By KAREN HOWLETT
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
With a report from Caroline Alphonso in Barrie
LONDON — Seven-year-old Madi Gensen used
to spend hours humming and screaming every day when she was a baby, leaving her
parents feeling totally helpless.
"Steve and I thought we were going crazy," said Leela Sharma, Madi’s mother.
"We felt pretty helpless."
Ms. Sharma said she and her husband knew something was wrong with their
daughter, but it was not until she was 2½ that she was diagnosed with
autism.
Madi’s parents, along with their curly-haired little daughter, were among a
group of parents who joined Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory at a
roundtable discussion on autism at a daycare centre in London yesterday. 
Mr. Tory was there to call attention to the plight of parents struggling to
find treatment for autistic children, and promised to invest an additional
$75-million a year to help children with autism by unclogging the long waiting
list for treatment. It’s a list he said has soared to 1,000 children today,
under the Liberal government, from just 89 four years ago.
Ms. Sharma said she and her husband spend thousands of dollars on treatment
for their daughter, who cannot be left alone for "30 seconds."
Mr. Tory criticized Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty for not fulfilling the
promise he had made just before the 2003 campaign to provide treatment for
children over the age of 6 if the Liberals won the election.
"Like with so many of his other promises, Dalton McGuinty failed to follow
through," Mr. Tory said.
However, the Liberals pointed out yesterday that they removed the age-6
cutoff for intensive behavioural intervention treatment in 2005 and have more
than tripled spending on autism services to $140-million a year.
Mr. McGuinty questioned whether Mr. Tory could inject more funding into
autism treatment and, at the same time, live up to his promise to phase out the
$2.6-billion annual health premium.
"I would ask all Ontarians to be very careful when considering commitments
made by Mr. Tory where there is a cost associated with those commitments,
because he’s now telling us that he can cut our taxes, he can deliver more
services and he can balance the budget," he told reporters.
Mr. Tory said a Conservative government would work with educators,
child-support workers and school boards to ensure that children get the support
they need. He conceded that he would have to "work out" how this would be done
with educators.
"But I’m confident there isn’t a teacher in Ontario who won’t want to work
with the parents and with the government to make sure that can happen," he
said.
The Liberals have said they plan to introduce additional special-education
reforms to expand support for students with autism.
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