Parents angry about insufficient government-funded autism services attended an NDP event in Richmond Hill yesterday morning and others plan to hold a protest at Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty's office in Ottawa on Saturday.
"It's hard to live with a child with autism, especially if there's no support (from) the government," Aslanboga said.
NDP Leader Howard Hampton lashed out at McGuinty for leaving children with autism "languishing on waiting lists" for treatment and forcing desperate parents to sell their homes to get the money they need to help their children.
"That is completely unacceptable. No parent should have to do that … after the premier of the province gave them, and all other parents, a written promise that this was not going to happen," Hampton told reporters.
Right now, there are about 1,000 children on the waiting list for intensive behaviour intervention (IBI) therapy that can cost $50,000 a year per child.
In the 2003 election, McGuinty promised – in a letter to a mother of an autistic child – to end the previous Conservative government's "unfair and discriminatory" practice of cutting off IBI funding when children turned 6.
Once elected, he delayed doing it until 2005 and continued to fight parents in an existing court case.
Even though the Liberals have since tripled annual funding for autism to $140 million and more than doubled the number of children receiving the intensive therapy to some 1,200 children, the broken promise has dogged the party.
"We were not able to do it as quickly as we wanted because of a lack of therapists," Finance Minister and Liberal campaign co-chair Greg Sorbara said, adding that autism services was the only area that experienced a tripling of funding.
Hampton said parents would hear in "a couple of days" what his party would do for autistic children if elected.
Bruce McIntosh will be listening closely. He remembers the day in 2005 he got a call telling him his son Cliff had finally made it to the top of the waiting list for therapy.
Three days earlier, he and his wife had talked to a real estate agent about selling their home. For more than two years they had been paying some $20,000 a year to provide Cliff with part-time therapy.
IBI therapy, parents say, can change the world for some autistic children.
Sharon Gabison still remembers the first time her son, Eric Segal, asked a question.
"I had a son who didn't speak and one month after he started (intensive treatment) he came out with a question," Gabison said.
They were standing in a KFC fast food restaurant.
"What's the name of this place?" she recalls her son, then 5, asking.
"It was one of those oh-my-god moments in life," she said.
When her son turned 6 and was cut off the treatment that had made such a difference in his life, Gabison paid more than $50,000 to keep it going and joined with other families in a court case.
"You do anything you can for your kids," she said, adding too many families can't afford to go it alone.
She's a member of the Ontario Autism Coalition, which is trying to make autism funding a prominent election issue. "We're not necessarily targeting the Liberals. We're trying to make the issues known to everyone," she said.
Gabison attended Hampton's event yesterday with the coalition's glass fish bowl. If every Ontarian put $7.50 in the bowl, the waiting list for services for autistic children could be eliminated, she said.
The coalition plans to give the money they collect throughout the election campaign to whichever party forms the next government and ask them to fix the system.
Day of Action 2007 
