October 4th – October 9th 2007
ELECTION DAY OCTOBER 10th 2007
A
PRE-Election Mailer
Although it is almost election day, this mailer will also contain other articles relevant to Autism.
visit
Autismnewsarticles.blogspot.com
NOTE
Some articles WILL Be repeated here to bring issues for our families to the forefront.
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Saturday, October 06, 2007
The Alliance for Families with Autism (AFA) held a three-party debate on autism policies and programs. It was an unprecendented and unique event that allowed the three main political parties to have an opportunity to discuss their respectives policies regarding autism.
The debate participants included from the Liberal Party the Minister of Education and Minister of Children and Youth Services. The N.D.P. represenative was Shelley Martel and representatives from the P.C. included Frank Klees and Christine Elltiot.
"Autism is an important issue for the Ontario provincial election! It is important for the autism community to know the position of all three parties so that the community can make an educated decision on election day! People with autism need us all working together for their future." said Trish Kitching, founding member of the AFA.
The event was held in June of 2007 and was open to families, where there were nearly 100 people in attendance at the Sheraton Parkway Hotel in Richmond Hill. The AFA's mission is to improve the lives of children and adults affected by autism and to provide factual information in a non-partisan approach to all stakeholders.
The following information is a list of questions and written responses from the three main political parties regarding the issues surrounding autism in Ontairo.
NDP WRITTEN RESPONSE
Question:
1) There has been an incredible increase in the number of children on the waitlist to receive IBI therapy from the AIP. What is your party’s plan if it forms the next government, to eliminate the waitlist and what is the timeline involved? As well, what will you do to ensure that all Regional Programs and Direct Funding Programs are consistent with the admission, review and discharge of children with autism from the AIP?
Response:
The wait list has grown 1,100% under the McGuinty Liberals’ watch. When the Liberals were elected, only 89 children were waiting for IBI treatment to begin. Now, the wait list of children assessed and eligible for IBI therapy has grown to 985 children. The provincial government must make a significant financial investment up front to ensure children who need IBI can receive it. Otherwise, as a society, we will pay so much more when these children are unable to finish school, find themselves in the court system, or end up in a group home or an institution, because they were not able to receive the treatment they needed.
New Democrats believe that we must make an important investment now. The current wait list must be completely cleared and new children who qualify for IBI treatment must be able to start their services as soon as they qualify. We believe doing both could be completed in a maximum of 3 years.
The issue of the consistent and fair delivery of Regional and Direct Funding Programs, across the province, is an important one. Parents of children with autism need to know that regardless of where they are receiving services in Ontario , access to these services is fair and consistent. The Ministry of Children and Youth Services has contractual agreements with the Regional providers to provide IBI treatment. In addition, the Ministry is the funding agent for both the Regional and Direct Funding Programs, and as such, has an obligation to guarantee that all policies and procedures set out by the Ministry are being applied consistently by all providers. If not, the Ministry must be accountable to parents and intervene directly with providers to guarantee that the rules regarding admission, review, and discharge of children from programs are properly followed.
Finally, we must ensure there is no cost for parents to choose the Direct Funding Option (DFO) as opposed to the Direct Service Option (DSO). The decision between DFO and DSO is often income based for families living on a tight budget. Current DFO rates do not cover all the costs, making it still difficult for the families with the most limited finances to choose DFO.
Question:
2) With the recent announcement regarding Policy/Program Memorandum 140 to incorporate ABA into schools, how will your party, if elected, develop and monitor ABA models for school age children with ASD and ensure the proper qualifications and mandatory training will take place? Please explain what would be your action plan and timeline to ensure that each child with autism is receiving the services they require within the education system and would that include making the Individual Education Plan (IEP) legally binding like the Identification Placement Review Committee (IPRC)?
Response:
The recent announcement regarding Policy/Program Memorandum 140 to incorporate ABA techniques into schools, falls short of what New Democrats believe is required in the school system today – that IBI therapists must be permitted into the classroom.
We appreciate that for children with ASD who are mild on the spectrum, the application of general ABA principles might be enough to support their learning. But for many other children with autism, especially those who are severe on the spectrum, their own therapist, in the classroom, is what is required to allow them to learn.
New Democrats believe that the 7000 children with ASD currently in the public school system must have the services they require to learn incorporated into their Individual Education Plans and that a copy of these plans, must be submitted to a separate office in the Ministry of Education to ensure boards are meeting their requirements in this regard.
A fundamental shift in the attitudes of some school boards and Ministry personnel is required with respect to ensuring children with ASD are having their education needs met. Justice Kiteley’s Court decision of March 2005, (Deskin/Wynberg case) made it very clear that too many boards were not providing the supports and services children with autism required, and that the Minister of Education was not giving direction to school boards to do so. This must change.
Question:
3) Does your party’s plan, if it forms the next government, include children that need to receive intensive ABA therapy within the education system? If so, please explain the plan and who would be accountable for putting together such programs and overseeing them? If not, how will your government, if elected, integrate children receiving intensive ABA therapy if it is not taking place within the education system? Once again, please indicate a timeline for each stage.
Response:
The NDP would ensure that IBI therapists are allowed into classrooms in Ontario . For many children who are severe on the spectrum, having their IBI therapists with them at school allows them to learn and to access the public education system – a right they are entitled to in Ontario. Unless and until the Minister of Education directs school boards to permit IBI therapists into the classroom, children with autism will continue to be denied the public education every child in Ontario is entitled to receive. Justice Kiteley said it best in her March 2005 Court decision in the Deskin/Wynberg case,
“The Minister of Education failed to fulfill the statutory duty to ‘ensure that appropriate special education programs and special education services’ were available to all exceptional pupils without payment of fees. In particular, the Minister of Education failed to develop policy and give direction to school boards to ensure that ABA/IBI services are provided to children of compulsory school age. Indeed, the actions and inactions of the Ministry of Education and the Minister created a policy barrier to the availability of IBI/ABA in schools. The absence of ABA/IBI means that children with autism are excluded from the opportunity to access learning with the consequential deprivation of skills, the likelihood of isolation from society and the loss of ability to exercise the rights and freedoms to which all Canadians are entitled.”
The NDP would require the Minister of Education to take the lead and guarantee that all children with autism can access IBI therapy in the classroom if they need this to learn.
Question:
4) Families are being given true choices between direct funding and direct services for their children receiving IBI from the AIP. Will there also be a choice of funding for families not wanting to send their children with autism into the public school system?
Response:
The NDP supports public education. Every child in the province, including a child with autism, has a right to public education.
The unfortunate reality is that as a result of the failure of the Ministry and Minister of Education to fulfill their statutory duties to ensure appropriate programs and services are available for children with autism in the public school system, parents have been forced to send their children to private schools to access supports. They are being forced to pay out of their own pocket to secure an education for their son or daughter because they can’t get what is needed in the public school system.
New Democrats believe that the Minister and Ministry must fulfill their obligations to ensure the appropriate supports and services are in place (including having IBI therapist in the classroom), so that children with autism can fully access a public education in Ontario .
Question:
5) What does your party, if elected, feel will be their greatest challenges with regards to the autism community and why? What are your plans to overcome these challenges?
Response:
The greatest challenge facing the provincial government is to recognize the incidence of autism spectrum disorder is rapidly increasing (1 out of 150 children) and we are not ready to meet the needs of those children who are being diagnosed now and will continue to be diagnosed in ever increasing numbers in Ontario . Meeting this challenge will require substantial public investments in supports and services for children, both pre-school and school-age, and support for research to unlock the reason for the “epidemic” of ASD.
We will need to be steadily increasing the number of health care professionals who both diagnose and treat children with autism, including paediatricians, psychologists, senior IBI therapists and therapists. A specific strategy for recruitment and retention of these providers is required.
Given the number of therapists must grow to meet the increasing need for IBI treatment, more spaces must be made available in the college system to qualify and graduate more therapists. This will also lead to a need for some form of regulation of therapists in order to ensure the provision of high quality IBI services to children with autism.
The budget for IBI treatment must grow to ensure we are able to start services for children with autism once they are assessed and qualify for funding for treatment. This increased budget is also critical to ensure we don’t have children who qualify for IBI languishing on wait lists.
As children with autism grow into adulthood, and in recognition of the fact that many adults with autism now lack programs and services to support them in the community, we will need supportive housing, employment supports, etc., to ensure they can fully participate in the community.
Question:
6) How will your party, if it forms the next government, ensure families receive the proper services they need when they are faced with linguistic and cultural barriers? As well, we often concentrate our efforts on the children and youth affected by autism in Ontario . What are your party’s plans for adults outside of the preschool and education system, in terms of assigned living, work opportunities, and ensuring these individuals do not slip through the cracks?
Response:
The face of Ontario is changing and it is imperative that our public services take that reality into account and reflect cultural and linguistic diversity. The Regional Program providers, as employers, must develop a recruitment strategy for staff which recognizes the diversity of the families and communities they are working with. The provincial government must also provide public information about autism and available government services in appropriate languages to newcomer and settlement agencies, doctors’ offices, family health teams, community health centres, and childcare centres. The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, in delivering college programs for IBI therapists, must also be conscious of the need to do outreach to attract potential students who reflect the diversity of the children with autism who they will be working with.
Adults with autism deserve access to community supports and programs. Many never received any treatment, so those who are severe on the spectrum may have more challenges with respect to community living than others who received treatment at a younger age. Given the increase overall in the number of children now being diagnosed with ASD, adults with ASD and those moving to adulthood require a much broader range of supports and services than we are currently providing in Ontario. We need assistive/supportive housing to accommodate adults in the community; vocational training and supervised co-op placements which also support employers who are keen to participate; adult day programs for those unlikely to participate in co-op placements; and respite services for caregivers who care for their adult children with ASD at home. It is imperative that individuals who work with/support adults with ASD in the community have specific training to be able to recognize and respond appropriately to their needs.
Question:
7) Does your party support a National Autism Strategy and if so what will you do to ensure you are working towards this goal? If elected, what would be the components of a National Autism Strategy that Ontario should support?
Response:
The NDP supports the creation of a National Autism Strategy to ensure that parents of children with autism, wherever they live in Canada , have equal access to basic supports and services their children need – at home, in school, and in the community. Unfortunately, this is not happening.
Under the McGuinty Liberals, in May 2006, Stacey and Jonathan Haley of Bowmanville moved to Alberta so their twin boys could receive a full range of publicly-funded services and programs. “It was a heart-breaking decision – we don’t know a soul in Alberta and we have a great support network in our local community,” said Stacey. “But, we really didn’t feel that there was any other alternative. If we wanted 40 hours of IBI for each of our boys, we were looking at costs of almost $200,000 a year.”
Deborah Campbell left Ontario in August 2005 because her son Johnathan, was unable to access the autism programs he required. In Alberta , he receives publicly-funded IBI and other services which meet his needs. “Government ministries and school boards in the province of Ontario are forcing parents to become both political and educational refugees,” said Campbell .
These forced relocations must stop and the federal government needs a national strategy which establishes a range of publicly-funded autism services to be available in each province. The federal government must also provide funding to all provinces and be accountable to ensure each reaches that service level.
The federal government must also step up to the plate with significant funding for autism research, especially in light of the sharp increases in incidences of ASD. While many organizations are fund-raising for research (i.e. Autism Speaks Walk), the burden cannot fall exclusively to families, friends, and the private sector to pay for autism research.
The real way to ensure families with children with autism get the IBI treatment they need, wherever they live, would be to bring autism under the Canada Health Act. We support the work done by NDP MP Peter Stoffer, and other MPs who feel the same way, to try and make this an important national issue.
Question:
8) There are several legal battles being fought on the issue of ABA and IBI in Ontario . 120 Ontario Human Rights Commission cases under the group name Arzem, the Class Action case of Sagharian, and the Class Action case of Hartley. What will your government do, if elected in power this fall to compensate these families and to reach a fair resolution that will put an end to the legal battles? Will the governing parties categorically say that they will not seek compensation for legal fees which are a major risk for these members of the autism community seeking what they believe is a fair treatment for their children?
Response:
New Democrats would not seek compensation for costs from parents with children with autism who have gone to court to try and get the services their children needed. These parents have struggled enough. They should never have been forced into court in the first place, but were, because their government was not providing what their children were/are entitled to receive.
In the last election, Mr. McGuinty said, “I also believe that the lack of government-funded IBI treatment for autistic children is unfair and discriminatory. The Ontario Liberals support extending autism treatment beyond the age of six.” If Mr. McGuinty really meant what he said, then once he was elected, he would have stopped the court case against the Deskin/Wynberg families and settled with them. Instead, Mr. McGuinty fought these families in Court for another 11 months. He only stopped the age 6 cut-off of children’s IBI treatment when Justice Kiteley forced him to with her court decision at the end of March, 2005—a full 18 months after Mr. McGuinty had been elected. Taxpayers’ money, that should have been used to pay for IBI, was instead squandered by the Liberals to fight these families, not once, but twice, in Court. And now Mr. McGuinty is prepared to squander even more money by going to Court on June 18th, to try and block the release of information requested over 3 years ago by NDP MPP Shelley Martel on how much the Liberals spent fighting these families.
With IBI therapists in the classroom, the elimination of the wait list, province-wide autism program consistency, education programs that reflect linguistic and cultural diversity, increased support and services for adults to enjoy a quality of life in the community and an open ear to further assist families and individuals living with autism, the need to go to court should end.
No Ontario family with a child with autism should have to go to court to get the services they need—at home, at school, or in the community—because their government refuses to provide what is needed.
PC PARTY WRITTEN RESPONSE
Debate Questions
1) There has been an incredible increase in the number of children on the waitlist to receive IBI therapy from the AIP. What is your party’s plan if it forms the next government, to eliminate the waitlist and what is the timeline involved? As well, what will you do to ensure that all Regional Programs and Direct Funding Programs are consistent with the admission, review and discharge of children with autism from the AIP?
Progressive Conservative Party Leader John Tory announced in February that, if elected, a PC government would take action to help parents and children dealing with autism. The first step in the PC party’s plan is to begin by clearing the existing wait list for autism treatment for children under age of six by providing direct funding immediately for every child on the waitlist. Specifically, any child on the waitlist would immediately be offered direct funding.
The PC Party’s fiscal plan includes a new targeted investment of $70 million to clear Dalton McGuinty’s wait list (estimated at 1,400 waiting without service).
2) With the recent announcement regarding Policy/Program Memorandum 140 to incorporate ABA into schools, how will your party, if elected, develop and monitor ABA models for school age children with ASD and ensure the proper qualifications and mandatory training will take place? Please explain what would be your action plan and timeline to ensure that each child with autism is receiving the services they require within the education system and would that include making the Individual Education Plan (IEP) legally binding like the Identification Placement Review Committee (IPRC)?
AND
3) Does your party’s plan, if it forms the next government, include children that need to receive intensive ABA therapy within the education system? If so, please explain the plan and who would be accountable for putting together such programs and overseeing them? If not, how will your government, if elected, integrate children receiving intensive ABA therapy if it is not taking place within the education system? Once again, please indicate a timeline for each stage.
Progressive Conservative Party Leader John Tory announced in February that, if elected, a PC government would partner with the education system, child support workers and school boards to ensure that upon reaching school age, children with autism have the supports they need – including, when recommended by a qualified professional, ABA and IBI - as part of a continuum of services to help these children integrate and succeed.
A John Tory government would not have age cutoffs and will provide the right, appropriate and best treatment at any age, as prescribed by an appropriately qualified professional – be it IBI or other services.
Furthermore, a John Tory government would seek more transparency within the public school system in relation to the almost $2 billion allocated to special needs children. A John Tory government will work with school boards, teachers and their representative organizations to ensure appropriately qualified professionals are in the schools to guide and deliver services and programs.
A John Tory government would also look at best practices and adopt international standards to accredit professionals who provide educational support for children with autism.
The PC Party has also included investment in our college and university system in our fiscal plan so that it can meet the appropriate standards and ensure we have adequate supply of accredited trained professionals here in Ontario.
4) Families are being given true choices between direct funding and direct services for their children receiving IBI from the AIP. Will there also be a choice of funding for families not wanting to send their children with autism into the public school system?
The PC Party believes in giving parents choices. Parents know their child best and understand what their needs and abilities are and the environment in which they learn best. A John Tory government would support parents in making the best choice for their child.
In Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario , there is no consistent option across the province. Under John Tory parents will be provided with flexible options that work for them.
A John Tory government will give parents the choice to meet the needs of their children in the best way they see fit – either through a regional service provider or through managing their own child’s services with direct funding for accredited providers.
A John Tory government will also invest an additional $5 million annually in respite programs to give parents and families the support they need and deserve.
5) What does your party, if elected, feel will be their greatest challenges with regards to the autism community and why? What are your plans to overcome these challenges?
The PC Party believes the greatest challenge with respect to the autism community will be restoring their trust in the government.
It is not surprising that parents are disillusioned - Dalton McGuinty has made so many promises and parents have been disappointed so many times. Dalton McGuinty made a promise but then said he didn’t have the resources to follow through and provide the services children so desperately need. When Dalton McGuinty turns around and commits $400 million to retrofit a casino, you have to wonder where social justice has gone in the decision-making process.
A John Tory government has made a commitment to you and to your children and – unlike Dalton McGuinty – he has costed that commitment and he has planned for it in his fiscal plan with the allocation of $75 million starting in the first year of his mandate. John Tory will do what he has said he will do.
6) How will your party, if it forms the next government, ensure families receive the proper services they need when they are faced with linguistic and cultural barriers? As well, we often concentrate our efforts on the children and youth affected by autism in Ontario . What are your party’s plans for adults outside of the preschool and education system, in terms of assigned living, work opportunities, and ensuring these individuals do not slip through the cracks?
Ontario is a culturally diverse province and so our programs and services need to be designed and implemented with that in mind. The PC Party understands the importance of awareness and education that cuts across cultural and linguistic lines and is committed to reaching out to all families in need of support to ensure that these families are aware of what services are available to them.
With respect to adults with autism, the PC Party understands that services have been heavily focused on early childhood interventions. It is important to address the very different set of challenges that adults with autism face.
The PC Party believes that there is more work to be done to provide vocational training for adults with autism to allow these citizens to benefit from the pride that comes from meaningful work. The PC Party believes in an inclusive Ontario and understands the need for more social, recreational and respite programs so that adults with autism are not left unengaged.
7) Does your party support a National Autism Strategy and if so what will you do to ensure you are working towards this goal? If elected, what would be the components of a National Autism Strategy that Ontario should support?
The PC Party would absolutely support a National Autism Strategy.
The PC Party believes a National Autism Strategy should begin by focusing on taking the lead role in three important areas:
1. Coordinating levels of service and programming being delivered across the country to ensure comparable services are being provided across the country, that all jurisdictions are learning from one another’s best practices, and that parents don’t feel pressure to move to another jurisdiction simply to access services for their children.
2. Showing leadership in autism research and sharing lessons from international best practices.
3. Providing more tax credits and programs that will improve the ability for parents, who are too often forced into bankruptcy, to better plan for the future.
8) There are several legal battles being fought on the issue of ABA and IBI in Ontario . 120 Ontario Human Rights Commission cases under the group name Arzem, the Class Action case of Sagharian, and the Class Action case of Hartley. What will your government do, if elected in power this fall to compensate these families and to reach a fair resolution that will put an end to the legal battles? Will the governing parties categorically say that they will not seek compensation for legal fees which are a major risk for these members of the autism community seeking what they believe is a fair treatment for their children?
The PC Party believes it is shameful that parents have spent years fighting with Dalton McGuinty in court to obtain the services for their children that he promised to them in his election campaign.
A John Tory government would not penalize parents in courts and would not be seeking any compensation for any legal fees.
LIBERAL PARTY WRITTEN RESPONSE
Alliance for Families with Autism Debate Questions: Liberal Response
Question #1
There has been an incredible increase in the number of children on the waitlist to receive IBI therapy from the AIP. What is your party’s plan if it forms the next government, to eliminate the waitlist and what is the timeline involved? As well, what will you do to ensure that all Regional Programs and Direct Funding Programs are consistent with the admission, review and discharge of children with autism from the AIP?
We need to talk about where we plan to go but we also need to talk about the progress we have made to-date. Our government is building an improved and expanded continuum of service. We have more than doubled annual spending on services for children and youth with autism to more than $130 million. We’ve hired almost 300 new therapists and established the Ontario College Graduate Certificate Program in Autism and Behavioural Sciences - 100 graduates in 2006, 100 graduates in 2007, and another 200 expected in the next two years. It’s about building the capacity to provide the services needed. More than 1,100 children are now receiving IBI– an increase of 105 percent since April 2004.
Wait list management teams, internal to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, have given the families of the most recent 231 children real choice when it comes to the Direct Funding Option (DFO) and Direct Service Option (DSO). We are changing the way parents get to choose in the future.
We ended an age cutoff that was implemented by the Conservative government. Since July 2005, children have no longer been discharged on the basis of age. That has caused both the number of children in service and the number of children waiting for service to rise. Approximately 60% of the children receiving IBI services are now age six or older. Approximately 45% of the children currently on the wait list are age six or older.
We also assess children for appropriate services sooner. There were more than 1,000 children waiting for assessment when we took office. By assessing children sooner, we have reduced the wait list for assessment by more than 65%. However, this has also contributed to the growth of the wait list for service.
