Ontario boosts autism budget to $779M, advocates question where money is going

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy's budget, tabled Thursday, contains two lines on the Ontario Autism Program, including touting the new funding.

Ontario is increasing funding for its autism program to $779 million this year, the government announced in this week’s budget, but advocates say it’s not yet clear exactly where that money will go.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy’s budget, tabled Thursday, contains two lines on the Ontario Autism Program, including touting the new funding.

Children, Community and Social Services Minister Michael Parsa’s office has not yet offered details on how the money will be used, but the Ontario Autism Coalition fears it will not all go toward therapy for children.

“We’re very happy about any increase to the budget,” said coalition president Alina Cameron. “It’s very welcome and it’s needed. But the way it’s laid out, it just raises a lot more questions than answers for us.”

Last year’s budget for the program was about $720 million, but Cameron said previous boosts of about $60 million don’t seem to have made a huge difference in the wait list.

Figures obtained by the autism coalition through a freedom-of-information request show that as of early February, nearly 80,000 children and youth were registered to seek services through the program, but only about 17,650 were in an active agreement for core therapy funds.

“The rate of registration is higher than the rate of entry to core clinical services,” Cameron said.

“We don’t really see a big change of services at the user end, based upon these yearly increases. They often just get absorbed into system costs, rather than reaching families.”