Ontario Autism Program — Letter to the Large Urban Mayor’s Caucus of Ontario

I sent this letter to the Mayor of Guelph, Cam Guthrie, who is Chair of the Large Urban Mayor’s Caucus of Ontario. Thought it may be of interest. Here’s the text:

Dear Mayor Guthrie,

I am writing to you in advance of the May 24 Large Urban Mayor’s Caucus of Ontario meeting in Guelph, where Ontario’s “downloading by stealth” will likely be a topic of conversation. Although LUMCO undoubtedly has a full agenda, I wanted to draw your attention to the revised Ontario Autism Program (OAP), which will further increase fiscal pressures on municipalities.

In short, the new OAP is an irredeemably flawed program that assigns scarce resources not on clinical need, but on a one-size-fits-all model that is wholly inappropriate for a spectrum disorder. Children with considerable challenges will receive inadequate levels of therapy, while children without such need will receive support far in excess of what they require. It would be like the government replacing OHIP by giving every Ontarian a cheque for $6500 to buy their own health care. That would benefit me, a relatively healthy 42-year-old, but it would be at the expense of those with real health issues. It would be an incredibly wasteful way to run a healthcare system.

While the Government of Ontario is currently examining ways to increase support for children with higher needs, which is positive, they have continued to commit to the wasteful practice of providing excess support to “low need” cases, which limits their ability to provide adequate support to all children. Although I have not modeled the waste in the new OAP, it is certainly over four percent, likely an order of magnitude higher. I am sure you will appreciate the irony.

As described in the Senate of Canada study Pay Now or Pay Later, failure to provide adequate treatment to children when they are young will require governments to “pay later in terms of much higher costs in future years for welfare, social services, and institutional care.” A 2012 study in the Netherlands found that failing to provide adequate childhood therapy can increase future costs by 1.5 million CAD per individual on the spectrum. Much of these costs are borne by municipalities, so a flawed OAP will cause increased strains on your budgets in the future.

Simply put, I am asking the Ontario government to scrap their wasteful OAP, and develop a new plan based on clinical need rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. I hope that you will join me.

I am happy to discuss further or provide additional details; feel free to contact me at any time.

Best,

Mike P. Moffatt