We struck an Expert Clinical Panel for the Autism Intervention Program, an independent arms-length body that is developing a set of clinical practice guidelines to enable consistent and evidence-based clinical decision-making in the program. The Panel is chaired by Dr. Peter Szatmari and includes a number of experts, including a parent of two children with autism.
Question # 2
With the recent announcement regarding Policy/Program Memorandum 140 to incorporate ABA into schools, how will your party, if elected, develop and monitor ABA models for school age children with ASD and ensure the proper qualifications and mandatory training will take place? Please explain what would be your action plan and timeline to ensure that each child with autism is receiving the services they require within the education system and would that include making the Individual Education Plan (IEP) legally binding like the Identification Placement Review Committee (IPRC)?
Since taking office in 2003, our government has undertaken a number of key initiatives to focus on better student outcomes, including better outcomes for children and youth with autism.
Our government has committed itself to improving supports for children and youth with autism in schools. We launched the Autism Spectrum Disorder Reference Group to provide our government with recommendations on how best to provide this enhanced support. The Reference Group’s recommendations have set the course for the progess we are making.
On May 18, 2007 , the Ministry of Education released a Policy and Program Memorandum (PPM) on the use of Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) in schools. School boards have been directed through the PPM to use ABA methods with students with ASD, in accordance with their individual education plans. This includes intensive forms of ABA .
The PPM provides direction to school boards, principals and educators in the following areas:
• To support the use of ABA as an effective instructional approach for many students with ASD ;
• To ensure that ABA methods are incorporated into the Individual Education Plans of students with ASD , where appropriate;
• To ensure that parents and relevant professionals are invited to provide input and participate in the Individual Education Plan (IEP) process;
• To plan for students’ transitions and to use relevant ABA methods to support transitions, where appropriate;
• To develop a plan for the implementation of the PPM and to consult with their local Special Education Advisory Committees ( SEAC ) regarding the implementation; and
• To consult with their local SEACs regarding the monitoring of the implementation of the PPM, at least on an annual basis.
• The Minister’s Advisory Council on Special Education, as well as members of the Ministers’ Autism Spectrum Disorders Reference Group who wish to be involved, will be consulted twice a year regarding the implementation of ABA methods by school boards.
To support school boards in the successful implementation of the PPM on ABA , extensive staff training will be provided. Our government is currently implementing training on ASD for school board teams, up to six to eight representatives from every school board, including superintendents, principals, teachers, teachers’ assistants, school support staff and SEAC members. The school boards’ team training will be followed by principal training and training for school teams - funded through a $1-million investment. Both training opportunities will take place over the summer months to prepare staff to implement the PPM in September 2007. It is estimated that up to 1,400 principals will be trained as well as 1,400 other staff directly working with students with ASD , including principals, teachers and teachers’ assistants.
In addition, our government has provided a grant of $2.75 million to Geneva Centre for Autism. The Centre has committed to use this investment to provide further team training on ABA approaches with school staff in the fall.
We will hold school boards accountable for the implementation of the PPM, as it is a fundamental component of our efforts to strengthen the supports available to children and youth with autism in schools.
Question # 3
Does your party’s plan, if it forms the next government, include children that need to receive intensive ABA therapy within the education system? If so, please explain the plan and who would be accountable for putting together such programs and overseeing them? If not, how will your government, if elected, integrate children receiving intensive ABA therapy if it is not taking place within the education system? Once again, please indicate a timeline for each stage.
Our government recognizes that all children, regardless of their needs, are entitled to a high quality education in Ontario .
Directing school boards on the use of Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) with students with autism in schools, through the PPM released on May 18, 2007, was an important step forward in addressing the need for ABA methods to be available to students with autism who need it in schools across the province. We will be carefully monitoring the implementation of the PPM in September in school boards across the province. As previously mentioned, the implementation of the PPM is supported by a number of training initiatives our government has undertaken.
Our progress to-date has been made possible by working in patnership with parents, school boards, teachers, educators, and experts in the field of autism. We will continue to work in collaboration with our partners to implement ABA in schools, including intensive ABA , such as Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI).
Question # 4
Families are being given true choices between direct funding and direct services for their children receiving IBI from the AIP . Will there also be a choice of funding for families not wanting to send their children with autism into the public school system?
Our government looks forward to a time when all schools across the province are supportive of children with autism in their schools and are able to provide the services they need. However, we believe that it is important for parents and families to not feel that they are being forced to send their children to school to receive services that they are not comfortable receiving within that system of service provision. The important thing is ensuring that kids who require support be able to get it. We will continue to strengthen and improve all the service options available for children and youth with autism and their families.
Question # 5
What does your party, if elected, feel will be their greatest challenges with regards to the autism community and why? What are your plans to overcome these challenges?
The best way to overcome challenges is by working together, in partnership. The improvements we have made to the provision of services for children with autism would not have been possible without us having the opportunity to hear the advice and the experiences of parents. We have learned much from the parent community and the progress we have made is the result of that.
Funding is not the only answer to improving services for children and youth with autism. As funding increases and the demand for service grows, we must also build and retain the human resource capacity to absorb this growth. That's why we started a college-level program to train new therapists. We are also working to overcome a significant shortage of child psychologists in Ontario . We will continue to grow the capacity of the system to better meet the growing demand for service in the long-term.
We plan to continue the good work we have already done to improve the learning environment for our children and youth with ASD. We plan to continue building the relationships we have with members of the autism community – with parents, community groups, educators, school boards, and within government.
Question # 6
How will your party, if it forms the next government, ensure families receive the proper services they need when they are faced with linguistic and cultural barriers? As well, we often concentrate our efforts on the children and youth affected by autism in Ontario . What are your party’s plans for adults outside of the preschool and education system, in terms of assigned living, work opportunities, and ensuring these individuals do not slip through the cracks?
We recognize that families with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds can also have different needs. Addressing this need is part of our effort to build the capacity within the service system.
Services for children, youth, and adults with autism must be provided through a collaborative, interministerial approach. By working through interministerial collaboration, we are able to offer a broad range of coordinated services to address the needs of children, youth, and adults with autism as they move along the service continuum.
As announced in our 2007 Budget, our government is investing $200 million more over the next four years to strengthen the developmental service sector. Our government has begun drafting of a new piece of legislation for the developmental services sector. This piece of legislation is the first new piece of legislation in this area since the 1970s. The McGuinty government wants to bring the developmental services sector into the 21st century. We are proposing an enhanced consistent approach to determining eligibility for developmental services by updating the definition of developmental disability, which will benefit autistic adults in that they may have the intelligence to perform daily tasks but not the social skills that help them do so. This new piece of legislation will also allow families and individuals the choice to receive services through a transfer payment agency or to receive funding directly to purchase the services themselves. It will also allow funding to transfer with the client if they move from one community to another. Outside of this legislation, we are adding autism clinical expertise over time to our specialized networks of care, which includes long distance teleconference diagnosis.
Question # 7
Does your party support a National Autism Strategy and if so what will you do to ensure you are working towards this goal? If elected, what would be the components of a National Autism Strategy that Ontario should support?
Our government is on record as supporting a National Autism Strategy.
On November 8, 2006 , Minister of Children and Youth Services Mary Anne Chambers appeared before The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology in Ottawa , where she presented her case for a national autism strategy to benefit children with autism and their families across the country. She was the only elected official across the country who accepted the invitation to appear before the committee. In her presentation, she suggested the federal government consider the following:
• A public awareness campaign to help more people understand autism, including how to socialize and live with those with autism;
• Direct grants or tax deductions for parents/families with children with autism, similar to support for caregivers who provide babysitting services and for people who look after their senior relatives;
• More funding for research on autism;
• Recruitment of more child psychologists to work with children and youth with autism;
• More funding for residential supports to provide respite for parents and help children with autism learn to take care of themselves to some degree;
• Standard certification for service providers nationally; and
• A regulatory body for behaviour analysts and therapists.
The full transcript of the Minister’s presentation can be found at:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/39/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/Com-e/soci-e/10eva-e.htm?Language=E&Parl=39&Ses=1&comm_id=47
Question # 8
There are several legal battles being fought on the issue of ABA and IBI in Ontario . 120 Ontario Human Rights Commission cases under the group name Arzem, the Class Action case of Sagharian, and the Class Action case of Hartley. What will your government do, if elected in power this fall to compensate these families and to reach a fair resolution that will put an end to the legal battles? Will the governing parties categorically say that they will not seek compensation for legal fees which are a major risk for these members of the autism community seeking what they believe is a fair treatment for their children?
Our focus has been, and will remain, improving the services and supports available to children and youth with autism, and their families. Our interest is to work in partnership with families because our experience has demonstrated that working with the parent community yields real results.
The Ontario Court of Appeal decision in the Deskin-Wynberg case left the government with the option of reinstating the IBI age six cutoff. We chose not to because our commitment is to improve services for all children and youth with autism, regardless of age.
For More Information Please Contact
The alliance for families with autism (afa)
Cindy DeCarlo – Barrie
advocate.4kids@sympatico.ca
(705) 737-0417
Trish Kitching – Sudbury
ktchmeifucan2002@yahoo.ca
(705) 222-9432
Pat La Londe – Kingston
palalonde21@aol.com
(613) 542-6477
John McVicar – Kitchener
findingnewmarkets@sympatico.ca
(519) 574-2333
Lisa Prasuhn
lisa.prasuhn@sympatico.ca
(905) 729-4029
reminder
>From: "Karyn Dumble"
>To: "Karyn Dumble"
>Subject: FOR DISTRIBUTION: Weekly News
>Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 14:40:14 -0400
>
>
>Ontario Election 2007
>
>It's not too late to find out your candidates' viewpoints on autism.
>First, check out website (www.autismontario.com
>
already
>responded. If they haven't, use the sample email provided (under
>Additional Election Resources on the bottom of the main Elections
page)
>to ask them to respond. We are keeping a running tally of responses so
>be sure to check back to our Election section often. Lastly, don't
>forget to vote. Advance polls are open now.
>
>
>
>2007 Summer Camp Support Fund
>
>The program for 2007 is now closed and we are no longer receiving
>applications. By extending the application deadline to September 30,
>2007, many more families were able to complete the necessary
paperwork.
>Thank you for your assistance in getting the word out to as many
>families as possible.
>
>
>
>A Letter from the Canadian Association for Community Living (CACL)
>
>Dear Parent / Guardian
>
>In November 2007, the Canadian Association for Community Living (CACL)
>will be releasing a national Report Card on Inclusion - a report that
>will comment on how well we are doing, as a country, with respect to
>inclusion in the areas of Deinstitutionalization, Disability Supports,
>Family Supports, and Education. In November 2008, at the 50th
>anniversary of our national association, we will be releasing a more
>comprehensive report that will speak to our national performance in
each
>of the 10 Goals in our 10 Year Agenda.
>
>
>
>We want to make sure the report card is accurate and reflective of the
>voices of people with intellectual disabilities and their families.
In
>order to do this we need your help. Access to accurate, reliable and
>comparable information on the education of students with intellectual
>disabilities is extremely difficult. In order to obtain reliable and
up
>to date information on the educational experiences of children and
youth
>with disabilities and their families, a survey has been developed and
is
>available for completion on-line. This survey is short (can be
completed
>in less than 10 minutes) and is completely anonymous.
>
>
>
>The data obtained from the survey will be critical in painting a
picture
>on the national status of education for students with intellectual
>disabilities, the extent to which it presents as an inclusive
>experience, and the extent to which families are satisfied with this
>experience.
>
>
>
>The survey can be accessed at:
>http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=PBiTxo3P0ApmO3aHwpXaVA_3d_3d
>
>
>
>If your son / daughter is of school age we would ask that you take a
few
>minutes to complete this survey. Your participation in this survey is
>critical to ensuring that our report on Education is based on real and
>up to date experiences of children and their families. If you know of
>other families who have school aged children with disabilities please
>feel free to share with request with them also.
>
>
>
>We thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. If you
>should have any questions regarding the survey please contact Anna
>MacQuarrie at amacquarrie@cacl.ca.
>
>
>
>Again our thanks.
>
>
>
>Tell Us Your Story! The Canadian Association for Community Living
would
>like to hear from you. We are developing a National Report Card on
the
>status of people with intellectual disabilities and their families.
As
>part of CACL's 10-year, 10 goal agenda, our first National Report Card
>will be issued in November 2007 and will focus on four key areas:
>deinstitutionalization, disability supports, family supports and
>inclusive education.
>
>
>
>The stories will be highlighted in our on-line National Report Card
and
>may also be profiled in the printed version issued in November 2007.
We
>are looking for stories that reflect your experience with one of these
>four areas.
>
>
>
>We want stories from a range of people that illustrate the successes
and
>challenges of inclusion in these four areas. We want to hear from
>people with an intellectual disability, family members, teachers,
>employers, community members etc. Inclusion touches all of us and we
>want stories to give us as many perspectives on inclusion as possible.
>
>
>
>To help you get started here are some ideas for sharing your story:
>
>* Introduce yourself and tell us a bit about who you are and
>what your connection to inclusion is
>
>* Tell us how you feel about one (or more) of the four key
>areas:
>
>o Deinstitutionalization
>
>o Disability Supports
>
>o Family Supports
>
>o Inclusive Education
>
>* Share your successes and accomplishments as they relate to
one
>(or more) of the four key areas
>
>* Tell us about the struggles, obstacles or barriers that you
>have faced that relate to one (or more) of the four key areas
>
>* Let us know what changes you would make to ensure inclusion
is
>a reality for all people with an intellectual disability.
>
>How to Share Your Story - To be part of providing a voice to our
>National Report Card on Inclusion, email your story to Anna
MacQuarrie,
>amacquarrie@cacl.ca before October 31, 2007.
>
>
>
>Research Study Looking for Participants
>
>Dr. Rutherford and Brenda Johanson are involved in a study at McMaster
>University to find an early diagnostic tool for autism based on social
>cognitive and social perceptual skill development. We are using
>eyetracker technology to measure the interest displayed by babies
>with/without a family history of autism when shown pictures and videos
>of social stimuli. Similar studies are being conducted at Yale child
>Study Centre. The study is noninvasive, less than 20 minutes in length
>and the parents are with their children at all times. (Full letter
>attached.)
>
October 5, 2007
Autism group rips Grits over lack of policy
http://torontosun.com/News/Ontariovotes2007/2007/10/05/pf-4551780.html
By ANTONELLA ARTUSO, QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU CHIEF
The Ontario Autism Coalition has rated the election platforms of the provincial parties and given the Liberal plan a poor grade.
Laura Kirby-McIntosh, the mother of an autistic son and an advocate with the coalition, said both the NDP and Conservative commitments "exceeded expectations," while the Green party did not respond to their questions.
The coalition is seeking to have Intensive Behavioural Intervention, a specialized therapy for autistic children, provided to children in the public school system.
All provincial parties were asked if they would allow IBI therapists into schools and if they had a plan to eliminate wait lists for the service.
The Liberal response was rated "below expectations" because their answers were incomplete or they failed to answer, Kirby-McIntosh said.
Google Alerts
Autism coalition puts parties to the test
MORE STORIES
• Key issues under radar in election
• Autism coalition puts parties to the test
• Facts getting lost in faith-school funding controversy
• MMP Referedum answers only a call away
• Child Find boxes now at LCBO
Regional News
Oct 04, 2007 07:44 PM
By: Michael Power
An e-mail message to the four main political parties asking for each candidate’s stance on autism issues resulted in good reviews of two parties, a less-than-stellar grade for a third and no verdict on the fourth, said the co-founder of the Ontario Autism Coalition.
The coalition sent the e-mail Sept. 4 to the Progressive Conservatives, Liberals, the NDP and the Green Party, asking about their stances on three issues surrounding autism treatment, said Laura Kirby-McIntosh, a Concord resident who also attended a press conference in Toronto on the subject this week.
The coalition was joined at the conference by the Ontario Association for Behaviour Analysis and the Campaign for Public Education.
Specifically, the groups asked about:
• a list of children waiting for specialized autism treatment, which currently stands at about 1,000;
• funding for that specialized treatment, known as Intensive Behavioural Intervention, (IBI);
• putting in place a system to accredit people to administer IBI.
The coalition then analyzed the parties’ responses to see whether they lived up to — or even exceeded — expectations.
“This was a way to elicit that kind of response from them in writing,†said Ms Kirby-McIntosh, whose seven-year-old son, Clifford, is autistic.
The NDP and the Progressive Conservatives exceeded the coalition’s expectations, she said. The parties gave detailed responses to the questions and have made official announcements on how they would deal with autism issues.
The NDP states it will fund IBI services in classrooms and clear the waiting list for autism services.
John Tory has also vowed to clear the wait list, ensuring children have the support they need when they start attending school and expanding respite programs for parents and autistic children.
The NDP, under leader Howard Hampton, didn’t specify if the party would give IBI funds directly to parents or to agencies, while John Tory’s Conservatives have stated they will offer to provide funding directly to the families of autistic children.
“We’re pleased to see both those leaders taking the issue seriously,†Ms Kirby-McIntosh said. “We’re pleased to see there’s an extensive dialogue on the issue.
The Liberals’ response to the e-mail mainly highlighted improvements to services the government had made in the last four years, without touching on new commitments, Ms Kirby-McIntosh said. The three issues the coalition asked about were not addressed in the party’s response, she added.
“That one really is below our expectations,†she said. “We asked for A, B and C and they gave us R. So it’s really difficult for us to assess that.â€
The Liberal platform says the party plans to give schools “$10 million to prepare schools to deliver IBI therapy on-site for the first time.â€
The Green Party, meanwhile, has yet to respond to the coalition’s request for information.
Google Alert
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/features/ontariovotes2007/story.html?id=2da6174a-735f-4ce0-9ea3-b72af5ae8943&k=73094
John Tory repeats call for more funding for autism treatment
Craig Pearson
CanWest News Service
Friday, October 05, 2007
BRAMALEA, Ont. -- Calling Premier Dalton McGuinty "cruel" for his treatment of families with autistic children, Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory repeated his call Friday to provide more funding for autism treatment.
"These families of children with autism are feeling helpless and forgotten," Tory said at a campaign stop in a crowded office of a PC candidate in Bramalea, just west of Toronto. "But they will not be invisible and they will not be silent. I am here to say I will listen, and I will also act to give these families the meaningful supports they deserve."
Tory repeated his commitment to invest $75 million to clear what he says is a rapidly growing waiting list for autism treatment in the province.
"The waiting list consisted of 89 kids when Dalton McGuinty came to office in 2003," Tory said. "Today it's 1,000."
Tory noted that McGuinty wrote a letter during the last election promising help for autism treatment, but that the Liberal government later ended up going to court against some claims from families of children with autism.
"I don't know how Mr. McGuinty can live with himself," Tory said, continuing his stinging attacks on the premier as the election winds down with the Liberals leading in the polls. "It's cruel behaviour to go back on your word, make people have a hope that you would help, and then turn around and fight those people in court and spend the taxpayers money that's needed for children."
The Liberals say Tory has "selective memory" on the issue, and claim they have invested $140 million more in autism research and that 1,400 more autistic children in the province are receiving IBI therapy than under the previous government.
With five days to go in the election, Tory planned another jam-packed day campaigning against the health tax and the doctor shortage in Liberal-held ridings in southwestern Ontario and the greater Toronto area.
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/2007/10/05/pf-4553174.html
Tory calls McGuinty 'cruel' to autistic kids
Broke his promise to help, PC leader charges
By CHIP MARTIN, SUN MEDIA
BRAMALEA — Premier Dalton McGuinty demonstrated “cruel behaviour” when he broke his promise to help Ontario’s autistic children and their families, Conservative leader John Tory charged here today.
“They thought they had a champion, what they got was a champion promise-breaker,” said Tory, adding he would commit $75 million to clear the backlog of autistic children waiting for treatment and another $5 million to provide respite for their parents.
Tory said McGuinty explicity promised to help autistic children in his 2003 election campaign when the waiting list for treatment numbered 89 — now it is 1,000.
“I don’t know how Mr. McGuinty lives with himself when he calls that progress,” the Conservative leader told supporters after meeting with parents of autistic children this morning.
Among them were Neil and Elana Meirovich, a Richmond Hill couple whose son, Jerry, 7, has autism.
While he now receives behavioural treatment for 20 hours a week that is fully covered, the family went into debt of more than $150,000, Neil Meirovich said. That was to cover the cost of treatment that McGuinty promised would be covered.
Neil said based on McGuinty’s promise he voted Liberal, but not this time.
"I’ll be voting Conservative,” he told reporters, noting he wants to continue the fight on behalf of other parents whose struggle continues.
He and Tory noted McGuinty not only failed to live up to his promise but spent millions in court to fight parents who tried to make him deliver on that promise.
Tory said McGuinty should be embarrassed.
“It’s cruel behaviour to go back on your word . . . then go and fight these people in court. He created needless suffering for these most valuable kids and their families.”
The Conservative leader will be in Guelph to talk about the Liberal government’s poor record in dealing with seniors, people with disabilities, people without doctors and low-income families.
In the evening he will attend a rally in London before heading off to Sarnia on what Tory’s handlers are calling “the real-people tour.”
For more campaign coverage, read tomorrow's Free Press on the web or in print.
