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18 hours ago
TORONTO - Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory tried to rub
salt into an old Liberal wound Tuesday as he promised hundreds of
Ontario families more money for costly but effective therapy for their
autistic children - and hinted he’ll enlist the help of a prominent New
Democrat to get it done.
The backlog of autistic children waiting
for therapy has grown to 1,000 from 89 under the Liberal government,
said Tory, who accused Premier Dalton McGuinty of failing to honour a
promise to the families of autistic kids.
A Conservative
government would immediately increase annual provincial spending on
autism by $75 million - up from about $140 million currently - to
quickly wipe out the waiting list, Tory said after meeting with a group
of parents of autistic children in London, Ont.
"If you never set
the objective of getting rid of the waiting lists, then you never
will," he said. "Those kids can’t wait on those lists, they need the
care soon. It won’t be easy, but it must be done."
The charge of
another broken promise angered Liberal officials, who insist they kept
their promise to end a long-standing policy of cutting off access to
intensive behavioural intervention (IBI) at the age of 6, nearly
tripled spending on autism and more than doubled the number of kids
getting access to treatment.
Public funding for treatment of
children with autism is a thorny issue in Ontario. The Liberals insist
money is best spent in training therapists and expanding college
training programs, while the NDP and Conservatives are campaiging on
pledges to dramatically increase services.
Some of the parents Tory met said they were encouraged by his pledge to help them and their children.
David
Patchell-Evans, the founder and CEO of GoodLife Fitness Clubs, has an
11-year-old autistic daughter. He said society just doesn’t seem to
take autism as seriously as it should.
"People don’t die of
autism. They die of AIDS and they die of diabetes if it’s not treated,"
Patchell-Evans said. "Autism is more prevalent of all those things, but
people don’t die of it, and so I don’t think it gets the attention
because it’s not immediate, in your face."
He said the Liberals
had done little to help autistic families, despite McGuinty’s written
pledge to them during the 2003 election campaign, but felt he could
trust Tory’s word as a businessman to keep his promise.
"What
he’s saying is they’ll make a difference the moment they get into
power. That’s what I thought was going to happen last time," said
Patchell-Evans.
"You wouldn’t believe the heartbreak that
happened last time, because these people are at the end of their ropes.
We all want things for our children, but in this case we just want our
children to talk."
Tory proceeded to prove the old adage that
politics makes strange bedfellows when he heaped praise on longtime NDP
stalwart Shelley Martel, a fierce critic of the Liberals on the autism
file who announced her retirement from politics earlier this year.
"I
just watched her and her great passion for this, and the degree to
which she is held in such high regard and is seen as having so much
credibility by people in (the autism) community," he said.
" I hope I have the privilege to do something about this, and she’d be certainly somebody I’d love to call on."
WIth
their success directly dependent on the demise of the Liberals, the
Conservatives and the NDP have long maintained an unholy alliance of
sorts on the campaign trail. Recent polls that suggest a minority
government have only served to amplify the rhetoric of late, and
embolden the NDP, which would hold the balance of power.
On
Monday, NDP Leader Howard Hampton said a minority government would need
to pledge allegiance to the New Democrat agenda, a shopping list of
social services improvements that carry an estimated $9.1-billion price
tag.
A day later, McGuinty acknowledged for the first time the
possibility that he could be leading a minority when the dust settles
after voting day Oct. 10.
"The electorate will do its own thing
in its own course; I accept that, and that’s fine by me," he said
during a campaign stop in Barrie, Ont. "They have their responsibility
to come to understand the issues and, of course, to get out and vote."
Ontario’s "just-in-time" economy demands a nimble and agile Liberal majority to keep moving forward, he said.
McGuinty
was courting commuters Tuesday as he talked up a plan to expand
commuter rail service between Toronto and Barrie, Ont., a rapidly
expanding city suburb about an hour’s drive north - when there’s no
traffic.
Hampton, meanwhile, made a stop in Sault Ste. Marie,
where he hauled out buckets filled with pennies - 45,000 of them, to be
exact - to illustrate the $450 a year the Liberals have cost low-income
taxpayers by breaking their pledge to hold the line on taxes.
The
NDP has said it would phase out the contentious Ontario Health Premium
for low-income earners and reduce it by $450 for taxpayers earning up
to $80,000.
"Mr. McGuinty … has a four-year record of saying
anything, promising anything to get elected and then walking away from
those promises and disappointing people," Hampton said.
"Part of
our campaign is to remind people this is not what you voted for, this
is not what you were promised and you deserve someone you can count on."
-With files from Keith Leslie
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Awareness 
