Premier Doug Ford ran on a promise to fix the broken Ontario Autism Program.  The PC's were supposed to earmark an additional $100 million in funding, but when Children Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod unveiled the new plan there was no new funding brought to the table.

Instead, Ontario families with autistic children found out that the Ford government betrayed their trust and will simply be redistributing the current inadequate funding, spreading it thinner by giving it evenly among all the 40,000 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, no matter how extreme or minor a child's diagnosis falls on that wide spectrum.  The new plan is hamfisted and nothing short of a spectacular failure for a relatively new government which had promised these families an improved system.  Fast forward several months later and they replaced one broken system with another hopelessly broken system.

Don't take my word for it though, MacLeod's parliamentary secretary Amy Fee's staffer who quit over the plan and was previously the president of the Ontario Autism Coalition bluntly explained the ineffectualness of the plan to The Kitchener Record: "The decision to grant funding based on a child's age and time in the program, rather than their need for support, is like giving 'every kid who needs glasses the same prescription.'"

An owner of a private autism therapy clinic that I'm friends with also told me about the atrocious plan.  Although it will help 23,000 children currently on the waitlist to finally get funding from the program and join the up-until-now lucky 8,400 children currently enrolled in the program, it will spread funding so thinly among them that it will only cover a small sliver of the overall cost to most families.  In turn, many families simply will not be able to cover the costs of treatment and their children will not be able to fully develop and reach their full potential.  (Fellow Loonie Politics contributor Michael Taube also laid out the problems succinctly in the Toronto Star.)

MacLeod unsurprisingly faced an earful last week from angry and disheartened parents who are understandably upset with the lacklustre plan after being promised much more from this government that's now pulling a bait-and-switch on them.

MacLeod is standing her ground and claiming there isn't enough money or a "silver bullet" to what — if one can infer by her own words — she apparently sees as a cost-sink beast to be vanquished.

But it shouldn't be looked at this way.  This is an investment in tens of thousands of citizens and their ability to be productive, functional, contributing members of our society.

To cover the costs of these 40,000 children would be incredibly expensive, especially for a province crippled by debt and still on a diet of overspending, and is probably not doable without increasing the current budget for the Ontario Autism Program by many, many millions of dollars.

But this plan does nothing to address the unregulated fees of Autism professionals or the lack of oversight to fraud and abuse of the system, waste (i.e. those elusive efficiencies Ford banged on about during the election) that the government has the means to stop.  And to turn a blind eye the varying severity and needs of children with autism will ensure that most of the kids with minor needs get coverage while those with the greatest needs of all will be less likely than ever to get the therapy they need.

This latest move by the Ford government once again reveals that it appears to have no fortitude or imagination for coming up with ways to do the right thing under pressure.

There's still plenty of waste in this province.  Why not find some and justify the cuts by saying the money needs to be reappropriated to help tens of thousands of kids with autism?

Looking at the obsolescent and superfluous provincial broadcaster would be a start.  With a budget of $40 million and redundant educational programming and news that can easily be replaced by similar sources on the internet, not to mention its low ratings, TVO has long outlived its relevance and importance.

If MacLeod came out tomorrow and announced TVO was being dissolved and its $40 million budget transferred to the Ontario Autism Program, as well as its headquarters sold off, who could reasonably argue with that?  Of course, some downtown Toronto elites would have conniptions, but they would just prove themselves to be spoiled, self-entitled champagne socialists.

Unfortunately, however, this government seems content to over promise and under deliver, relying on cheap, unimaginative parlour tricks like No Name buck-a-beer and one-size-fits-all autism funding.

It'll grow tiresome even for the base in three years' time.

Photo Credit: Global News

Written by Graeme C. Gordon