Google Alert
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/October2007/05/c9248.html
Attention News Editors:
The Facts on Autism: NDP had no program, Conservatives cut kids off
Only Ontario Liberals have expanded program to all children
TORONTO, Oct. 5 /CNW/ - John Tory is desperate, and is now trying to
exploit parents and children with autism for his own personal gain.
There's no question these families have a struggle. And there's no
question services are improving.
Fact: The autism lawsuit began on November 24, 1999 against the
Conservative government. The suit finally went to court in April 2003, again,
against the Conservative government.
Fact: Ontario Liberals promised to "support extending autism treatment
beyond the age of six. In government, (we) will work with clinical directors,
parents, teachers, and school boards to devise a feasible way in which
autistic children in our province can get the support and treatment they need.
That includes children over the age of six."
Fact: Neither the NDP or Conservatives made any commitment to lift the
unfair age cap. The NDP never even had an autism program when they were in
office.
Fact: The discriminatory age cap was lifted by Ontario Liberals. There is
no age cut off for autistic children. Approximately 60% of children receiving
service are age six or older.
Fact: In 2003, 530 children received IBI services. This year, 1,400
children will receive IBI services.
Fact: As a result of a new College diploma program, 200 new therapists
have been trained.
Fact: Funding for autism services has increased from $44 million in 2003
to $140 million in 2007.
Fact: This summer, 800 autistic children enjoyed summer camp experience
as a result of our new investments.
Fact: 3,000 families with autistic children are receiving respite
services this year as a result of our new investments.
Fact: Our next step is to prepare schools to deliver IBI directly
on-site.
More investments have led to more services for more children and
families.
For further information: Ben Chin, (416) 961-3800 ext. 412,
ben_chin@ontarioliberal.ca
http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20071005/autistic_kids_mcguinty_071005/20071005?hub=TorontoHome
'More work to be done' for autistic kids: McGuinty
CTV.ca News Staff
Though Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty won't commit to clearing a queue for autistic children awaiting treatment, he admits more should be done for them.
McGuinty was speaking at an elementary school in Brampton north of Toronto on Friday when he made the remarks, saying "more work needs to be done."
However, he wouldn't provide details on what that work might include or what immediate steps the government could take.
The opposition parties have slammed the Liberal Party's handling of the autism issue, saying the number of children waiting for the treatment method known as IBI (intense behavioural intervention) has increased dramatically under McGuinty's government.
Conservative Leader John Tory is among those criticizing McGuinty on the issue. On Friday, Tory accused McGuinty of outright cruelty, saying he promised in writing during the last election to help autistic children, but has broken his word.
"They thought they had a champion; what they received was a champion promise-breaker," Tory said.
"I consider this kind of behaviour not just unaccountable, not just irresponsible, but quite frankly, it's cruel."
The Liberals maintain that spending on autism has almost tripled under their watch, and the number of children accessing IBI programs has more than doubled.
Tory contradicted that position, saying the government has actually been fighting in court for the past several years to limit funding to children with autism.
Tory says he would spend $75 million to provide the necessary resources to the children, and another $5 million to allow parents some relief from caring for their autistic kids.
During McGuinty's Friday visit to the school in Markham north of Toronto he unveiled a new plank in the party's education plan. If re-elected, McGuinty said, he would spend up to $150 million annually to reduce class sizes in grades 4 to 8, boost arts programs and help students get ready for high school.
Globe
Tory confident he can salvage campaign over long weekend
KAREN HOWLETT
Globe and Mail Update
October 5, 2007 at 12:53 PM EDT
BRAMPTON — Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory says he is confident he can salvage his campaign over the next five days as voters begin focusing on the election over the Thanksgiving weekend.
“People are never really preoccupied with politics,” he told reporters at a campaign event in Brampton, west of Toronto, the old stomping grounds of his mentor, former premier Bill Davis.
“I think if they spend time with their families this weekend they will be thinking about the future.
Mr. Tory said that as families gather around the table for turkey dinner with their children and grandchildren, they will take the time to reflect upon why children with autism in the province are not getting treatment, why so many Ontarians can't find a family doctor and why farmers are struggling to make ends meet.
“I believe that augers well for me and for us,” he said.
But he said he regrets that many of the issues he has tried to focus on have been drowned out by his contentious plan to extend public funding to all religious schools. In an effort to diffuse the controversy, he announced this week that he will put the policy to a free vote in the provincial legislature.
He is now making a concerted effort to change the channel. In Brampton Friday, he returned to the topic of families struggling with autistic children. Last week in London, he hosted a roundtable discussion with several parents of autistic children.
“We haven't had an opportunity until recently to discuss these very real concerns,” said Mr. Tory, who was wearing a ceramic autism pin on the lapel of his jacket.
Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty's broken promises have been a key theme throughout Mr. Tory's campaign. He said today that Mr. McGuinty's treatment of parents of autistic children was not only “irresponsible” but “cruel.”
Mr. McGuinty wrote a letter during the 2003 campaign to Nancy Morrison, the mother of an autistic son, promising to end the previous Progressive Conservative government's “unfair and discrimatory” practice of cutting off funding for treatment when children turned 6.
But it was not until two years after he was in office – when the courts ruled in July of 2005 that the province was violating the children's constitutional rights by denying them treatment – that Mr. McGuinty lived up to his promise.
“When I meet these parents and see what they're having to go through, and I see that Mr. McGuinty chose to fight them in court, I think it is inexcusable behaviour,” Mr. Tory said. “It's cruel.”
Mr. Tory has invited ordinary Ontarians to participate in his media events to help drive home his points about the Liberals' four years in office. Today was no different. Neil Meirovich, whose son Jerry was diagnosed with autism at the age of 2.5, was at his side.
Mr. Tory said Jerry languished for more than two years on a waiting list for treatment. He said Mr. Meirovich and his wife were forced to borrow from family and friends to raise the $150,000 for their son's treatment.
There are 900 children in Ontario on a waiting list for intensive behavioural intervention (IBI) therapy, a system of behaviour modification to teach autistic children language skills and how to play appropriately. The treatment costs an average of $70,000 a year for each child.
Mr. Tory has pledged to spend another $75-million a year on autism services to help unclog the waiting list if he becomes premier.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Canoe
Union boss Hargrove throws support to Liberals, says NDP is out of touch
By THE CANADIAN PRESS
TORONTO - Prominent union boss Buzz Hargrove, once a staunch supporter of the New Democrats, has once again delivered a stinging rebuke to Ontario's NDP and leader Howard Hampton while throwing his support behind the province's incumbent Liberals.
Hargrove, the outspoken president of the Canadian Auto Workers, has made a tradition in recent provincial and federal campaigns of slamming the NDP and its leadership, dismissing the party as out of touch and actively supporting the Liberal alternative.
"I'm personally supporting the Liberals because I don't think the NDP is true to its roots," Hargrove said in an interview Friday.
"It's not a left party. It's a centrist party that's trying to compete for votes in the centre of the spectrum, which I think is a mistake."
McGuinty and Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory spent the day trading blows over just how the Liberal government has treated families struggling with the challenges of autistic children.
Tory accused McGuinty of being "cruel" for promising to help familes with autistic kids, only to turn around and fight those same families in a court battle over funding for a costly but effective treatment known as Intensive Behavioural Intervention, or IBI.
"They thought they had a champion; what they received was a champion promise-breaker," Tory said.
The Liberals insist they've nearly tripled spending on autism since they were elected in 2003 and more than doubled the number of children getting access to the therapy.
McGuinty also pledged Friday to spend up to $150 million a year to reduce class sizes in grades 4 to 8, provide more individual attention in areas like the arts and to better help students make the transition to high school.
Hampton, no stranger to Hargrove's campaign barbs, wasn't willing Friday to even dignify Hargrove's comments with a reply, opting instead to accuse Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty of providing little more than excuses for the difficulties confronting the province's manufacturing sector.
The province's economy added about 30,000 jobs last month, but about 11,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, for a total of 44,000 manufacturing jobs that have disappeared this year, Hampton said during a campaign event in Sarnia, Ont.
"Dalton McGuinty simply goes around the province saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I feel your pain, but there's nothing I can do,"' Hampton said.
"If our plan had been put in place three years ago I think a number of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost could have been avoided."
Hargrove defended his pro-Liberal position by citing a number of high-profile Liberal investments in the auto industry, including $235 million for Ford and General Motors.
"By taking the lead he's leveraged over $7 billion in investment in the auto industry in the last three years," Hargrove said of McGuinty.
"Howard (Hampton), one of the problems is he doesn't understand what's happening in the manufacturing industry or the auto industry."
Hargrove acknowledged there are still a lot of people facing job losses in Ontario, but said a McGuinty-led Liberal government would be in a much better position to turn the tide than any government led by Hampton.
Hargrove has long directed union members to practice strategic voting - casting a ballot for whichever Liberal or NDP candidate is in a better position to win - in order to avoid a Conservative government.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Star
Tory calls McGuinty 'cruel'
Oct 05, 2007 01:26 PM
Robert Benzie
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU CHIEF
It was "cruel" of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty to drag parents of autistic children through the wringer over the past four years, charges Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.
Tory, who today repeated his pledge of $75 million in new funding for autism services, reminded voters of McGuinty's "broken promise" from the 2003 election.
"Right now, the parents of more than 1,000 children under the age of six with autism are feeling like they've been abandoned on an island as their kids sit on these growing waiting lists," he said in Bramalea.
"The waiting list consisted of 89 kids when Dalton McGuinty came to office in 2003. Today it is 1,000, so that's what's happened on his watch."
McGuinty countered that his government has tripled the funding for autism services from $42 million to $140 million, expanded training spaces for therapists and paid for summer camps.
"Let's talk about how far we've come. You'll remember under the NDP there was zero funding for autistic kids, zero. You'll remember that we've tripled the funding that was there under the Conservatives," the Liberal leader told reporters during a campaign stop at Lincoln Alexander Public School in Markham.
While 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, there are 1,200 kids currently receiving the intensive therapy, up from 550 when the Conservatives were in power.
The Liberals also note the waiting list is longer because children are being assessed for treatment whereas they were kept on waiting lists for assessment in the previous Tory government.
Still, Tory insisted that's not good enough.
"I don't know how Mr. McGuinty lives with himself in trying to describe that as progress because we all know that's it not," he said, adding the Liberals' decision to continue legal actions started by the previous PC government against parents seeking autism services was wrong.
"They thought they had a champion (in McGuinty). What they received instead was a champion promise breaker," said Tory, noting the Liberal leader had pledged in writing to give parents "the support and treatment they need."
"I consider this kind of behaviour not just unaccountable, not just irresponsible, but quite frankly it's cruel. It's cruel behaviour to go back on your word."
— With files from Kerry Gillespie
-----------------------------------------------------------------
London Freepress
Tory calls McGuinty 'cruel' to autistic kids
Fri, October 5, 2007
Chip Martin, Sun Media
BRAMALEA — Premier Dalton McGuinty demonstrated “cruel behaviour” when he broke his promise to help Ontario’s autistic children and their families, Conservative leader John Tory charged here today.
“They thought they had a champion, what they got was a champion promise-breaker,” said Tory, adding he would commit $75 million to clear the backlog of autistic children waiting for treatment and another $5 million to provide respite for their parents.
Tory said McGuinty explicity promised to help autistic children in his 2003 election campaign when the waiting list for treatment numbered 89 — now it is 1,000.
“I don’t know how Mr. McGuinty lives with himself when he calls that progress,” the Conservative leader told supporters after meeting with parents of autistic children this morning.
Among them were Neil and Elana Meirovich, a Richmond Hill couple whose son, Jerry, 7, has autism.
While he now receives behavioural treatment for 20 hours a week that is fully covered, the family went into debt of more than $150,000, Neil Meirovich said. That was to cover the cost of treatment that McGuinty promised would be covered.
Neil said based on McGuinty’s promise he voted Liberal, but not this time.
"I’ll be voting Conservative,” he told reporters, noting he wants to continue the fight on behalf of other parents whose struggle continues.
He and Tory noted McGuinty not only failed to live up to his promise but spent millions in court to fight parents who tried to make him deliver on that promise.
Tory said McGuinty should be embarrassed.
“It’s cruel behaviour to go back on your word . . . then go and fight these people in court. He created needless suffering for these most valuable kids and their families.”
The Conservative leader will be in Guelph to talk about the Liberal government’s poor record in dealing with seniors, people with disabilities, people without doctors and low-income families.
In the evening he will attend a rally in London before heading off to Sarnia on what Tory’s handlers are calling “the real-people tour.”
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Canoe
Tory hinges northern hopes on economic promises
By THE CANADIAN PRESS
2007-10-05
BRAMALEA, Ont. - Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory is accusing Premier Dalton McGuinty of cruelty for breaking a promise to help children with autism.
Tory says McGuinty promised in writing during the last election to help autistic children. Tory says that promise has gone by the wayside. In fact, he says, the government has spent the last several years fighting in court to restrict funding for these children.
Tory is promising that if he's elected, he would spend $75 million to get the kids the help they need.
Tory is also promising another $5 million so parents can get some relief from caring for their autistic children.
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PC Party media release
Oct-5-07 JOHN TORY WILL PROVIDE NEW LEADERSHIP TO HELP OUR MOST VULNERABLE CITIZENS
(Bramalea, ON) Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory today outlined that new leadership is needed in order to help those families who have been left behind over the past four years of McGuinty rule.
“The real test of leadership comes not only from creating new opportunities and new prosperity, but also in making sure this opportunity and prosperity is equitably shared,” Tory said, “Too many vulnerable Ontario families are left feeling invisible, betrayed and abandoned by the McGuinty government. A real leader would listen to these people, learn from these people and deliver real results.”
Tory started his day in Bramalea, where he met with parents of children with autism who have been left languishing for years on waiting lists for autism treatments after Dalton McGuinty broke his 2003 election promise to provide them with support. Tory reiterated his commitment to invest $75 million to clear the current waiting lists, provide more flexible treatment options for families, and provide more supports to educators and child support workers in order to give children with autism the supports they need.
“These families of children with autism are feeling helpless and forgotten,” Tory said, “But they will not be invisible and they will not be silent. I am here to say I will listen, and I will also act to give these families the meaningful supports they deserve.”
Tory will visit Guelph later this afternoon where he will further address solutions for the plight of vulnerable seniors, people without doctors and low-income families.
“In the last four years, many of these people have been forgotten by the McGuinty government,” Tory said. “Mr. McGuinty has also forgotten our seniors in long-term care or without a doctor who are left to fend for themselves at the very moment in their life when they need this peace of mind the most.”
“Do we really want four more years of this kind of neglect and denial? Do we really want four more years of Dalton McGuinty?”
Tory pledged to stand up for those less fortunate.
“Too many Ontario families are living in poverty, and too many are living in housing conditions that are unacceptable,” Tory concluded. “Our plan will unlock one billion dollars to repair, renovate and rebuild homes for our most vulnerable neighbours. We will also immediately eliminate Mr. McGuinty’s health tax for individuals making less than $30,000 per year. Unlike Mr. McGuinty, I am prepared to be held accountable for my promises I make, and for delivering real results.”
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CBC
'More should be done' for autistic kids: McGuinty
October 5, 2007
The Canadian Press
MARKHAM, Ont. — Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty says more should be done to help autistic children, but won't commit to clearing a waiting list for treatment.
Speaking at an elementary school north of Toronto, McGuinty acknowledged "more work needs to be done,'' but wouldn't expand on his comments.
Opposition parties say the backlog of children waiting for the one-on-one treatment -- known as intensive behavioural intervention, or IBI -- has grown significantly under the Liberal government.
They say the backlog is now at about 900 children, and accuse the party of breaking a promise to the families of autistic kids.
The Liberals say they've nearly tripled spending on autism and more than doubled the number of children getting access to the treatment.
McGuinty was at a school in Markham, where he talked to Grade 4 students and later touted new statistics that say Ontario's unemployment shrank last month.
He says the province's manufacturing sector continues to "be challenged,'' but says his party is the only one that can bring labour and business to the table.
The Liberal leader also unveiled a new plank in his education platform, saying a Liberal government would spend up to $150 million a year to reduce class sizes in grades 4 to 8, provide more individual attention in areas like the arts and help students make the transition to high school.
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CTV.CA
'More work to be done' for autistic kids: McGuinty
CTV.ca News Staff
Though Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty won't commit to clearing a queue for autistic children awaiting treatment, he admits more should be done for them.
McGuinty was speaking at an elementary school in Brampton north of Toronto on Friday when he made the remarks, saying "more work needs to be done."
However, he wouldn't provide details on what that work might include or what immediate steps the government could take.
The opposition parties have slammed the Liberal Party's handling of the autism issue, saying the number of children waiting for the treatment method known as IBI (intense behavioural intervention) has increased dramatically under McGuinty's government.
Conservative Leader John Tory is among those criticizing McGuinty on the issue. On Friday, Tory accused McGuinty of outright cruelty, saying he promised in writing during the last election to help autistic children, but has broken his word.
"They thought they had a champion; what they received was a champion promise-breaker," Tory said.
"I consider this kind of behaviour not just unaccountable, not just irresponsible, but quite frankly, it's cruel."
The Liberals maintain that spending on autism has almost tripled under their watch, and the number of children accessing IBI programs has more than doubled.
Tory contradicted that position, saying the government has actually been fighting in court for the past several years to limit funding to children with autism.
Tory says he would spend $75 million to provide the necessary resources to the children, and another $5 million to allow parents some relief from caring for their autistic kids.
During McGuinty's Friday visit to the school in Markham north of Toronto he unveiled a new plank in the party's education plan. If re-elected, McGuinty said, he would spend up to $150 million annually to reduce class sizes in grades 4 to 8, boost arts programs and help students get ready for high school.
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Liberal Party media release
Attention News Editors:
The Facts on Autism: NDP had no program, Conservatives cut kids off
Only Ontario Liberals have expanded program to all children
TORONTO, Oct. 5 /CNW/ - John Tory is desperate, and is now trying to
exploit parents and children with autism for his own personal gain.
There's no question these families have a struggle. And there's no
question services are improving.
Fact: The autism lawsuit began on November 24, 1999 against the
Conservative government. The suit finally went to court in April 2003, again,
against the Conservative government.
Fact: Ontario Liberals promised to "support extending autism treatment
beyond the age of six. In government, (we) will work with clinical directors,
parents, teachers, and school boards to devise a feasible way in which
autistic children in our province can get the support and treatment they need.
That includes children over the age of six."
Fact: Neither the NDP or Conservatives made any commitment to lift the
unfair age cap. The NDP never even had an autism program when they were in
office.
Fact: The discriminatory age cap was lifted by Ontario Liberals. There is
no age cut off for autistic children. Approximately 60% of children receiving
service are age six or older.
Fact: In 2003, 530 children received IBI services. This year, 1,400
children will receive IBI services.
Fact: As a result of a new College diploma program, 200 new therapists
have been trained.
Fact: Funding for autism services has increased from $44 million in 2003
to $140 million in 2007.
Fact: This summer, 800 autistic children enjoyed summer camp experience
as a result of our new investments.
Fact: 3,000 families with autistic children are receiving respite
services this year as a result of our new investments.
Fact: Our next step is to prepare schools to deliver IBI directly
on-site.
More investments have led to more services for more children and
families.
For further information: Ben Chin, (416) 961-3800 ext. 412,
ben_chin@ontarioliberal.ca
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York Region News
Environment, autism top issues for NDP candidate
News
October 4, 2007
By: John Slykhuis
York North MPP Julia Munro “has done nothing” to deal with the pollution stemming from the abandoned aluminum smelter on Warden Avenue, the newly chosen provincial New Democratic Party candidate for York-Simcoe charged last week.
“The Georgina smelter is unfortunately another broken Liberal promise that so desperately needs attention. My shock was to learn that our incumbent MPP lives within a few kilometres of that site, yet she has done little to hold the Liberals accountable for their promise to clean it up,” Nancy Morrison told about 60 of the party faithful, including leader Howard Hampton, at the Bradford Community Centre last Thursday night.
Ms Morrison is a Bradford resident and a civilian employee of the South Simcoe Police.
The meeting was chaired by Georgina Coun. Dave Szollosy, a long-time NDP supporter.
Shelley Martel, who is Mr. Hampton’s wife, is MPP for the Sudbury riding of Nickel Belt and the NDP’s health critic. She also gave a ringing endorsement for Ms Morrison, describing her as, “a good friend of mine,” who has been a champion for autistic children in the province.
Ms Morrison and her husband Phil have twins, a boy, Sean, and a girl, Meredith.
Her son is autistic and required intensive behavioural intervention.
Mr. McGuinty broke his promise when he said, prior to the last election, that funding for the therapy would continue after an autistic child reached the age of six, Ms Morrison said.
In a letter to Ms Morrison before the last election, Mr. McGuinty said, if elected, his government would support intensive autism treatment beyond the age of six, calling the policy of the Progressive Conservative government of the day “discriminatory.”
That broken promise, Ms Martel said, “speaks volumes about Dalton McGuinty...This letter shows (Mr.) McGuinty would have said anything to get elected and he did.”
The result was an anti-discrimination lawsuit by parents of autistic children that the McGuinty government fought, Ms Martel said.
