TORONTO, Canada:  The Ontario government is committed to helping parents of older autistic children pay for costly behavioural therapy, but needs "a bit of time," the provincial Premier, Dalton McGuinty, said on December 10.

In the legislature, McGuinty urged a family services critic, Shelly Martel of the NDP, not to "underestimate our commitment to help out those families to which are born children suffering from autism."

Martel accused McGuinty of breaking a campaign promise by not extending provincial coverage of intensive behavioural intervention therapy for autistic children over the age of six.

"It's time for you to keep your word," Martel yelled at McGuinty, "because autistic children who need IBI therapy should not have to go to court to get it."

McGuinty insisted his government was fighting families of autistic children in court because of the larger issue of who should set government spending priorities, not because of any lack of commitment to help.

"There is something larger at stake here in terms of mandating governments to proceed with certain kinds of expenditures, and that's why we're in court," McGuinty said to reporters.

The Premier insisted that setting a bad precedent was not the only reason the government could not extend funding. "We simply don't have enough people around right now with the skills to help those children under six, let alone those over the age of six," McGuinty told Martel.

But Martel accused McGuinty of "trying to buy votes from families with autistic children."

Families with autistic children are fighting the policy in a lawsuit and in human-rights complaints, claiming ending the therapy at age six is discriminatory and runs contrary to medicare principles.

(Source: The London Free Press, December 11, 2003)