he and his Liberal buddies duped parents of autistic kids (myself included) into believing they would fund, or at least attempt to build programs for these kids that were relevant to their communities and families.
It never happened. Now we have a federal government who sees many votes to be gained by announcing a thinly disguised vote-grabbing program, which has no substance.
Save the $800,000 and put it to better use. There is no point in wasting our dollars just so you can say you have developed another program. This program will be as useless as the rest we’ve seen come and go. After 11 years of waiting for something good to come out of any government I’ve decided I’m not listening anymore to the lies and deceit. You folks have deceived and duped us into believing that help was on its way.
We’ve been going it alone for a long time now, so please, don’t interfere with us and the real progress we are making by announcing some silly get-a-vote program that will have absolutely zero impact on anyone who lives with this serious and destabilizing social illness.
I don’t know who designs and develops these ideas, but I do know that it is a waste of time and resources, unless you actually fund it and design it around the family that requires it. There is absolutely no use in designing another under funded program

Godivas