“Despite everything else she has to do, Nancy was often in court in solidarity and support of those families.”
The lawsuit was defeated when an earlier decision was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal last year.
“Autism isn’t the only issue that is important to me,” she said, noting the increase in MPP salaries.
“The Liberal government held a special extension just before Christmas to ram through a raise to give MPPs a minimum of $110,000 a year and Premier McGuinty has gone to (more than) $196,000 a year, which the Conservatives fully supported. The NDP voted against this. Meanwhile, the government doesn’t think the lowest income earners in this province are worth $10 an hour. Shame on them.”
Mr. Hampton, who is the Rainy River MPP and has been party leader since succeeding Bob Rae in 1996, was quick to compliment Ms Morrison’s track record in the community.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work with Nancy so this is a personal commitment because I’ve seen how committed she is to work on behalf of community, to work on behalf of others in a very unselfish way,” he said.
Mr. Hampton said he’s also happy she came forward as the candidate because she embodies NDP principles.
“I don’t claim that we will necessarily win the next election. I just want to have enough new members like Nancy Morrison that we can have a substantial say in what the agenda is going to be after the next election.”
Mr. Hampton reiterated the NDP commitment to the working and middle class and a “share the wealth” philosophy.
“Every day when I turn to the business pages of the newspaper I see, in big broad print, that the economy is doing better than ever; that billions are being made on the stock market; that corporation executives’ pay and bonuses have skyrocketed like never before; that we are much wealthier today than we’ve every been — and yet as I make my way across Ontario from community to community, what I often see is ordinary families having to work longer and harder than ever to try to make ends meet and to try to provide for their children.”
The NDP is also providing leadership in environmental areas such as global warming and if elected, would provide low-interest loans for people to buy energy-efficient appliances and things such as solar panels, Mr. Hampton said.
In addition to Mrs. Munro, Ms Morrison will also square off against Liberal candidate John Gilbank, a Jackson’s Point businessman, in the Oct. 10 election.
The new riding includes Georgina, the Georgina Island Chippewas First Nation, East Gwillimbury, a northern slice of King Township, Bradford-West Gwillimbury and Innisfil.
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iGMKYrS1RGNP3IHiZ5sq6i6dtRvw
Hampton cool under fire from one-time ally; Tory calls McGuinty 'cruel'
2 days ago
TORONTO - John Tory pledged to improve on the "cruel" Liberal approach to autism, Howard Hampton kept his cool under attack from a one-time ally and Dalton McGuinty quaffed campaign ale Friday as the Ontario election campaign entered a long-weekend sprint to the finish.
One day after Hampton angrily bellowed at reporters to stop ignoring the "real issues," the New Democrat leader was downright serene by comparison despite a stinging rebuke from an old friend-turned-foe: labour leader Buzz Hargrove.
Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, has in recent years opted to shun the traditional choice of organized labour and instead support Liberals like McGuinty and former prime minister Paul Martin.
"I'm personally supporting the Liberals because I don't think the NDP is true to its roots," Hargrove said in an interview Friday.
"It's not a left party. It's a centrist party that's trying to compete for votes in the centre of the spectrum, which I think is a mistake."
The NDP's only response came from spokesman Jeff Ferrier: "Mr. Hargrove is entitled to his opinions."
Tory, whose Progressive Conservative campaign has been battered by his controversial proposal for faith-based school funding, managed to get off a few shots against McGuinty and his government's record helping families with autistic children.
Tory accused McGuinty of promising in the last campaign to help families with autistic kids, only to turn around and fight those same families in a court battle over funding for a costly but effective treatment known as Intensive Behavioural Intervention, or IBI.
"They thought they had a champion; what they received was a champion promise-breaker," Tory said. "I consider this kind of behaviour not just unaccountable, not just irresponsible, but quite frankly, it's cruel."
The Conservatives have also slammed the Liberals for allowing the backlog of children waiting for the costly IBI treatment to grow to nearly 1,000 kids.
The Liberals call that accusation unfair, saying the wait list has grown because the government agreed to assess more children to determine if they are eligible for treatment.
McGuinty insisted that his government has nearly tripled funding for families with autism, more than doubled the number of children getting access to the treatment, and brought the therapy into public classrooms.
But for the most part, the incumbent - polls suggest he's on the cusp of forming another government - was trying to stay out of the fray, promising to ease classroom congestion in grades 4 through 8 and to give Ontario taxpayers a holiday on the third Monday each February.
As the Liberals whistle-stopped their way across southern Ontario, they stopped for a short visit to Oktoberfest celebrations in Kitchener-Waterloo, where McGuinty seemed to have victory on his mind.
"I've been looking forward to a toast of some kind, which I'm about to participate in," he said before chugging a beer in front of dozens of polka-loving revellers.
Hampton, meanwhile, spent his day hammering McGuinty on the manufacturing job losses that have been plaguing the province.
The Ontario economy added about 30,000 jobs last month, but about 11,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, for a total of 44,000 manufacturing jobs that have disappeared this year, Hampton said during a campaign event in Sarnia, Ont.
"Dalton McGuinty simply goes around the province saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I feel your pain, but there's nothing I can do,"' Hampton said.
"If our plan had been put in place three years ago I think a number of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost could have been avoided."
Not so, said Hargrove, who defended his pro-Liberal position by citing a number of high-profile Liberal investments in the auto industry, including $235 million for Ford and General Motors.
"By taking the lead he's leveraged over $7 billion in investment in the auto industry in the last three years," Hargrove said of McGuinty.
"One of the problems is (Hampton) doesn't understand what's happening in the manufacturing industry or the auto industry."
Hargrove acknowledged there are still a lot of people facing job losses in Ontario, but said a McGuinty-led Liberal government would be in a much better position to turn the tide than any government led by Hampton.
Hargrove has long directed union members to practice strategic voting - casting a ballot for whichever Liberal or NDP candidate is in a better position to win - in order to avoid a Conservative government.
McGuinty pointed out that jobs actually increased by about 30,000 overall in September in Ontario, while the unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 per cent to 6.2 per cent.
"I think it's 96 per cent of all the new, full-time jobs we've created pay $19.65 an hour or more - these are good jobs," he said.
Google Alert
The Brampton Guardian
John Tory promises $75M
http://www.northpeel.com/printArticle/35319
Progressive Conservative leader John Tory made a campaign stop in Brampton Friday, where he reiterated a pledge to invest $75 million to help autistic children.
Rolling up in a bus tattooed with slogans, Tory was greeted by several dozen PC supporters at the campaign office of Bramalea-Gore-Malton candidate Pam Hundal on Atomic Road.
Tory ripped into the Dalton McGuinty Liberals before he made his multi-million dollar pledge to "stand up for those less fortunate."
"These families of children with autism are feeling helpless and forgotten," Tory said. "But they will not be invisible and they will not be silent. I am here to say I will listen, and I will also act to give these families the meaningful supports they deserve."
As part of his visit to Brampton, Tory met with parents of children with autism.
The PC leader used the opportunity to listen to their stories and lay into the Grits for making "parents languish for years on waiting lists for autism treatments after Dalton McGuinty broke his 2003 election promise to provide them with support."
"The real test of leadership comes not only from creating new opportunities and new prosperity, but also in making sure this opportunity and prosperity is equitably shared," Tory continued. "Too many vulnerable Ontario families are left feeling invisible, betrayed and abandoned by the McGuinty government. A real leader would listen to those people, learn from these people and deliver real results."
Joyce Lang, whose 11-year-old daughter Amanda is autistic, said any monies geared to helping parents and people with autism are welcome.
"At this point $75 million is going to make a difference no matter where it goes," Lang said. "It's going to make an impact no matter where the money is going to end up."
Lang said the help her daughter receives is limited.
For instance, at age six, her daughter was taken off a government-funded support program that helps with speech.
"The average family can't do more than what insurance covers and when a family's insurance covers $500, if you have an average plan, well, it doesn't go very far," Lang told The Guardian.
Tory said the $75 million would go toward clearing the current waiting lists, provide more flexible treatment options for families, and provide more supports to educators and child support workers.
"In these last four years, many of these people have been forgotten by the McGuinty government," Tory said.
But autism wasn't the only issue Tory touched on.
The Conservative leader also used the podium to slam Liberals on the construction of Highway 410 and the issue of Peel Memorial Hospital.
"I look at just two examples of the McGuinty record in this area, and the record of the people who are presently representing the Liberal Party in Brampton, have to carry with them. And that is Peel Memorial Hospital," said Tory, flanked by Hundal, Brampton-Springdale candidate Carmen McClelland and Mark Beckles, candidate for Brampton-West. "Where have they been in terms of producing over the last four years...a plan for that hospital? They have done nothing," Tory said. "All they did was to indicate that as of now, they are going to appoint some sort of a task force when the move is taking place. And when you see somebody waiting to the last minute to appoint a task force like that, on a local issue so important to the people of Brampton, you know there is some kind of hidden agenda. You know they are not serious about keeping that hospital open. We know that's wrong and we don't accept that kind of hidden agenda."
With regards to Highway 410 Tory said there is some pavement laid down but it's not really ready for anything "except for a pre-election stunt."
Tory was scheduled to travel to Guelph Friday afternoon where his staff said he would talk about vulnerable seniors and low-income families."
pcriscione@bramptonguardian.com
Sun
October 6, 2007
Preem called 'cruel' by Tory
By CHIP MARTIN AND ANTONELLA ARTUSO, SUN MEDIA
BRAMALEA -- Premier Dalton McGuinty was "cruel" to break his promise to help Ontario's autistic children and their families, Progressive Conservative leader John Tory charged yesterday.
"They thought they had a champion -- what they got was a champion promise-breaker," said Tory, who said he would spend $75 million to clear the backlog of autistic children waiting for one-on-one treatment and $5 million to provide help for their parents.
Tory said McGuinty promised to help autistic kids during the 2003 election campaign, when the waiting list for treatment was 89. Now it numbers more than 1,000.
"I don't know how Mr. McGuinty lives with himself when he calls that progress," Tory told supporters after meeting with parents of autistic children.
'MOST VULNERABLE KIDS'
"It's cruel behaviour to go back on your word ... then go and fight these people in court. He created needless suffering for these most vulnerable kids and their families."
Among the parents Tory met were Neil and Elana Meirovich, a Richmond Hill couple whose son, Jerry, 7, has autism -- treatment for which has forced the family into more than $150,000 debt. Neil Meirovich said that was for treatment McGuinty had promised would be covered.
Tory noted McGuinty not only failed to live up to his promise but spent millions in court to fight parents who tried to make him deliver on his promise.
In Markham yesterday, McGuinty said he's pleased Ontario's economy generated 30,000 net new jobs last month, but a closer look shows those additional jobs are in the public sector. StatsCan said the growth in private sector employees in September was 0% in Ontario.
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Globe
PC's core voters on side, Tory says
KAREN HOWLETT AND PAUL WALDIE
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
October 6, 2007 at 12:55 AM EDT
GUELPH, ONT. KITCHENER, ONT. — John Tory enters the final days of the Ontario campaign with the belief he has won back his core supporters after his decision to put his religious school policy to a free vote and is using the final stretch of his campaign to reach out to progressive voters.
Mr. Tory told reporters Friday he is confident he can win over more supporters during the Thanksgiving weekend by getting them to think about the prospect of another four years under the Liberals, and what he says is Dalton McGuinty's inability to solve social problems.
As voters prepare for Wednesday's election, the Liberals were handed good news on the economic front with better than expected employment figures showing Ontario created nearly 30,000 new jobs in September and the provincial unemployment rate fell two percentage points to 6.2 per cent. While the unemployment rate was slightly above the 5.9 per cent national average, the job-creation number led the country by far.
Campaigning in Guelph Friday, Mr. Tory said he regrets that many of the issues he has tried to focus on during the campaign have been drowned out by his plan to extend public funding to all religious schools. “We haven't had an opportunity until recently to discuss these very real concerns.”
He criticized the Liberals for failing to fix the doctor shortage and challenged families gathering around the table for turkey dinner to reflect upon why so many children with autism are on waiting lists for treatment.
During a luncheon speech, Mr. Tory's key message was that broken promises by political leaders have consequences. The speech capped a week in which the Conservative Leader has focused on the plight of the less fortunate.
“With each passing day, more and more of our most vulnerable fall through the cracks,” he said.
Party officials said Mr. Tory will spend the last days campaigning in Don Valley-West, the riding where he is running, and also in the Greater Toronto Area.
“We're going to be pushing forward hard on issues that are finally becoming part of the campaign, belatedly, but it's not too late,” Conservative Party spokeswoman Ingrid Thompson said.
Mr. Tory also talked about the night two years ago that he spent sleeping in a residence in Flemingdon Park, a housing development in Toronto. He said he was awakened in the middle of the night by cockroaches crawling across his chest.
“That kind of housing development is a source of shame and embarrassment,” he said.
But the audience applauded during the 25-minute speech only when Mr. Tory talked about a meat-and-potato issue for traditional Conservatives – the millions of dollars the Liberals rushed out the door in year-end grants with no rules and procedures.
“I think he is setting out that the PC Party of Ontario is a moderate, centralist party that's not to be feared,” said Tim Woolstencroft, managing partner of the Strategic Counsel, a Toronto polling firm.
Mr. McGuinty largely ignored the jibes from Mr. Tory and stuck to a low-key campaign pace, stopping at just three events, commenting as he went on the job figures.
“We're at a point now where nearly 400,000 net new jobs have been generated during the course of the past four years,” he said.
He also easily deflected difficult questions about the loss of manufacturing jobs, down 11,000 in September, by citing his government's job creation strategy and claiming that the vast majority of new jobs created pay $19.50 an hour.
“Remember we are in a transitional phase when it comes to manufacturing,” he said. “We're going to ensure that we create the kinds of strengths in our manufacturing sector that demand good jobs.”
Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at the Bank of Montreal, said the job growth in Ontario has been something of a surprise. He said Toronto's unemployment rate used to be as high as Montreal's and St. John's, but that is no longer the case.
He noted that while manufacturing jobs have disappeared, thousands of jobs have been created in the service sector. For example, in the past year while employment in manufacturing fell by 60 per cent, the number of jobs in the education field jumped 58 per cent.
New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton said the Liberal government has offered excuses but no plans for Ontario's struggling manufacturing industry. Buzz Hargrove, the president of the Canadian Auto Workers, and once a staunch supporter of the New Democrats, said: “I'm personally supporting the Liberals because I don't think the NDP is true to its roots.”
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Star
NDP CAMPAIGN
Seats `in play,' a confident Hampton says
Leader says party's own polls show many Liberals, Progressive Conservatives not solidly committed
Oct 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Richard Brennan
STAFF REPORTER
NDP Leader Howard Hampton says voters are only now waking up to the fact there is a provincial election next week and that he's "absolutely" not about to throw in the towel.
"Virtually every seat across the North (11) is in play and every seat in Hamilton (three) is in play. There are at least five seats in Toronto for us that are in play, as well as Windsor, Sarnia and London," Hampton told the Toronto Star.
An Ipsos-Reid poll released yesterday shows a majority government for the Liberals with 43 per cent support, the Progressive Conservatives with 32 per cent, the NDP at about 18 per cent, and the Green Party at 6 per cent.
Even so, Hampton, who is fighting his third election as party leader, says the situation is still fluid given the poor showing of Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.
Hampton said the NDP's own polling is showing many Liberals and Progressive Conservatives are not solidly committed.
"They are people who don't want to vote for McGuinty. They don't trust him, they don't believe him and they can be swayed to go elsewhere. And there are people who are ordinarily Conservatives, but Tory has frustrated them so much with this faith-based school funding issue."
Hampton said that if the chips fall his way, the NDP, which held 10 seats at dissolution, could clinch far more than 15 seats, including the two the Liberals hold in Windsor.
"Windsor has taken a hit of 30,000 jobs," he said.
Last night Hampton, joined by federal NDP Leader Jack Layton, spoke to more than 1,000 people at the International Muslims Organization in Rexdale – the NDP's largest crowd to date.
Earlier in Sarnia yesterday, Hampton told supporters that with four days of campaigning left, people are just starting to get their heads around picking sides.
"I don't think people have had a chance so far during this election to actually think about all the broken promises of Dalton McGuinty," he said. "Next Wednesday, the people of Ontario will have an opportunity to pass judgment on Dalton McGuinty and his legacy of broken promises."
In a twist, 24 hours after chewing out the media for not covering his issues, Hampton acknowledged he's too busy to pay attention to what they say about his campaign.
"To tell you the truth, I never see the media coverage," he said. "I have things to prepare, I have kids to get to bed, I have work to do."
The NDP has made six commitments for this election campaign.
Provide a health tax rebate of up to $450 per person and $900 per two-income family.
Immediately raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour from $8 and roll back the MPPs' pay increase.
Roll back college and university tuition fees to 2003 levels and eliminate apprenticeship "classroom" fees.
Make sure all children get the classroom resources they need – including children with autism and special needs.
Reduce hospital waits by expanding and improving home care and long-term care.
Establish a Right-to-Know law so families know what toxins are in our food, air, ground, and water.
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TheRecord.com
Should we re-elect Dalton McGuinty?
Yes! Premier has shown genuine leadership
GARY BORATTO
Society needs leaders, and expects people to put themselves forward for such tasks. Once upon my childhood, people talked about being called into a profession, and while the term may now seem a tad arcane I still find it a helpful sentiment, reminding me that leadership comes with grave responsibility. It is not to be taken lightly.
Given that, it troubles me that we seem so ambivalent about leadership, as if we always expect the worst. When Dalton McGuinty is attacked for breaking campaign promises, we are as likely to break into a yawn as to be surprised. Yet, what does it mean that such incumbents are sitting ducks, and that it will always be easier to point out their faults than it is to undertake the difficult tasks of finding compromises between the many needs within our province and its budget.
We tend to forget that while McGuinty made promises about no new taxes, no private public hospitals, care for the families of autistic children and an end to coal-fired generators, Ernie Eves and the incumbent Tories were claiming a balanced budget. So, while McGuinty did not keep his promises, Eves could not have met his promises either, and he left the Liberal government that followed his in an almost untenable financial situation. The Liberals found themselves backtracking in earnest.
For all that, McGuinty did not just twiddle his thumbs for four years, but did govern the province. I do not believe we should judge solely on the basis of what was promised and not done, but on the basis of what was actually accomplished. When that's done, giving the premier a second chance does not look so out of line. (Although it would not have done irreparable damage to the budget to help out the families of the autistic.)
In any case, we should recall that no law is enacted by the whim of a political party, by fiat of its leaders or even (save for the present referendum) by a vote of the electorate. Our government follows a process wherein our elected representatives consider proposed legislation and decide on the basis of information and debate. Campaigns are, in reality, about choosing who will govern, yet by making elaborate election promises, political parties habitually seek to treat elections like referendums on budget proposals or like bribes to special interest groups.
It is a wrong-headed but persistent error, and we fall for it. It makes the things of governments appear to be a simplistic process of making easy choices, when it is truly not so.
We too often forget that promises come not only with a price but with social and political consequences that require sober reflection. Our political leaders do not have magic wands. To tell the truth I have never seen an unlikelier batch of candidates for fairy godmother.
It would be better if the political parties would each clearly present their vision for the resolution of the issues presently facing Ontario and the principles, priorities and understandings needed for developing legislation which would most clearly meet the needs and aspirations of our people. Making promises without considering the financial realities or the will of the people is counterproductive.
Progressive Conservative lead John Tory discovered that is so when he proposed funding for sectarian schools, then had to back-track even before the election. Clearly the issue of funding for all religious schools needs to addressed, and a wise political party would seek some way of resolving this thorny issue, not for political gain but for the health and growth of Ontario as a multicultural reality without special privilege for some.
In any case, what I want to hear are not promises from the social agenda of special interests groups at the expense of others, but clear policies about holistic priority- setting surrounding the greatest needs of our province and its most vulnerable people, including the families of those with autism. A political party that is willing to commit to clear and open priority- setting deserves a chance to govern.
As for the public, we also have a calling, to vote following our informed conscience.
Gary Boratto is a minister with the United Church.
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Star
`Broken promises' take toll, Tory says
Criticizes McGuinty over his 2003 election pledge to give autistic kids support, treatment
Oct 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Robert Benzie
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU CHIEF
Neil Meirovich voted Liberal in 2003 solely because of Dalton McGuinty's promise to improve funding for autism.
Not this time.
Meirovich, father of an autistic child, said yesterday he is voting for the Progressive Conservatives because he feels "betrayed big time" by the Liberals.
His voice cracking with emotion, the Richmond Hill photographer said getting adequate care for his 7-year-old son Jerry has been frustrating and exhausting.
He and his wife, Elana, a high school chemistry teacher, have spent about $180,000 – depleting savings and forcing them to borrow from friends and family – to get Jerry the intensive behaviour intervention (IBI) therapy that is helping him.
After almost three years of paying the full cost of his treatment themselves, the government covered 60 per cent before extending that to 100 per cent a few months ago.
Despite the reprieve, Meirovich said he is still disappointed the family "had to fight for that."
"I'm not pushing for my son, I'm doing it for province-wide. I've attended numerous rallies. I have enough to deal with with my son, I don't need to be attending rallies to get what my son needs," he said.
"This time I will be voting PC, last time I voted Liberal because I figured he was there to help."
Pointing to the plight of the Meirovich family and other parents of autistic children, Conservative Leader John Tory told 125 supporters in Bramalea that there is a human toll to McGuinty's "broken promises."
Tory repeated his commitment to invest $75 million for autism treatment in the province.
During the 2003 election campaign, McGuinty pledged in writing that he would give autistic children the "support and treatment they needed."
But upon taking office, he continued a legal fight that dated back to the previous Tory government of Mike Harris.
The province eventually spent $2.4 million battling parents of autistic children who sued the government over its refusal to fund IBI for children older than age 6.
"Right now the parents of more than 1,000 children under the age of 6 with autism are feeling like they've been abandoned on an island as their kids sit on these growing waiting lists," Tory said in Bramalea.
"The waiting list consisted of 89 kids when Dalton McGuinty came to office in 2003. Today it is 1,000, so that's what's happened on his watch."
McGuinty countered that his government has tripled the funding for autism services from $42 million to $140 million, expanded training spaces for therapists and paid for summer camps.
"Let's talk about how far we've come. You'll remember under the NDP there was zero funding for autistic kids – zero. You'll remember that we've tripled the funding that was there under the Conservatives," McGuinty told reporters during a campaign stop at Lincoln Alexander Public School in Markham.
While there are about 1,000 children on the waiting list for IBI that can cost $50,000 a year per child, there are 1,200 kids currently receiving the therapy, up from 550 when the Conservatives were in power.
The Liberals also note the waiting list is longer because children are being assessed for treatment, whereas they were kept on waiting lists for assessment in the previous Conservative government.
Still, Tory insisted that's not good enough.
"I don't know how Mr. McGuinty lives with himself in trying to describe that as progress, because we all know that it's not," he said.
"I consider this kind of behaviour not just unaccountable, not just irresponsible, but quite frankly it's cruel. It's cruel behaviour to go back on your word."
– With files From Kerry Gillespie
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Globe
McGuinty Makes No Promises for Autistic Children
Maria Babbage
Canadian Press
October 5, 2007 at 9:22 PM EDT
MARKHAM, ONT. — Though "more work needs to be done" on their behalf, Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty wouldn't commit Friday to clearing a long waiting list of children awaiting an expensive autism treatment, drawing fire from opposition parties eager to lure support away from the front-running Liberals.
Mr. McGuinty, who pledged to spend more money on middle-grade students, wouldn't expand on his comments except to say the Liberals have done more for autistic children than have previous NDP or Progressive Conservative governments.
"I can only imagine the nature of the challenge for parents who are absolutely devoted to their kids and want to make sure they get all the opportunities that they need," Mr. McGuinty said at a school in Markham, north of Toronto.
"I think we have made some real progress and, of course, there's still more work to be done."
The Conservatives, whom polls suggest are lagging behind the incumbent Liberals in the final days before the Oct. 10 vote, pounced on Mr. McGuinty's remarks, calling him "cruel" for breaking a promise to help autistic children.
Opposition parties say the backlog of children waiting for the costly but effective one-on-one treatment — known as Intensive Behavioural Intervention, or IBI — has grown to nearly 1,000 kids under the Liberal government.
The Liberals call that accusation unfair, saying the wait list has grown because the government agreed to assess more children to determine if they are eligible for treatment.
Both the NDP and Conservatives have vowed to clear the wait list if they are elected. Mr. McGuinty wouldn't go that far, but did say his government has nearly tripled spending on autism, doubled the number of children getting access to treatment and provided funding for classroom therapy.
The province also spent $2.4 million on a seven-year court battle, started by the former Conservative government, with the parents of autistic children — many of whom say they're struggling to cope with medical bills that can easily exceed a year's salary.
More recently, the party came under fire from the Ontario Autistic Coalition, which says the Liberals have failed to adequately respond to questions about whether they'll take the children off the waiting list.
Mr. McGuinty, whose re-election efforts have so far remained largely free of the controversy that has plagued the Conservatives over their pledge to extend funding to faith-based schools, has been running a low-key campaign of late.
And while he hasn't openly speculated on the outcome, victory didn't seem to be far from Mr. McGuinty's thoughts during a brief appearance at an Oktoberfest party in Kitchener to announce a proposed new statutory holiday, called Family Day, that would fall annually on the third Monday of February, or Feb. 18 in 2008.
"I've been looking forward to a toast of some kind, which I'm about to participate in," Mr. McGuinty said before chugging beer in front of dozens of polka-loving revellers.
Earlier in the day, Mr. McGuinty unveiled a new plank in his education platform, saying a Liberal government would spend up to $150 million a year to reduce class sizes in grades 4 through 8, provide more individual attention in areas like the arts, and help students make the transition to high school.
He also touted new statistics indicating Ontario produced 30,000 new full-time jobs last month. However, the province's job growth for the first nine months of this year — 1.2 per cent — was still well below the national average.
Mr. McGuinty acknowledged that Ontario's manufacturing sector, hit hard by the soaring Canadian dollar, continues to be "challenged." But the Liberals are the only party that can bring labour and business to the table, he added.
"We're in a transitional phase when it comes to manufacturing," Mr. McGuinty said. "We're going to ensure that we create the kinds of strengths in our manufacturing sector that demand good jobs, and that's why we continue to invest in our kids."
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Canada.com
John Tory repeats call for more funding for autism treatment
Craig Pearson , CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, October 05, 2007
BRAMALEA, Ont. -- Calling Premier Dalton McGuinty "cruel" for his treatment of families with autistic children, Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory repeated his call Friday to provide more funding for autism treatment.
"These families of children with autism are feeling helpless and forgotten," Tory said at a campaign stop in a crowded office of a PC candidate in Bramalea, just west of Toronto. "But they will not be invisible and they will not be silent. I am here to say I will listen, and I will also act to give these families the meaningful supports they deserve."
Tory repeated his commitment to invest $75 million to clear what he says is a rapidly growing waiting list for autism treatment in the province.
"The waiting list consisted of 89 kids when Dalton McGuinty came to office in 2003," Tory said. "Today it's 1,000."
Tory noted that McGuinty wrote a letter during the last election promising help for autism treatment, but that the Liberal government later ended up going to court against some claims from families of children with autism.
"I don't know how Mr. McGuinty can live with himself," Tory said, continuing his stinging attacks on the premier as the election winds down with the Liberals leading in the polls. "It's cruel behaviour to go back on your word, make people have a hope that you would help, and then turn around and fight those people in court and spend the taxpayers money that's needed for children."
The Liberals say Tory has "selective memory" on the issue, and claim they have invested $140 million more in autism research and that 1,400 more autistic children in the province are receiving IBI therapy than under the previous government.
With five days to go in the election, Tory planned another jam-packed day campaigning against the health tax and the doctor shortage in Liberal-held ridings in southwestern Ontario and the greater Toronto area.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Globe
Tory critical of Liberals' treatment of autistic children
COLIN PERKEL
The Canadian Press
October 5, 2007 at 9:14 PM EDT
BRAMALEA, Ont. — Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty broke a promise he made during the last campaign to help autistic children and instead treated them with cruelty, Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory charged Friday.
At three campaign stops, Mr. Tory noted the Liberal government spent millions of dollars fighting parents in court to restrict funding for their children.
"They thought they had a champion; what they received was a champion promise-breaker," Mr. Tory said.
"I consider this kind of behaviour not just unaccountable, not just irresponsible, but quite frankly, it's cruel."
Ontario PC Leader John Tory chats with a young supporter at a campaign event in Brampton Friday. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn)
At the heart of the issue was the extension of funding for expensive autism therapy, known as Intensive Behavioural Intervention, for children who suffer from the poorly understood mental and social disorder.
The province and parents ended up at legal loggerheads because funding was cut off at age six.
Senior Liberals, indignant at the accusation of cruelty, quickly shot back that it was the previous Conservative government that initiated the legal action — on a policy issue — and Mr. McGuinty lifted the cap even though the government won the suit.
Campaigning in Markham, Mr. McGuinty acknowledged more could be done to help autistic children, but he wouldn't commit to clearing a waiting list for treatment.
"I think we have made some real progress and, of course, there's still more work to be done," he said.
Advocates say the backlog has grown to close to 1,000 children under the Liberal government.
However, the Liberals say they've nearly tripled spending on autism and more than doubled the number of children getting access to the treatment.
They also say the only reason the wait list has grown is because more children are being assessed and diagnosed with the disorder.
They say the previous Conservative government simply left the children off assessment lists.
Heather LeGrow, the mother of a 10-year-old autistic boy, told Mr. Tory she voted for the Liberals in the last election on the strength of Mr. McGuinty's promise to help autistic children.
Instead, her son found his funding cut off, she said.
"I'm already disgusted at the McGuinty government," Ms. LeGrow said, clutching a letter from the premier she said took a year to arrive and promised help that never came.
"I just don't want to have my heart broken by the Tories."
At a campaign rally in London, Mr. Tory brushed off polls showing his party still badly trailing with just days to go in the election campaign.
"Any time a poll is being taken, there's not an election being held on that day," Mr. Tory said.
During his stump speech to about 200 supporters, many of whom sat stoney-faced, Mr. Tory accused Mr. McGuinty of being out of touch, complacent and arrogant.
He again accused Mr. McGuinty of going from "incompetence to cruelty" on the autism issue.
If elected, Mr. Tory promised to spend another $75 million to get autistic kids the help they need.
He also pledged a further $5 million so parents can get some relief from caring for their autistic children.
"Right now, the parents of more than 1,000 children under the age of six with autism are feeling like they have been abandoned on an island as their kids languish on a growing waiting list," Mr. Tory said.
The NDP is promising public funding for the therapy in classrooms for all autistic children, something the Liberals say is not sustainable.
"I think it's clear how many times Dalton McGuinty has broken his promise to children with autism," said NDP Leader Howard Hampton.
"He continues to let them down. The waiting list has skyrocketed."
Mr. Hampton credited Mr. Tory with recognizing the wait list is a serious problem, but said the Conservative leader hasn't committed enough money to eliminate it entirely.
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Canadian Press
Hampton cool under fire from one-time ally; Tory calls McGuinty ’cruel’
By Allison Jones, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Friday, October 5, 2007
TORONTO - John Tory pledged to improve on the "cruel" Liberal approach to autism, Howard Hampton kept his cool under attack from a one-time ally and Dalton McGuinty quaffed campaign ale Friday as the Ontario election campaign entered a long-weekend sprint to the finish.
One day after Hampton angrily bellowed at reporters to stop ignoring the "real issues," the New Democrat leader was downright serene by comparison despite a stinging rebuke from an old friend-turned-foe: labour leader Buzz Hargrove.
Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, has in recent years opted to shun the traditional choice of organized labour and instead support Liberals like McGuinty and former prime minister Paul Martin.
"I’m personally supporting the Liberals because I don’t think the NDP is true to its roots," Hargrove said in an interview Friday.
"It’s not a left party. It’s a centrist party that’s trying to compete for votes in the centre of the spectrum, which I think is a mistake."
The NDP’s only response came from spokesman Jeff Ferrier: "Mr. Hargrove is entitled to his opinions."
Tory, whose Progressive Conservative campaign has been battered by his controversial proposal for faith-based school funding, managed to get off a few shots against McGuinty and his government’s record helping families with autistic children.
Tory accused McGuinty of promising in the last campaign to help families with autistic kids, only to turn around and fight those same families in a court battle over funding for a costly but effective treatment known as Intensive Behavioural Intervention, or IBI.
"They thought they had a champion; what they received was a champion promise-breaker," Tory said. "I consider this kind of behaviour not just unaccountable, not just irresponsible, but quite frankly, it’s cruel."
The Conservatives have also slammed the Liberals for allowing the backlog of children waiting for the costly IBI treatment to grow to nearly 1,000 kids.
The Liberals call that accusation unfair, saying the wait list has grown because the government agreed to assess more children to determine if they are eligible for treatment.
McGuinty insisted that his government has nearly tripled funding for families with autism, more than doubled the number of children getting access to the treatment, and brought the therapy into public classrooms.
But for the most part, the incumbent - polls suggest he’s on the cusp of forming another government - was trying to stay out of the fray, promising to ease classroom congestion in grades 4 through 8 and to give Ontario taxpayers a holiday on the third Monday each February.
As the Liberals whistle-stopped their way across southern Ontario, they stopped for a short visit to Oktoberfest celebrations in Kitchener-Waterloo, where McGuinty seemed to have victory on his mind.
"I’ve been looking forward to a toast of some kind, which I’m about to participate in," he said before chugging a beer in front of dozens of polka-loving revellers.
Hampton, meanwhile, spent his day hammering McGuinty on the manufacturing job losses that have been plaguing the province.
The Ontario economy added about 30,000 jobs last month, but about 11,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, for a total of 44,000 manufacturing jobs that have disappeared this year, Hampton said during a campaign event in Sarnia, Ont.
"Dalton McGuinty simply goes around the province saying, ’I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I feel your pain, but there’s nothing I can do,"’ Hampton said.
"If our plan had been put in place three years ago I think a number of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost could have been avoided."
Not so, said Hargrove, who defended his pro-Liberal position by citing a number of high-profile Liberal investments in the auto industry, including $235 million for Ford and General Motors.
"By taking the lead he’s leveraged over $7 billion in investment in the auto industry in the last three years," Hargrove said of McGuinty.
"One of the problems is (Hampton) doesn’t understand what’s happening in the manufacturing industry or the auto industry."
Hargrove acknowledged there are still a lot of people facing job losses in Ontario, but said a McGuinty-led Liberal government would be in a much better position to turn the tide than any government led by Hampton.
Hargrove has long directed union members to practice strategic voting - casting a ballot for whichever Liberal or NDP candidate is in a better position to win - in order to avoid a Conservative government.
McGuinty pointed out that jobs actually increased by about 30,000 overall in September in Ontario, while the unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 per cent to 6.2 per cent.
"I think it’s 96 per cent of all the new, full-time jobs we’ve created pay $19.65 an hour or more - these are good jobs," he said.
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Star
Premier defends his autism stance
Oct 05, 2007 03:28 PM
MARKHAM–Premier Dalton McGuinty says more should be done to help autistic children, but won't commit to clearing a waiting list for treatment.
Speaking at an elementary school north of Toronto, McGuinty acknowledged "more work needs to be done," but wouldn't expand on his comments.
Opposition parties say the backlog of children waiting for the one-on-one treatment – known as intensive behavioural intervention, or IBI – has grown significantly under the Liberal government.
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CityNews
Who's Getting Your Vote?
Thursday October 4, 2007
CityNews.ca Staff
Still haven't decided who you want to vote for on October 11? Here's a recap of some of the key issues Ontario's party leaders have addressed in the election campaign.
Education
Liberals - provide more funding for public school system
Conservatives - improve existing public school system; hold free vote on expanding public education system to include non-Catholic faith based schools
NDP - provide resources needed for children with autism
Green - end funding for religious schools in Ontario
Economy
Liberals - expand Next Generation job funding
Conservatives - eliminate health tax
NDP - raise minimum wage to $10/hour
Green - Reduce personal taxes by $3.5 billion; phase out Ontario Health Premium Tax
Health Care
Liberals - give more power to patients; retain health care premium
Conservatives - address doctor shortage; eliminate health care premium over four years
NDP - provide health tax rebate of up to $450 per person and $900 per two-income family; lower health care premium for low-income families
Green Party - provide families with low incomes an additional health care allowance of $1,000 per person
Environment
Liberals - create tough new toxic reduction law that requires companies that emit toxic pollution to reduce their emissions over time
Conservatives - implement an integrated waste-management strategy in Ontario
NDP - establish "Right To Know" law that ensures families know what toxins and other hazardous materials are being used in Ontario's food, ground, air and water
Green - allocate $55 million to environmental issues
Social
Liberals - create an International Ontario Strategy to attract skilled people from around the world
Conservatives - hire new crown attorneys, crack down on bail and sentencing deals and double resources of squad that tracks down repeat offenders
NDP - unlock $1 billion to fix rundown social housing
Green - provide $300 million annually to provide non-profit, quality childcare across Ontario
To read each party's full platform, click on the following links:
Liberals
Conservatives
NDP
Green Party
Tory calls for more funding for autism
By Craig Pearson and Lee Greenberg
LONDON — Ontario PC leader John Tory repeated his charge Friday night that Dalton McGuinty is “cruel” for his treatment of families with autistic children and said the premier deserves to be fired for that alone.
“Dalton McGuinty broke his word, to yet another group, the parents of these children with autism,” Tory said at a rally in London. “He went from incompetence to cruelty, when he fought parents in court using their own money, where all they were trying to do was get him to keep his word.”
Tory noted that McGuinty wrote a letter during the last election promising help for autism treatment, but once in power the Liberal government ended up going to court against some claims from families of children with autism.
“I don’t know how Mr. McGuinty can live with himself,” Tory said at an earlier campaign stop in Bramalea. “It’s cruel behaviour to go back on your word, make people have a hope that you would help, and then turn around and fight those people in court and spend the taxpayers money that’s needed for children.”
Tory repeated his commitment to invest $75 million to clear what he says is a rapidly growing waiting list for autism treatment in the province.
“The waiting list consisted of 89 kids when Dalton McGuinty came to office in 2003,” Tory said. “Today it’s 1,000.”
At a campaign stop in Markham, McGuinty would not commit to clearing the waiting lists for children seeking specialized autism treatment at schools.
Asked several times about it, McGuinty would only say: “There’s more work to be done.”
McGuinty endured backlash for what parents said was a broken promise to lift the age six cap for Intensive Behavioral Intervention (IBI) treatment. The Liberals subsequently reneged by lifting the cap.
Both the Conservative and NDP platforms pledge an end to those waiting lists through funding the treatment at an estimated cost of $40,000 per year.
Liberal officials yesterday touted their progress on the file, pointing to a
nearly $100 million increase in annual funding for the treatment over four
years.
“For the first time ever we’re bringing funding into our schools to provide IBI therapy,” Mr. McGuinty said. “I can only imagine the nature of the challenge for parents who are absolutely devoted to their kids and want to make sure they get all the opportunities they need. I think we’ve made some real progress and of course there’s still more work to be done.”
Published Friday, October 05, 2007 5:24 PM by Suzanne2552
Filed under: News, Liberal, PC
Comments
karol karolak said:
==="Queen's Park" political farce.=== Episode one===
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty holds a meeting with his closest advisors; George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman, Kathleen "raging lesbian" Wynne, Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant and Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni.
Subject of the meeting: Creation of 500 million dollars Liberano Gang slush fund.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: As you all know I have been discussing with our Prime Minister the Right Honourable Paul Martin Jr. issue of fiscal imbalance. He was very frank with me he said that yes it is true that Ontario is getting short-changed in provincial transfer payments but since he runs a minority government he is unable to push thru Parliament any changes to transfer formula as it would be an act of political suicide for his government. PM advised me in confidence that we have to find a bullet-proof cause, than advertise the issue. We also have to create a crisis by making bullet-proof cause as bad as possible by cutting funding and creating roadblocks to resolution. Once we have all these conditions we will secretly set up a group of trusted people affected by this crisis and help them to start a legal action against provincial government. Once we lose case filed against us in Ontario Courts we will be in a position to turn to federal government and provide our PM with justification for one time extraordinary transfer payment to Ontario provincial government. What Paul Martin basically said, is that we have to “force his hand” in order for him to give us extra money.
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni; Dalton, I have a brilliant idea. How about autistic children?? This is just perfect cause as it involves children and what makes it so good is the fact that there is no known cause and there is no proven treatment. We could get all that money, spend it on something else and nobody is going to able to hold us accountable for lack of positive outcome.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: This is brilliant Marie, do you know anybody we trust that has an autistic child???
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni; Dalton do you remember the fact that I am a psychologist??? I can diagnose any kid as autistic and if that does not work we could always ask George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman to talk to psychiatrists at CAMH or George Hull Centre and they can put any kid on psycho-drugs cocktail that will definitely make him autistic for life.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: This is brilliant Marie, Michael do you know any lawyers and judges that we could trust??
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, are you pulling my leg?? We have all lawyers and all judges in this province in our pocket.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, I know that, but this is not what I was asking. Do you know any lawyers smart enough to keep all that BS to themselves, you know, lawyers that we have some dirt on them so we can keep in line thru blackmail???
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, I knew what you meant the first time you asked me. We have dirt on all lawyers in this province. If you insist I could look up a lawyer that killed someone or a lawyer that is serial child molester. Finding a lawyer that sits in our pocket is not an issue.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, what about a Judge???
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, it is even easier with the judge as most of them are sexual deviants on government payroll.
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman: Dalton, how much money are we talking here???
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: George, PM was mentioning 500 million dollars.
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, you must be kidding, nobody can sue us for 500 million dollars; no kid is worth this kind of money.
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni; Dalton, Michael is right it would have to be many kids.
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, it would have to be a class action lawsuit.
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman; Michael, I have a friend who was helping us sue the government on the issue of same sex marriages. Michael, we owe him so much, can you put him in charge of that class action lawsuit??
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: George consider it done. Where are we going to stash all that money so we will never have to account for them???
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni: Dalton, how about using all that money to create Autism Treatment Fund to be administered by Children’s Aid Societies??? They are charitable organisations completely outside of Ombudsman Ontario scrutiny they are financed by Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, and run by people loyal to Liberal Party. Michael can easily keep them in check as all of them are in this baby snatching and baby selling, I mean children trafficking business.
Kathleen "raging lesbian" Wynne: Dalton, this is not going to wash, nobody can sue government over budgetary decisions.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Kathleen since when you become a legal expert? I am a lawyer myself and I can tell you that I have personally organised better stunts than this in Ontario Courts and nobody blinked.
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman: Kathleen, Dalton is right. Do you remember first in the World lesbian divorce??
Kathleen "raging lesbian" Wynne: George, I am so disappointed in you, I never bring up your homosexuality, and you keep on bringing up my sexual orientation into every discussion.
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman: Kathleen, you are over sensitive about your lesbianism. When I have mentioned that lesbian divorce it was because these two lesbians lived together for less than a week after their "marriage".
Kathleen "raging lesbian" Wynne: George, so what is your point??What does it prove??
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman: Kathleen, you do not seem to have a clue. This whole lesbian marriage was a sham, and it should have been nullified. If it were heterosexual marriage, judge would have thrown both parties out of his court.
Kathleen "raging lesbian" Wynne: OK George, I got your point, you do not have to rub it in. Dalton, what about all these religious types that send their kids to religious schools in Ontario??? Dalton there are over 50000 kids that attend religious schools, and these schools do not get any funding from us despite the fact that parents pay taxes that suppose to fund their kid's education. If we go ahead with this we might be opening floodgates of lawsuits.
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Kathleen shut up, you have no clue how it really works in Ontario Courts. Nothing gets filed without our permission. How do you think we could possibly govern this province if people on the street were allowed to just walk into Court and sue people working for us???
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Thank you George and Michael for helping me out with Kathleen's objections. I guess we have the plan, so lets go ahead and do it. You Michael, will take care of the judge and George will talk to his homosexual lawyer friend who is going to organize autistic children's parents and file a class action lawsuit against us. Marie will create autistic treatment crisis, she will talk to Children Aid Societies and change funding formula for autistic kids they have in their custody to make it very attractive for them to apprehend and keep these kids.
==="Queen's Park" political farce.=== Episode two===
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty holds a meeting with his closest advisors; George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman, Kathleen "raging lesbian" Wynne, Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant and Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni.
Subject of the meeting: Folding of 500 million dollars Liberano Gang slush fund.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: As you all know, Conservative Party of Canada is now in charge in Ottawa. I have finally been able to meet with our new Prime Minister the Right Honourable Stephen Harper and we have been discussing issue of fiscal imbalance. He was very frank with me he said that yes it is true that Ontario is getting short-changed in provincial transfer payments but since he runs a minority government he is unable to push thru Parliament any changes to transfer formula as it would be an act of political suicide for his government. I have mentioned to PM about the agreement we had with previous PM Paul Martin Jr. about this autistic children lawsuit and our plan for a slush fund. PM Harper advised me in confidence that we have screwed ourselves as there is no way that feds will cough up any money in case we lose autistic children lawsuit in Ontario courts. Michael, how do we stand on that issue???
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, last time we talked about this project you wanted parents to win in Court. I had to twist this judge's arm to make him decide in parents favour. Judges are scared to rule against government unless it is on some nonsense like same sex marriage issue that does not involve any real money.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, you did what I asked you to do so I cannot blame you for it. Can it be undone???
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton sure it can be undone, all it takes is one phone call to Roy at Osgoode Hall.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael how long will it take to get it all undone????
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, it will take at least couple of months. We will have to file a notice of appeal and prepare all the usual BS paperwork.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, how much money have we spent on this project so far???
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, I do not know. We never track money on projects like that. I could guess it was couple of millions.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, did you hire people from outside of your Ministry to work on that project??? Can you hide all these expenses and have all these people submit new invoices billing for some other work???
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, sure we could do that, but why??? Are you scared???
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, you know that these NDP types are sniffing around looking for some dirt on us. This woman Shelly Martell was already asking at Queen's Park the other day what is going on with autistic children lawsuit, and when are we going to pay for treatment. When we quash this lawsuit there will be even more questions we will have to answer.
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni: Dalton, there will be an uproar over this. I have given instructions to CAS in Ontario to refuse to offer any treatment to autistic children unless parents sign over custody of their child to CAS. I am already getting lots of flack over that policy. Currently we pay CAS $211.00 dollars a day for every autistic child they take into their custody. They just love to make this kind of money but if we do not get that money from Ottawa who will continue to pay CAS???
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Kathleen what about some BS policy that autistic kids will get their treatment at public schools???
Kathleen "raging lesbian" Wynne: What about funding for teachers that will take these kids on.
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni: Dalton, what about these parents that are suing us?? Who pays their legal bills??? If they lose in Court of Appeals they will get stuck with all the legal bills.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, Marie raised good point, can you bribe all these people in case they lose so they stay quiet??? George, could talk to shrinks at CAMH and find out if there are any drugs that can be given to these kids so their autism goes away??
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, I will se what I can do.
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman: Dalton, I spoke to shrinks at CAMH. There are no drugs to treat that mental condition. If you want this problem to go away the only thing they were suggesting is Zyprexa pump and dump treatment to induce suicides in these kids. Once autistic kids kill themselves in great numbers your problems will go away.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: George, is this Zyprexa pump and dump treatment effective???
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman: Dalton, from what I have heard from all the shrinks that I spoke to it is very effective. Published data indicates that chances that someone commits suicide during first week following release from psychiatric hospital are 300 times higher than in general population. Their secret data indicates Zyprexa pump and dump induced suicide is almost 90% effective.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: George, this is incredible, could we use it on our political opponents???
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman: Dalton, we better disscuss things like this in private. Who do you want to knock off anyway??
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: George, what about this John Tory guy?? Do you think you could arrange this Zyprexa treatment for him???
George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman: Dalton, we cannot wipe out people well known. Shrinks at CAMH already had a big stink when they tried to knock out this mezzo soprano woman Linda Maguire and she fooled them and escaped to New York. Lucky for all of us she got so scared that she lives in Virginia now.
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, George is right, knocking off John Tory would be too risky. I was told that this mezzo soprano Linda Maguire woman to this very day is looking for a lawyer in Toronto who would be willing to sue us on her behalf over that mishap.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, so you will arrange with the judges at Osgoode Hall to get this lawsuit quashed, but what about these autistic kids in CAS custody??? How do we get rid of them??? We cannot just kill them off with Zyprexa poison as that would be too risky.
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni: Dalton, how about letting this new Ontario Ombudsman Andre Morin to investigate CAS write some scalding report and ask for release of these kids back to their parents???
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Marie, that is too risky. I do not trust this Andre Morin guy, I think that he might be Harper's mole.
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni: Dalton, we still have a year before next provincial election. All these autistic kids in CAS custody might become very hot political issue over time. Conservatives can hang us on that issue alone.
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, Marie is right and this new Ontario Ombudsman Andre Morin is a lawyer so if he starts getting out of our hands we could still put a lot of pressure on him thru the Law Society of Upper Canada.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, if you think that you can control Morin than we might try that. Just tell him that he has to wet with us any reports that he prepares and that we will decide when he releases them.
==="Queen's Park" political farce.=== Episode three===
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty holds a meeting with his closest advisors; George "sniffing homosexual" Smitherman, Kathleen "raging lesbian" Wynne, Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant and Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni.
Subject of the meeting: Cover up of an attempt to create 500 million dollars Liberano Gang slush. fund.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: As all of know, Conservatives are on offensive federally and are working hand in hand with Ontario Progressive Conservatve Party. They are Hell bent to kick us out of Queen's Park so please no more screwups. Michael how did it go with this autistic children treatment fund fiasco???? Did you finally get it squashed???
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, I told you that I will get it done so it is done.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, did you talk to the press and ask them to kip a lid on it???
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, yes I did.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Michael, you say that you did, but I do not think that they listen to you my secretary gave me these newspaper clips., this story run in all MSM.
Michael "legal mafia enforcer" Bryant: Dalton, you wanted this story to run in all MSM outlets when you started this project. They cannot just kip a lid on it it would look fishy. I was told that they will keep it short and sweet. That is the best they can do for you Dalton, we have to take some loses.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Marie, did you get these autistic kids released from CAS custody??
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni: Dalton, I am working on it CAS people are very reluctant to let them go, they got used to all that money we pay them to keep these kids.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Marie, I do not know how to tell you this but I will have to shuffle you out of children's ministry.
Marie "children trafficker" Bountrogianni: Dalton, why me??? What have I done to deserve this?? All I ever did was helping you out.
Dalton "the crook" McGuinty: Marie, somebody has to take a fall for this fiasco and I chose you. (tbc)
October 5, 2007 7:17 PM
Scientists make gut-brain connection to autism
Last Updated: Thursday, September 27, 2007 | 5:29 PM ET
CBC News
Compounds produced in the digestive system have been linked to autistic-type behaviour in laboratory settings, potentially demonstrating that what autistic children eat can alter their brain function, say scientists from the University of Western Ontario.
They announced their findings Thursday in Ottawa.
Scientists are learning that the brain and body can influence each other, says a Harvard researcher.
(CBC)
UWO researchers investigated the "gut-brain" connection after many parents of autistic children reported significant improvements in the behaviour of their autistic children when they modified their diet, eliminating dairy and wheat products, Dr. Derrick MacFabe, the director of a research group at UWO in London, Ont., told CBC News Thursday.
Researchers were particularly interested in one dietary characteristic the autistic children seemed to exhibit, he said.
"Certainly, a lot of these children had peculiar cravings for high-carbohydrate foods that caused their behaviours," he said.
"We were interested in finding a link between certain compounds that are produced by bacteria in the digestive system — particularly those occurring with early childhood infections."
The bacteria produce propionic acid, a short chain fatty acid, which in addition to existing in the gut, is commonly found in bread and dairy products, MacFabe said.
To test their hypothesis that diet plays a part in generating autistic behaviour, UWO scientists administered the compound to rats' brains.
"They immediately engaged in bouts of repetitive behaviour, hyperactivity and impaired social behaviours which had close similarity to what parents are seeing with autism," MacFabe said.
When the rats' brains were examined later, they were found to have inflammatory processes similar to those in the brains of autistic children, he said.
"We found, looking at the rats' brains under the microscope, changes that looked a lot like what's occurred from autopsy cases of patients who had autism."
It's remarkable that a simple compound like propionic acid would have such a dramatic effect on "normal" animals, he said.
MacFabe said his research team, and scientists at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., and Harvard University, are now conducting screening studies looking at effects of dietary changes in the general population.
New way of approaching autism
Dr. Martha Herbert, assistant professor in neurology at Harvard Medical School, told CBC News that the study opens up a new way of thinking about the disorder.
"Now we're learning that the brain and body can influence each other," she said.
Autistic children are increasingly being seen as "oversensitized," meaning "things may bother them that don't bother other people," she said. "We need to pay attention to this."
Treating a child's health should be the first step in addressing autism, Herbert said, rather than solely focusing on behavioural therapy, currently a mainline approach.
"Behaviour therapy is certainly important. But the child's health controls the bandwidth that the child has for being able to benefit from behavioural therapy. If a child is sick, they won't be able to focus."
Parents should watch their children closely to determine what foods trigger reactions and to consider removing those triggers, she said.
Herbert strongly advocates a balanced diet, consisting of all food groups, not just "bread and cheese."
"If you have foods that child is sensitive to in their immune system, that can set up processes that can impact brain function, and it can do so in a negative way. And if you remove those foods, that negative impact can stop."
Urine Testing Confirms Autism is Mercury Poisoning
A new peer-reviewed scientific/medical case study confirms that many
children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) suffer from mercury
poisoning. The new study, "A Prospective Study of Mercury Toxicity
Biomarkers in Autistic Spectrum Disorders" by Mr. David A. Geier and Dr.
Mark R. Geier has been published in the most recent issue of the
Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A (volume 70, issue 20,
pgs 1723-1730).
This study utilized urinary porphyrin profile analysis (UPPA) to
assess body-burden and physiological effects of mercury in children
diagnosed with ASDs.
Using UPPA, Geier and Geier (2007) examined 71 children diagnosed with
ASDs, 9 neurotypical siblings, and 5 general population controls. The
researchers studied urinary porphyrin patterns using results reported both
by the US Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp) and the French
Laboratoire Philippe Auguste.
Their findings demonstrated that:
1. . Only the non-chelated patients diagnosed with ASDs had porphyrin
patterns indicative of clinical mercury toxicity.
2. . Treating ASD diagnosed patients with chelating agents resulted
in lower mercury-specific urinary porphyrins.
3. . The UPPA patterns reported were consistent between the two labs
used.
The results of the present study confirm and extend previous
observations by Nataf et al. (2006) and Geier and Geier (2006) on the use of
UPPA profiling to establish the causal role for mercury in ASDs.
Additionally, the current findings are consistent with those observed by
many other physicians who treat patients diagnosed with both ASDs and
mercury toxicity.
Thus, urinary porphyrin profile testing is being successfully used to:
1. . Demonstrate the role of mercury in ASD populations,
2. . Identify those children and adults who are mercury poisoned, and
3. . Track mercury excretion from affected children undergoing
treatment.
For the past several years there has been a raging controversy as to
whether or not mercury in medicines, especially in vaccines, has caused a
dramatic rise in the rate of children diagnosed with an ASD. Many experts
have insisted ASDs are caused by some yet-to-be-identified genetic cause. A
paper recently published in Nature Genetics described the results of
multi-million-dollar genetics study (which studied a thousand-plus families
with at least two children diagnosed with an ASD using in-depth genetic
screening). Tellingly, the authors reported, "None of our linkage results
can be interpreted as 'statistically significant'."(The Autism Genome
Project Consortium 2007).
With the current study's results, public health officials should now
publicly admit what they have been saying in their private transcripts and
memos: Mercury from Thimerosal-containing vaccines and other medicines has
been a major cause of ASD cases, which, based on recent CDC estimates (CDC
2007), may, when corrected for under ascertainment, exceed a rate of one in
100 children.
Today, any parent, physician, or healthcare provider can easily
confirm whether a non-chelated child with an ASD diagnosis is mercury
poisoned by having UPPA testing run at either laboratory.
CoMeD's web site, *http://www.Mercury-freeDrugs.org *contains:
1. . Further information on how to order these tests,
2. . Full copies of the Nataf et al. (2006), Geier and Geier (2006), &
Geier and Geier (2007), and
3. . Some of the many published papers validating the UPPA test.
Google Alert
Maynard pledges to not accept MPP pay raise if elected
Ross McDermott, LondonTopic.ca
10/06/2007
London-Fanshawe NDP candidate Stephen Maynard
With just five days left until Ontarians go to the polls, London-Fanshawe NDP candidate Stephen Maynard made a personal commitment to not accept a 25 per cent pay raised for Ontario MPPs, passed in eight days by the McGuinty Liberals last December.
He made the "personal commitment to the people of London-Fanshawe," Friday (Oct. 5), while being flanked by several, former Liberal supporters who have pledged to vote NDP in the upcoming provincial election.
"While people earning minimum wage were told they would have to wait three years to earn $10 per hour, last Christmas the Liberals rushed through, in just eight days, a 25 per cent pay raise for MPPs. The Liberals and Conservatives have both voted for this. Only the NDP opposed it," Maynard said.
His pledge is following the move by a majority of NDP MPPs who, instead of accepting the legislated pay raise, are donating that money, on a monthly basis, to not-for-profit organizations in their respective communities.
"I know what it's like to try and make ends meet on minimum wage," Maynard said, adding he will donate the 25 per cent to organizations in London, "to help those citizens who need our help the most, and I will continue to do this until Ontario's working poor get a minimum wage of $10 per hour and until people on (Ontario Disability Pension) get a raise as well."
Behind Maynard stood several citizens who all felt they were betrayed the Liberal government for which they voted during the last Ontario election.
Among those was Cynthia Boufford, whose son Jordan suffers from autism and was a victim of a Liberal broken promise four years ago.
"I voted for (Khalil Ramal) in the last election because he stood on his platform and said people like (her and Jordan) won't have to wait for treatment for their children's autism. Six months later my son was discharged and he waited three years to get back into service," Boufford said.
Though she spoke with Ramal after her son was discharged, and carried out a personal protest against the actions of the McGuinty government, "Mr. Ramal always towed the party line that parents aren't experts and the government was using their own experts."
Boufford said she was impressed with Maynard's honesty. "The Liberals can promise anything, but they don't follow through on them."
Jordan, 9, is one of the rare children over the age of six, who is back in treatment now. The Liberal's experts, she explained, claim therapy doesn't help children over six years of age but Jordan's condition has improved immensely since getting back into therapy. She believes her outspoken protest and letter campaign to Queen's park is the main reason her son is once again receiving treatment.
Maynard said many important issues have been ignored during this election campaign as too much focus has been placed on PC Leader John Tory's stance regarding funding for faith-based schools.
"Important issues have been ignored. There are seniors – our parents and grandparents – sitting in urine-soaked diapers in long-term care homes," Maynard said. "There are autistic children and parents still seeking the financial program support they need. The Liberals took those families to court rather than honouring their promises.
"Ontario," he concluded, "has become the child-poverty capital of Canada."
http://www.londontopic.ca/article.php?artid=5240
Google Alert
Star
McGuinty slams Tory's new attack ad
Oct 07, 2007 06:45 PM
THE CANADIAN PRESS
Despite criticism he's waged one of the nastiest ad wars of the lot, Premier Dalton McGuinty insisted he's running a "positive campaign" and would never have approved an attack ad like the latest one released by Progressive Conservative rival John Tory.
In the ad, the Conservatives slam McGuinty for mismanaging health care, suing the parents of autistic children, wasting tax dollars on ``Liberal insiders" and ultimately asks whether the public wants ``four more years" of the same.
McGuinty said he first caught the ad while watching Saturday's hockey game with his son Liam who initially tried to change the channel to "protect" him.
"I said 'Liam, let me see the ad, will you,"' McGuinty said. ``So I saw it and it's never the kind of ad I would approve."
McGuinty said he's preferred to focus his campaign on his government's successes such as getting medical wait times down and bringing peace to Ontario schools which haven't seen a teacher's strike throughout his entire mandate.
"I think what leadership commands of us is that we speak to the sense of the possible. The great things we can do together," he said.
Tory defended his ad, suggesting it's not his fault if the truth hurts.
"When we have people in Ontario without a doctor and are elderly and can't get help, to me this is a very negative record and anything you say about it is bound to sound negative," he said.
Ryerson University professor Greg Elmer said he's been tracking the election campaign as it's played out on the web and insists Liberal Internet postings have been anything but positive.
He suggested the Liberals rolled out many of their positive ideas before the writ was dropped and have spent the official campaign period focusing on Tory's faults both online and through mainstream media.
"There's a new element to all 21st century campaigns that have to do with YouTube and Facebook. There's only so much we can manage in terms of my campaign," McGuinty countered.
"We have a kind of corporate campaign that's manifested itself in ads that we put on TV, the kind of ads that we put on radio, the kind of ads that we put in print and I like to think that I'm taking the lead on that and giving direction on that."
--------------------------------------------------------------
Power to the people
Deregulation doesn't lead to cheaper electricity prices -- but try telling that to the FIBerals
By LINDA LEATHERDALE, TORONTO SUN
The bulletin from Democracy Watch says it all: People of Ontario -- what are you voting for?
- Broken promises and dishonesty.
- Corruption and patronage.
- Waste.
- Secrecy.
- Lobbyists.
This is shocking stuff to think about, with the election only three days away.
Bottom line is, voters don't trust any more, and who can blame them with all the lies, broken promises and flip-flops on so many issues that end up fleecing taxpayers of their hard-earned money.
Hydro and its electrifying prices that fried consumers, businesses and left Northern Ontario a wasteland is a prime example.
Could it be that powerful lobbyists with big money bought the politicians?
Clamping down on wealthy influence through political donations is yet another broken promise by FIBeral leader Dalton McGuinty, who himself flip-flopped and lied to us about electricity.
Let me remind you of his words:
In an Oct. 31, 2001, letter inviting private energy companies to a fundraising party: "Throughout Ontario's electricity restructuring process, Dalton and the Ontario Liberals have been consistent supporters of the move to an open electricity market in Ontario."
SKYROCKETING BILLS
But then the burning issue of hydro privatization, plus executive gluttony, began to fry Ernie Eves' Tories, who busted up the old Ontario Hydro monopoly into three entities and set the wheels in motion for a few to get very rich with an IPO of Hydro One. Hydro bills were going through the roof, and thousands and thousands joined in my Stop the Hydro Madness protest, where more than 90% said they were opposed to deregulation. Eves was forced to cap electricity prices.
McGuinty smelled blood, and changed his message.
On Nov. 19, 2002, McGuinty said: "I didn't create this mess. My job is to clean it up. The market is dead, deregulation is dead, privatization is dead." Then, in a Toronto Sun editorial board meeting on Sept. 5, 2003, McGuinty stunned us by stealing NDP leader Howard Hampton's thunder of public power:
BROKEN PROMISES
"The plan to deregulate electricity and open up the hydro market to competition simply hasn't worked and we can't go back there ... No. 1, we've got to keep hydro public," McGuinty said.
That message, plus signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, promising no new taxes, won him a landslide victory.
But once in power, the FIBeral reign of broken promises began -- the biggest one being the $11-billion health tax grab, with our money ending up in a Slushgate scandal. A cricket club gets $1 million, while many families can't find a doctor and kids with autism are shut out.
As for hydro, McGuinty promised to keep Eves' price caps, but lied again.
The caps came off, and the message on public power changed. Here's what McGuinty's energy minister had to say:
On April 15, 2004: "Electricity is going to be a great place to invest."
On Aug. 9, 2005: "All new generation will be private."
On Dec. 5, 2006: "I'm struggling everyday to keep the price of electricity down."
Then on Aug. 30, 2007, McGuinty's Liberals unveiled their new electricity plan, which confirmed plans to expand and open up our electricity market.
The promise is that with more private players and increased competition, prices will come down. That's the same promise made by Mike Harris' Tories.
Yet, report after report shows that in the U.S. electricity deregulation has led to skyrocketing prices and price caps.
In Illinois, where prices jumped 50%, the state last month was forced to sign a $1-billion rebate for residents and businesses struggling with their bills. Illinois will also repeal deregulation. In Maryland, prices jumped 72%. Virginia repealed electricity deregulation.
Meanwhile, a study by The Associated Press found consumers in 17 deregulated states paid, on average, 30% more for hydro in 2006; while the New York Times reports a former Washington state utility regulator estimates these consumers paid $48 billion more for their power.
Hampton warns that if we keep going down the dark road of deregulation, Ontario's economy, now lagging the country in growth, will be hurt even more.
Public power, he's adamant, is the only way to go.
But rich donations by a powerful energy lobby continue to pour into political coffers, he says, adding both the Conservatives and the Liberals are lucky John Tory's misguided policy on funding religious schools kept the hydro issue off the table on the election trail.
It was the NDP who questioned the Tories about $17,000 in political donations from Enron Corp. -- the energy supplier caught in California's hydro privatization crisis that went down in history as the biggest corporate bankruptcy fraud in the U.S.
Hampton is sure money from energy players has flowed into Liberal coffers, too.
Quebec, Manitoba and the federal government have banned donations from corporations, unions and other non-voting groups, and Duff Conacher, co-ordinator of Democracy Watch, says Ontario should do the same.
He also blasted the Grits for breaking another promise.
"By breaking their 2003 election promise to democratize Ontario's political donations system, Dalton McGuinty's Liberals have allowed wealthy interests to have undue influence over the next provincial government through too large and secret donations," said Conacher, also chairman of the nationwide Money In Politics Coalition.
SMART METER
So far, McGuinty is leading in the polls. If he wins, not only do we face even higher hydro bills but he'll force every Ontario household to install a smart meter by 2010 -- which John Tory says will create a new administrative boondoggle like the gun registry or MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corp.). Right now, the poor souls in McGuinty's smart meter project are paying 10.5 cents a kilowatt hour during peak hours and 7.5 cents in the mid-peak hours, while we pay 5.3 cents for the first 600 kilowatt hours a month and 6.2 cents above that, no matter the time of day.
The smart meter guinea pigs pay only 3.5 cents from 10 p.m.-5 a.m., so they were probably up all night cooking their Thanksgiving turkey.
Talk about a totalitarian state, where government controls everything.
Well, McGuinty -- before a smart meter goes in my home, I demand a smart meter at Queen's Park to meter all the wasted spending, the fat-cat pay hikes, the bloated salaries of hydro brass and the big money donations.
And before it's too late, we need a leader with integrity.
It's time for Power to the People, not poor powerless people.
Go to dwatch@web.net to see how your party stacks up on honesty and ethics.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NDP, Tories make last-ditch effort to turn tide of McGuinty majority
GLORIA GALLOWAY
From Monday's Globe and Mail
October 7, 2007 at 10:23 PM EDT
TORONTO — Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory and the New Democrats' Howard Hampton made last-gasp efforts Sunday to derail another Dalton McGuinty Liberal majority.
Mr. Hampton was out campaigning hard against Mr. McGuinty, blaming the Liberals for the loss of thousands of jobs last year in the province's manufacturing sector.
And Mr. Tory was talking in upbeat tones despite polls that suggest the Liberals are on the road to an easy victory – and that he may even lose in his own riding of Don Valley West.
“Many people are saying they are ‘powerfully motivated' to change the government,” Mr. Tory said. “So they will be out to vote on Wednesday and a lot of people will be joining them and we will do just fine.”
The Progressive Conservatives launched a new television ad this weekend that asks: “Do you really want four more years of Dalton McGuinty? Because if you vote Liberal on Oct. 10, that's exactly what you'll get.”
Mr. McGuinty quickly denounced the message as being too negative. “It's never the kind of ad I would approve,” he told reporters Sunday.
But Mr. Tory said the only way he can describe the record of the McGuinty government is in negative terms.
“When we have autistic children who have not received aid and we have people who are paying tax who are among the poorest in Ontario, when we have people without a doctor who are elderly and can't get help, then anything you say about it is bound to sound negative,” he said.
But, even if the ad catches the attention of voters, the question for both Conservatives and New Democrats is whether there is enough time to turn the tide on a McGuinty majority. Late last week, one poll suggested the Liberals had an 11-point lead.
Peter Woolstencroft, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo, said there have been elections that saw major changes in voter support in the final two or three days, and sometimes a well-executed advertising campaign has been the deciding factor.
“But I don't think we have this here,” Dr. Woostencroft said. “The people who are going to vote have already made up their minds.”
Others, however, were not ready to hand the majority to Mr. McGuinty just yet.
“Given the circumstances, I think the message in their current TV spots is the best bet,” said Greg Lyle, the managing director of the Innovative Research Group, a public-opinion research and strategy firm.
“However,” he said, “for it to work, the Tories need to narrow the Liberal lead to about five points. That would need a movement of voters equal to the biggest week of the last federal campaign – possible but not easy.”
Despite the size of the task, one senior Tory said the response at the doorstops this weekend suggests people are thinking twice about the casting their ballot for the Liberals.
“Even though they might be comfortable with another Liberal win, a bunch of them are saying that McGuinty needs to be punished a bit and sending him a majority is the wrong message,” he said.
“It might make things interesting after all. I definitely get the sense that our worst days are over and that we probably are making gains.”
And John Capobianco, who worked as an adviser for the former Ontario Conservative government of Mike Harris, said campaigning this weekend has convinced him that people are more receptive to Mr. Tory than they were a week ago.
As for the New Democrats, Mr. Hampton hinted Saturday he may re-evaluate his role after the election. After every election, he told Global TV, “you sit down and think about it. I'm not making any promises either way.”
Henry Jacek, a political science professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, said a win for the New Democrats would be to increase their seat count in the Ontario Legislature from 10 to 15.
With reports from Steven Chase in Ottawa and The Canadian Press
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Globe
McGuinty shies away from attack ads
Canadian Press
October 7, 2007 at 2:20 PM EDT
MARKHAM, Ont. — Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty says he's running a ‘positive campaign' and would never have approved an attack ad like the latest one released by Progressive Conservative rival John Tory.
In it, the Conservatives slam Mr. McGuinty for mismanaging health care, suing the parents of autistic children, wasting tax dollars on ‘Liberal insiders' and ultimately asks whether the public wants ‘four more years' of the same.
Mr. McGuinty says he first caught the ad while watching Saturday's hockey game with his son Liam and says his first thought was that it was not the approach he would take.
He says he was raised to always focus on the positives and in this campaign, that means what his government has done to reduce medical wait times and strengthen public schools where teachers haven't been on strike in four years.
He deflected criticism that while his mainstream media ads may be positive, those on YouTube and other websites have been anything but.
Mr. McGuinty says there's ‘only so much he can manage' but that he's the one giving direction when it comes to newspaper, radio and TV ads.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tory upbeat despite gloomy outlook
GLORIA GALLOWAY
Globe and Mail Update
October 7, 2007 at 2:47 PM EDT
TORONTO — Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory is talking in upbeat tones today despite polls that suggest the Liberals will walk away with a majority government on Wednesday.
Mr. Tory, who spoke to about 1,500 people at a Christian revivalist-type church service in North Toronto, said he was not concerned about surveys showing Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty with an 11-point lead heading into the last week of the campaign.
“I have much greater faith in people who believe in the things that I do — honesty in government, competence with their tax dollars, fairness so we're not leaving people behind,” Mr. Tory told reporters.
“Those people are very powerfully motivated to go and vote and to change the government because they know four more years of Mr. McGuinty is not going to produce honest, competent, fair government. They will be out to vote on Wednesday and a lot of people will be joining them and we'll do just fine.”
Mr. McGuinty complained earlier in the day about what he said were American-style attack ads from the Conservatives that played on Saturday night during the hockey games.
But Mr. Tory said the only way he can describe the record of the McGuinty government is in negative terms.
“When we have autistic children who have not received aid and we have people who are paying tax who are among the poorest in Ontario, when we have people without a doctor who are elderly and can't get help, then anything you say about it is bound to sound negative,” Mr. Tory said.
Polls also suggest that the Conservative Leader could be defeated in his own seat of Don Valley West where he campaigned door-to-door on Sunday.
Reporters asked if he would stay in politics should that happen.
“The best way I can make a difference now — I decided this four years ago — is in public life,” replied Mr. Tory. “I came into public life to make a difference for a period of time and it wasn't to be short.”
But he said he had not given up hope of winning the seat, nor the election.
“I have been canvassing from door to door as recently as last night, I went out in my own riding late because I just couldn't stand to sit around doing nothing and I can tell you there's an awful lot of people that are thinking very carefully about the question that I have been posing. Do they want four more years of Dalton McGuinty?” Mr. Tory said.
“Anybody who declares it in advance, especially Mr. McGuinty is being arrogant and is being disrespectful to voters.”
At the church service, he told the mostly-black congregation that young black children and kids from other countries had been left behind and needed an outstretched hand from government.
“There is a wealth of talent among adults and kids in these communities,” he said, adding that he was proud of being characterized as a bridge-builder among races and religions. “The problem is a lack of access to opportunity.”
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National Post
Liberals, Tories accuse each other of 'most negative' campaign in years
Lee Greenberg and James Cowan, National Post and CanWest News Service
MARKHAM — Premier Dalton McGuinty, lashed out at his Conservative rival Sunday, saying he would not have allowed the type of attack ad aired by John Tory’s campaign Saturday night.
“It’s never the kind of ad I would have approved,” Mr. McGuinty said yesterday. “I was raised to find a way to be positive.”
“It just runs counter to what I think Ontarians want to hear.”
Mr. Tory defended the ads saying the spots merely highlight Mr. McGuinty’s shoddy record in office.
“Any recitation of Mr. McGuinty’s record is bound to be categorized as negative because it is,” Mr. Tory told reporters after attending a church service.
Mr. McGuinty said he saw the ad Saturday Night while watching Hockey Night in Canada with his second-youngest son, Liam.
“When the ad came on at the beginning he would change it,” Mr. McGuinty said yesterday. “In a funny kind of way he was trying to protect me. I said ‘Hey, Liam, lemme see the ad will you?’ ”
The stripped down attack ad features (similar to previous PC Party ads found here) the ominous voice of a male narrator, who asks “Do you really want four more years of mismanaged health care? Four more years of Dalton McGuinty suing the parents of autistic children?”
As the narrator poses the questions, they are written over a black screen. The ad goes on to critique the Liberal leader for a shortage of family doctors and wasted tax dollars on “Liberal insiders”
“Do you really want four more years of Dalton McGuinty? Because if you vote Liberal on Oct. 10, that’s exactly what you’ll get.”
Mr. Tory said the ad raises legitimate concerns.
“I think people have to ask themselves if we want four more years of what we’ve seen: people without a doctor, children with autism not getting help, seniors not getting the care they need. I think these are legitimate questions for an election campaign and if it sounds negative, that’s because it has been and it will continue to be if we stick with the present leadersip.”
A senior McGuinty advisor yesterday fumed about the ad, calling it another example of what he said was the most negative campaign Canadian political history.
Mr. McGuinty said he’s chosen to do things differently.
“If you take a look at the kind of campaign we ran in 99 and 2003 and what I’m running on today in 2007, I think Ontarians are entitled to see a positive plan placed before them.”
But Conservatives disagree. They point to a union group that has actively campaigned against Tories in the last two elections. Conservatives allege the Working Families Coalition — a group that has used several key Liberal campaign strategists — is a front for the McGuinty Liberals and has launched a complaint with the province’s chief election officer.
One recent WFC accused Mr. Tory “and his neoconservative team” of voting “against children.” (Ironically, the ad appears to use the same narrator as Mr. Tory’s latest attack ad). The group’s 2003 ads using the memorable tagline “Not this time, Ernie,” are said to have been instrumental in the defeat of former premier Ernie Eves.
Mr. Tory yesterday accused Liberal “cronies” at the WFC of running “the most negative (ads) that I’ve ever seen in Ontario politics.”
Conservatives also point to the Liberal war room’s occasionally nasty online
campaign. (The latest example is below, the main site is at ToryTube.ca)
Videos posted online by Liberals include one poking fun at a language gaffe where Mr. Tory mistakenly asks a reporter, in French, to wait a few moments “par [sic] favor.”
Mr. McGuinty yesterday distanced himself from that online campaign.
“There’s a new element to all 21st Century campaigns that has to do with youtube and facebook,” he said. “But there’s only so much I can manage in terms of my campaign. We have a sort of corporate campaign that’s manifested in the kinds of ads we put on TV, the kind of ads we put on radio and in print, and I’d like to think that I’m taking the lead on that.”
Asked if he was distancing himself from his war room director, Liberal lobbyist Warren Kinsella, Mr. McGuinty replied: “What I’m saying is I’m running a strong, positive campaign.”
Ontario voters will elect a new government on Wednesday Oct. 10. According to the latest polls, Mr. McGuinty’s Liberals hold an 11-point lead over their Conservative challengers, who were hampered by their disastrous plan to fund religious schools.
Mr. Tory criticized the Liberals for focusing on that plan rather than discussing issues. “I think the handling of the education issue at the start of the campaign by Mr. McGuinty could certainly not be described as ‘positive’ and ‘constructive,' " he said.
The Conservative leader’s uplifting message during his visit to Rhema Ministry stood in sharp contrast to the negative tone of his party’s advertisements.
Addressing close to 1,500 congregants, Mr. Tory said he had entered public life to “make sure, on some Thanksgiving Day, not too many of us in Ontario can feel we can be equally thankful.”
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ctv.ca
McGuinty says he's running a 'positive campaign'
The Canadian Press
MARKHAM, Ont. — Premier Dalton McGuinty says he's running a `positive campaign' and would never have approved an attack ad like the latest one released by Progressive Conservative rival John Tory.
In it, the Conservatives slam McGuinty for mismanaging health care, suing the parents of autistic children, wasting tax dollars on `Liberal insiders' and ultimately asks whether the public wants `four more years' of the same.
McGuinty says he first caught the ad while watching Saturday's hockey game with his son Liam and says his first thought was that it was not the approach he would take.
He says he was raised to always focus on the positives and in this campaign, that means what his government has done to reduce medical wait times and strengthen public schools where teachers haven't been on strike in four years.
He deflected criticism that while his mainstream media ads may be positive, those on YouTube and other websites have been anything but.
McGuinty says there's `only so much he can manage' but that he's the one giving direction when it comes to newspaper, radio and TV ads.
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Star
Party faithful thank Tory for defusing `mind bomb'
Reversal on school funding issue appears to have brought back Conservative supporters
Oct 07, 2007 04:30 AM
Robert Benzie
Rob Ferguson
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU
Promising to fund faith-based schools has been a "mind bomb" that will likely cost the Progressive Conservatives the election, but reversing course on the scheme appears to have stemmed the bleeding of core Tory supporters.
Leader John Tory announced Monday he would put his $400 million plan to bankroll Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Christian and other religious schools to a free vote in the Legislature.
That move effectively kills the measure, because even some Tory MPPs would join Liberals and New Democrats in voting it down.
In dozens of interviews with Conservative incumbents, candidates and backers since the policy flip-flop, there is a palpable sense of relief among the party faithful.
Although polls show Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberals poised to win a second majority government Wednesday, Tories insist the U-turn has given them a fighting chance in many ridings they might otherwise have lost.
"That helped. I certainly noticed a difference. It was hard to get our message out because of that," Bob Bailey, Conservative candidate in Sarnia-Lambton, said yesterday.
"A lot of people who had doubts before came back to me and said to me, `Look, Bob, we wanted to vote for you all along and this helps us,'" said Bailey, who is running against Culture Minister Caroline Di Cocco.
Terry Flynn, a marketing professor at McMaster University who studies political communications, said Tory sabotaged himself and is paying the price.
"It doesn't matter what he says now. The mind bomb has been dropped," said Flynn.
"They didn't understand the backlash it would create.
"They've impaled themselves on this."
Tory incumbent Frank Klees, who is running in the new riding of Newmarket-Aurora, is a big booster of funding faith-based schools, and he blames the Liberals for stoking public outrage over the proposal.
"To John's credit, he recognized that the misinformation was there, that people can't come to a conclusion on this until they've had a chance to consider the real facts," Klees said Thursday.
"There's been a shift, there's been a turnaround. We had a gentleman ... who had been saying: `I am not going to vote for you over this issue.' He came in (the office) this morning and not only did he say he was going to vote for us, he cut us a cheque to contribute to the campaign."
Bramalea-Gore-Malton candidate Pam Hundal said Friday that "the whole faith-based thing was a smokescreen."
"People had questions. Once I clarified it to them, then they moved on very quickly to what the real issues are in our riding like the closing of our hospital, Peel Memorial," said Hundal.
At Pickering GO station on Thursday, Ajax banker Ted Clark, 38, echoed the concerns of many voters.
"Earlier on, I did not like (Tory's) stance on opening up the public education to all religions and I wasn't going to vote for him," said Clark, who voted PC in 2003.
"But the fact that now he's willing to consider it as a free vote in the Legislature, I am seriously thinking of bringing my vote back," he said.
Asked yesterday if he wished he had changed his tune a week or more earlier than he did to salvage the election, Tory shrugged.
"I wish I'd been born a better looking man, but ... the bottom line is that things are as they are," the PC leader said in Sarnia.
"I am very happy that we've had this week, a 10-day period, in which we've been able to really talk about the other issues – autism, the doctor shortage, crime, the economy," he said.
"Those who write this election off and say it's over, I would say are misjudging the fact that there's going to be a lot of conversations taking place over a lot of turkey dinners at a lot of dining room tables across this province, where people are going to be saying: do we really want four more years of Dalton McGuinty?"
Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound incumbent Bill Murdoch, the first to publicly break ranks with the party on the schools issue, said the debacle "took over the election."
"I don't believe John wanted it to be the main issue," Murdoch said last week.
Tory strategists said their polling showed voters favoured the plan once they understood it was merely extending to other religions the same education now available to Catholics.
But that message got lost and, worse, revived memories within the PC party over the controversial 1984 decision by former premier Bill Davis – Tory's friend, mentor and former boss – to extend full funding to Catholic schools.
"It's a sore point in some parts of the province," said John Snobelen, education minister from 1995 to 1997 under PC premier Mike Harris.
"You get down into the kind of battles that happened in (some) small communities when the Catholic education funding to high school came in; it was really bitter."
Still, Snobelen, who canvassed in several ridings last week, said that since the policy shift, there's "a different feel and there's more volunteers and it's a more affable group."
"I do know that the party faithful is back in the fold and that's great," he said.
Randy Hillier, the rural rights activist and Tory candidate in Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, summed up the discomfort voters felt over religious schools.
"There was a little bit of a lump in some people's throats ... and they've swallowed and now people are feeling far more comfortable," Hillier said Thursday in Kingston.
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Tory blasts McGuinty for 'Bluewatergate'
By CHIP MARTIN, SUN MEDIA
2007-10-06
PC Leader John Tory was in Sarnia today where he blasted the McGuinty Liberals
over massive cost over-runs which saw the local hospital expansion project
balloon to $320 million from the original estimate of $276 million. With Tory
is local candidate Bob Bailey (CNW Group/John Tory 2007 Campaign)
SARNIA -- Spiralling costs, lack of accountability and incompetence have made
Sarnia's new hospital "ground zero" for Dalton McGuinty's style of management,
Conservative leader John Tory said here today.
"The Dalton McGuinty school of mismanagement is closing down next Wednesday,"
Tory told a small group of supporters outside the troubled project.
Expansion of the Bluewater Health Centre, originally estimated to cost $140
million has ballooned to $319 million, raising a firestorm of controversy and
a political headache for Liberal Caroline Di Cocco. Di Cocco is accused of
knowing about cost-overruns in August but suppressing that information.
Conservatives have dubbed it McGuinty's "Bluewatergate."
With Di Cocco under fire, both Tory and NDP leader Howard Hampton have made
late-in-the-campaign stops to blast what they call Liberal mismanagement of
the project. They see Sarnia-Lambton as up for grabs.
"She has continued to delay, deny and obscure the facts," Tory said in his bid
to bolster the hopes of Conservative candidate Bob Bailey.
Tory described as a "shaggy dog story" Di Cocco's assertion she was unaware of
a letter sent her in August by the ministry of health advising the cost by
then had risen to $276 million.
He said local ratepayers who have wanted redevelopment of the hospital for at
least 15 years -- and have raised $40 million for it -- deserve better.
The facility is a partnership with the private sector, with prime contractor
EllisDon of London.
"Skyrocketing costs. Deceptive information. No results. This has become the
McGuinty mantra for health care."
In North Bay, he said, a hospital project has ballooned from $221 million to
$551 million.
Tory said construction should proceed immediately and an in-depth audit
undertaken, involving the OPP, if necessary. And the province, he said, should
cover all the cost-overrun and not local citizens.
On his way back to finish his campaigning in the greater Toronto area, Tory
also stopped at a coffee shop in Strathroy where he posed for pictures with
seven-year-old Jonathan Sibley of Ilderton whose parents can't afford the
treatment he needs for autism. He gave the youngster a tour of his campaign bus.
And Tory also heard the story of town resident Henry Twynstra, 73, who had to
sell his home to cover the $40,000 cost to remove a brain tumour in Cleveland
when he couldn't receive timely treatment at home. A lifelong Liberal,
Twynstra said the health system is unfair and after meeting Tory said he plans
to vote for him.
Tory is planning stops in Burlington and Barrie before ending his day in Toronto.
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/264568
Google Alert
What you didn't hear in campaign
October 08, 2007
Ian Urquhart
The debate over public funding for religious schools has sucked the oxygen out of the 2007 provincial election, to the dismay of various interest groups who hoped their issues would be front and centre in the campaign.
Environmentalists, nurses, professors, university students, poverty advocates, parent activists, parents of autistic children, and property taxpayers, among others, have all seen their agendas overshadowed, to a greater or lesser degree, by the faith-based schools issue.
And most are bitterly frustrated as a result.
Laura Kirby-McIntosh, an autism advocate who was at Queen's Park last week distributing a meticulously prepared report card on the party positions, says she is "devastated" by the lack of attention. "It's been very, very hard to get our issue on the radar screen," she says.
Echoes Bob Topp of the Coalition After Property Tax Reform: "Our issue didn't get much attention despite efforts by ourselves and others to bring it forward."
Annie Kidder, a parent activist and spokesperson for People for Education, laments that she has tried, without success, to get the media and the party leaders to focus on issues like declining school enrolment.
"Probably the biggest concrete issue facing our schools is declining enrolment," she says. "It affects everything, is going to have an effect far beyond the school buildings, and we have no real strategy to deal with it.
"Other provinces have appointed whole commissions to look at it. In Ontario, for the most part, we are just looking the other way."
Not everyone is dismayed by the lack of attention during the campaign, however. Take, for example, the environmentalists, whom one might suspect would be furious.
Their issue scores high on the list of voters' concerns in the polls; yet there was not a single question on the environment in the televised leaders' debate, and an elaborate assessment of the party platforms by a coalition of 13 environmental groups sank without a trace in the mainstream media, besides the Star.
But Rick Smith of Environmental Defence, one of the 13 groups in the coalition, says the ultimate goal was to ensure that green planks were included in the platforms of all the parties.
"By and large, that has happened," he says. "We have a stack of very specific responses from the parties, and we'll be able to hold the parties to them, no matter who wins the election."
Doris Grinspun of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, is also pleased that many of her group's planks made it into the party platforms, including a commitment to a target of 70 per cent of nurses working full-time (compared to 62 per cent today).
But in both cases the parties' commitments might be more solid if the issues had been part of the province-wide election debate.
What is the solution to this problem? One idea is to add on more televised leaders' debates, with each one focused on a specific basket of issues. If they can do that in American presidential elections, surely it can be done in Ontario.
Another would be for the federal government to lighten up on its rules regarding what constitutes "partisan activity"– a no-no for groups wishing to retain their charitable status. The environmentalists, for example, were told they could not grade the party platforms ("pass" or "fail").
But in the end, campaigns take on lives of their own and head off in quite unpredictable directions. No institutional tinkering will change that reality.
From a listmate
Star
PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVES
The lawn of a new era?
Tory visits his childhood home in Don Valley West only to find its owners have put up a Liberal sign
Oct 08, 2007 04:30 AM
Richard Brennan
STAFF REPORTER
Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory went to his childhood Toronto home yesterday and saw red.
On the front lawn of the Snowdon Ave. house was a sign for the Liberal candidate in Don Valley West, Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.
"This is an outrage," Tory joked with an entourage of media types following him as he knocked on doors in the Bedford Park neighbourhood.
Undaunted, the 53-year-old Tory went to the door of the home where he lived until he was 6 years old, but he wasn't able to persuade Ian and Ann Welsh to change their allegiance. He still spent several minutes just out of earshot of reporters talking to them about the neighbourhood and his policies.
The Welshes said later that while they respected Tory, they were turned off by his proposal to publicly fund religious schools, which he has since backed away from, saying instead that if he wins it will be put to a free vote in the Legislature. The couple also supported David Miller rather than Tory when he ran for Toronto mayor.
Tory, accompanied by his wife Barbara Hackett, started off the day speaking to 1,500 mostly African-Canadians at a church service in northern Toronto.
Tory said Thanksgiving was a time to remember the less fortunate.
"I always think of Thanksgiving as a time when it's also important to remember that in our midst there are fellow citizens who have less to be thankful for."
Later, Tory, who is trailing in the polls, made no apologies for a new Conservative television ad that essentially tells people that if they vote Liberal they will regret it.
Tory said he saw no problem highlighting a Liberal record that he said includes broken promises, handing out $32 million to party friends through a secret government slush fund, an inability to address the doctor shortage, suing the parents of autistic children desperate to get care, and forcing seniors to sit in urine-soaked diapers for hours on end.
"If it sounds negative, it's because it has been and will continue to be if we stick with the present leadership," he told reporters after the service at the Rhema Ministries.
Tory said the Liberals have lost the right to govern because of their record of misleading voters, failing to help the most vulnerable people in Ontario and general arrogance.
"Four more years of Mr. McGuinty is not going to produce honest, competent, fair government," he said.
McGuinty told reporters in Markham the new Conservative ad was not the kind he would ever approve for the Liberals, and he didn't think the ominous, negative tone would play well over the holiday weekend.
McGuinty said Liberal online ads slamming the Tories and posted on sites like YouTube are out of his control. Some, however, feature Liberal staff members.
Critics say the Liberals have been able to avoid using attack-style ads because the Working Families group of unions and activists, some with Liberal ties, have been broadcasting them. "It was their cronies that were running the ads that were the most negative I have seen in Ontario politics. They are still on the air very specifically targeted at me," Tory said.
The former Rogers Communications executive said he is in politics to stay even if he doesn't win Wednesday. "I intend to continue in public life because this is what I have chosen to do ... to make the biggest difference I can," Tory said.
With files from Rob Ferguson
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Globe
Hampton, Tory sharpen their attacks as vote nears
GLORIA GALLOWAY
With reports from Steven Chase and The Canadian Press
October 8, 2007
TORONTO -- Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory and the New Democrats' Howard Hampton made last-gasp efforts yesterday to derail another Dalton McGuinty Liberal majority.
Mr. Hampton was out campaigning hard against Mr. McGuinty, blaming the Liberals for the loss of thousands of jobs last year in the province's manufacturing sector.
And Mr. Tory was talking in upbeat tones despite polls that suggest the Liberals are on the road to an easy victory - and that he may even lose in his own riding of Don Valley West.
"Many people are saying they are 'powerfully motivated' to change the government," Mr. Tory said. "So they will be out to vote on Wednesday and a lot of people will be joining them and we will do just fine."
The Progressive Conservatives launched a new television ad this weekend that asks: "Do you really want four more years of Dalton McGuinty? Because if you vote Liberal on Oct. 10, that's exactly what you'll get."
Mr. McGuinty quickly denounced the message as being too negative. "It's never the kind of ad I would approve," he told reporters yesterday.
But Mr. Tory said the only way he can describe the record of the McGuinty government is in negative terms.
"When we have autistic children who have not received aid and we have people who are paying tax who are among the poorest in Ontario, when we have people without a doctor who are elderly and can't get help, then anything you say about it is bound to sound negative," he said.
But, even if the ad catches the attention of voters, the question for both Conservatives and New Democrats is whether there is enough time to turn the tide on a McGuinty majority. Late last week, one poll suggested the Liberals had an 11-point lead.
Peter Woolstencroft, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo, said there have been elections that saw major changes in voter support in the final two or three days, and sometimes a well-executed advertising campaign has been the deciding factor.
"But I don't think we have this here," Dr. Woostencroft said. "The people who are going to vote have already made up their minds."
Others, however, were not ready to hand the majority to Mr. McGuinty just yet.
"Given the circumstances, I think the message in their current TV spots is the best bet," said Greg Lyle, the managing director of the Innovative Research Group, a public-opinion research and strategy firm.
"However," he said, "for it to work, the Tories need to narrow the Liberal lead to about five points. That would need a movement of voters equal to the biggest week of the last federal campaign - possible but not easy."
Despite the size of the task, one senior Tory said the response at the doorstops this weekend suggests people are thinking twice about the casting their ballot for the Liberals.
"Even though they might be comfortable with another Liberal win, a bunch of them are saying that McGuinty needs to be punished a bit and sending him a majority is the wrong message," he said.
"It might make things interesting after all. I definitely get the sense that our worst days are over and that we probably are making gains."
And John Capobianco, who worked as an adviser for the former Ontario Conservative government of Mike Harris, said campaigning this weekend has convinced him that people are more receptive to Mr. Tory than they were a week ago.
As for the New Democrats, Mr. Hampton hinted Saturday he may re-evaluate his role after the election. After every election, he told Global TV, "you sit down and think about it. I'm not making any promises either way."
Henry Jacek, a political science professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, said a win for the New Democrats would be to increase their seat count in the Ontario Legislature from 10 to 15.
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Globe
ONTARIO VOTES: NEARING THE FINISH LINE: PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS
The final grades are in
Each day of the campaign, Globe and Mail editorial board member Adam Radwanski has been grading the party leaders at globeandmail.com. As voters prepare to head to the polls on Wednesday, he offers an overall take on how each one stacks up
ADAM RADWANSKI
October 8, 2007
There are few things I will claim over John Tory. He's had a much more accomplished career than me. He was commissioner of the Canadian Football League; I just turn up at the games. He's running a provincial party; I'm writing a daily report on how he's doing. But if nothing else, let the record show that I'm quicker at judging when something is too ambitious to work.
It took Mr. Tory three-quarters of the campaign to realize that he was not going to be able to convince Ontarians of the merits of his religious schools plan. By contrast, it took me about half an hour to realize that I was not going to be able to incorporate every single aspect of the campaign into a daily report card.
My initial thinking was that the leaders would each be graded on a variety of factors. Who was running the best-staged events? Whose war room was responding quickest to opponents' attacks? Who was controlling the agenda? Which side was proving the most Internet-savvy, using online media to reach out to younger voters?
There were two problems with this approach. First, without being on each campaign bus all the time, it was impossible to track every movement by every leader - let alone what his staff was up to. More importantly, I wouldn't have been able to see the forest for the trees. Tracking all that minutiae would have meant that the report card bore little relation to how the election was actually being decided.
The goal of a campaign is to win over average voters, not political nerds. And average voters don't sit around breathlessly awaiting the next press release or combing the Internet in search of YouTube videos poking fun at Dalton McGuinty. Instead, their impressions are formed mostly by brief clips on the evening news and newspaper headlines the next morning.
So to understand who's winning or losing the battles, that's what you have to keep your eye on - the things you'd look at if watching the campaign wasn't part of your job description. And then you have to ask yourself three key questions.
First, what message was each leader trying to get across that day to voters? Second, did he succeed in getting that message across? And third, was it the right message in the first place?
The reason Mr. McGuinty scored the best day-to-day, and has the highest overall mark looking back, is that for the most part voters saw what he wanted them to see. Owing both to self-discipline and to his campaign's careful staging of each event, he very rarely got thrown off message. That message - we've done a lot of good things, especially on education, and John Tory will mess them up - was exceedingly boring. But it was the right one under the circumstances, because the province had little will for major change, and stability is Mr. McGuinty's best selling point. Mr. Tory, by contrast, spent most of the campaign unable to control the message. The Progressive Conservative Leader spent his days trying to get Ontarians talking about the Liberals' health-care tax or their disdain for the parents of autistic children, but coverage of him focused almost exclusively on religious schools. As that issue swallowed him alive, nothing he did - interviews, public events, TV and radio ads - was enough to change the topic.
NDP Leader Howard Hampton fared slightly better than Mr. Tory, in that the coverage of him generally focused on whatever issue he was trying to get across that day. But in his case, the problem was that it wasn't the right message. With an unimaginative campaign, he wound up being marginalized - the one thing he absolutely needed to avoid.
To be clear, each leader was judged solely on whether he achieved his own goals, not in relative proportion to the other two. Otherwise, Mr. Hampton - whose party was sure to receive the lowest number of seats - would have been guaranteed the lowest grade. And however ambitious his belief that he would be able to make popular an unpopular policy, it was Mr. Tory who surely deserved that distinction.
B+
DALTON MCGUINTY
Post-mortems on this race will suggest that, with his pledge on religious schools, John Tory handed the Liberals another four years in office. It's hard to dispute that was the biggest factor. But part of the reason Mr. Tory and his ill-advised promise became the focal point of the campaign is that Dalton McGuinty gave his enemies very little to fire at.
When he took over the Liberal leadership in 1996, Mr. McGuinty flustered so easily that he would have been hard pressed to remember his own name under pressure. But he's morphed into a remarkably adept politician. As we discovered when he visited our editorial board last week, it's impossible to get him off-message. Ask any question, no matter how pointed, and he'll give the appearance of answering it while returning to his talking points within five to 10 seconds.
His opponents alleged, accurately, that he was operating inside a bubble - avoiding any uncontrolled situations in which he interacted with voters. But with a lead in the polls, and his primary opponent busy self-destructing, his main task was to stay out of trouble. And save for one extremely uncomfortable encounter with an Ottawa cancer patient (see below), he did just that. Even in the leaders debate, with Messrs. Tory and Hampton hammering him, he avoided any slip-ups.
With most of the same players around from their 2003 win, the Liberals also had going for them the slickest of the three campaigns. Their TV ads were better and their day-to-day operations ensured Mr. McGuinty stayed out of those unscripted situations he was so desperate to avoid. They correctly identified off the top that they could make the campaign about religious education. And they adopted the time-tested strategy of having their leader stay positive - talking about all the wonderful things he'd done in his first four years - while his ministers and spin doctors conducted more aggressive attacks against Mr. Tory.
For putting forward interesting policy ideas, Mr. McGuinty would be lucky to get a "D." For providing those of us covering the election with fodder, he would get an "F." But he wouldn't care about either of those; in fact, I'm not even sure he cares whether Ontarians like him. Mr. McGuinty's focus was on running a smooth, disciplined campaign that would get him re-elected. And on that front, he did an impressive job.
Best Day: Sept. 21, 2007
A- "The Premier did a good job of shaking off the effects of the tag-team assault on him the night before. Holding a big rally in front of cheering Liberals was a nice way to look like a winner, and the line about Tory and Hampton becoming a hot celebrity couple - 'HoJo' - was pretty clever."
NOW: Mr. McGuinty's campaign worked because he kept it even keel. But this was the day he cemented his hold on power. By shaking off the blows thrown at him in the leaders debate the night before, he put an end to the perception that he was on the ropes.
Worst Day: Sept. 26, 2007
D "Man, this was ugly. When someone with colon cancer accuses you of not doing enough to let them live, you don't inform them in three words that they're wrong and shuffle off to find someone more friendly."
NOW: Mr. McGuinty's exchange in an Ottawa hospital with Mike Brady, captured on camera, could have derailed his entire campaign. It didn't, but it made the Premier's handlers more determined than ever to avoid uncontrolled public events.
C-
JOHN TORY
John Tory is a successful businessman, exemplary private citizen and all-around nice guy. But it appears he's not an especially good politician.
That, at least, is the only conclusion to be drawn from his spectacular failure to anticipate how the public would respond to his pledge to publicly fund religious schools, and his inability to do damage control once that reaction became clear.
Mr. Tory says he knew from advance polling his promise would be a tough sell. But what he clearly expected was that, even if a majority opposed the idea, it would be low enough on those voters' list of concerns that it wouldn't affect their decision. Meanwhile, it would provide inroads into minority communities, where it would be enough of a ballot question to help the Tories take a bunch of extra seats. Instead, those opposed to it turned out to feel very strongly indeed. Had Mr. Tory recognized this sooner, he could have softened or abandoned the promise in the campaign's first week, and after some initial ridicule it might have blown over. Instead, he did the worst possible thing - painting it as a matter of principle, then backing away with a week to go. By then, it was too late to erase it as a campaign issue; all he did was make himself look less principled.
That the religious schools pledge came to define Mr. Tory underscored another shortcoming - his inability to articulate a clear vision for the province that differed from Mr. McGuinty's. Even in the debate, in which he generally performed well, he spent so much time criticizing the Liberal Leader that he neglected to lay out his own policies. And when he did make promises, they were scattershot.
A final problem was the way he was presented to voters. Mr. Tory is an inherently likeable guy. But that didn't come through in his TV ads or on the news. Instead, he looked angry and negative as he attacked Mr. McGuinty's record. The message should have been that he was no average politician; instead, he came off like a mid-level U.S. congressional candidate.
Mr. Tory's campaign was not without its moments, mostly when he showed his personable side talking to average voters. But when a campaign ends with the leader hard pressed even to win his own riding, it has to be considered a dismal failure.
Best Day: Sept. 20, 2007
A- "This was the John Tory that Conservatives thought - or at least hoped - they were getting when they picked him as leader. Well prepared and completely at ease in the spotlight, he cut the most appealing figure during the debate."
NOW: The leaders debate was one of the few times that Mr. Tory was able to get away from religious schools, since the leaders were mandated to talk about other issues. He made the most of it, striking the right tone in his attacks on Mr. McGuinty. But he was never able to use it to build momentum.
Worst Day: Oct. 1, 2007
D- "There's no way to view what happened on Monday in isolation, so call this one a cumulative grade. It's official: He sabotaged his own campaign for no good reason whatsoever."
NOW: A bunch of people asked that day whether I'd be giving Tory an "F" for his climb-down on religious schools. I didn't, because at least his actions spared him a caucus mutiny. But by backtracking so late, he acknowledged that he'd wasted the first three weeks on a matter of "principle" he was now willing to drop.
C
HOWARD HAMPTON
Last Thursday I wrote that Howard Hampton appeared to be reaching the end of his rope. In the midst of a third straight futile campaign as NDP Leader, he had openly speculated to The Toronto Sun's editorial board on Wednesday that he might be "the wrong person" for the job. It was in keeping with his tone in the campaign's latter stages; when he'd visited our own editorial board at the start of the week, there was little pretense his party had much chance on election day.
Still, I hadn't quite realized the depths of his frustration. On Thursday afternoon, Mt. Hampton erupted. He lashed out at John Tory for allowing the religious education debate to hijack the campaign, but saved most of his ire for reporters, demanding to know why they weren't paying more attention to his campaign and his issues. "We've become the child poverty capital of Canada - don't any of you people care?" he bellowed. "Don't you care that there are seniors living in soiled diapers? Don't you care about that? I'm asking you, what do you care about?" After a campaign dominated by a single issue, Mr. Hampton's complaint wasn't entirely without merit. But he can also blame a couple of baffling errors in judgment for his inability yet again to gain traction with voters.
The first, more minor mistake was the NDP's lack of preparedness for the start of the campaign. Rather than trying to set the agenda, Mr. Hampton waited several days before unveiling his platform. With the NDP needing a big splash to avoid becoming an afterthought, that marginalized them from the outset.
The bigger problem was that Mr. Hampton declined to make the one pitch that could have increased the NDP's support base. With polls showing the potential for a minority government, he should have openly campaigned for the balance of power - something Jack Layton, did in the last two federal elections. By outlining all the progressive things the NDP would force Dalton McGuinty to do, he could have won over enough left-leaning Liberals to increase his seat count.
Midway through the campaign, Mr. Hampton briefly broached this subject. Then he reverted to his usual script, declining to make the case for a minority government even when given the chance. That, as much as its lack of concern for the poor and the elderly, is why the media went back to largely ignoring him.
Best Day: Sept. 24, 2007
B+ "The smartest thing for Mr. Hampton to do from here on out is to try to convince those straddling the fence between the Liberals and the NDP that he's offering them a combination of the two. This was a modest start, but it suggests he might know enough to stop pretending he's going to be premier."
NOW: So much for that theory. Mr. Hampton's speculation on a minority government made him seem like a player. Then he went back to his usual script, and most of the province went back to ignoring him.
Worst Day: Oct. 4, 2007
D "Hampton blew a gasket, lashing out at reporters for failing to give him and his issues the coverage they deserved. ... I'm sorry, but this is loser talk. Every NDP leader struggles to get media attention. The good ones find a way."
NOW: This was the culmination of not just a frustrating campaign for Mr. Hampton, but a frustrating career as leader. It's understandable that he lost his patience, but effectively conceding six days before the election isn't a brilliant strategy.
From a listmate
The John Tory Show | CFRB
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