Ontario government won’t divulge progress in autism program rollout

The government said it would get 8,000 kids into core clinical services by the end of the fall, but as of last month that number was only about 888.

TORONTO — The Ontario government is refusing to publicly divulge its progress in enrolling children in core autism therapies, after the last update showed it was far off its own target.

Merrilee Fullerton, the minister of children, community and social services, has said the government would get 8,000 kids into core clinical services by the end of the fall, but as of last month that number was only about 888.

Government officials said at that time that movement was initially slow due to getting a new intake process up and running, and they said those numbers would start to grow exponentially.

But Fullerton’s office refused to provide an update to those numbers in response to a request this month from The Canadian Press.

“Given that thousands of invitations are out the door to families, and at different stages, providing these numbers no longer reflects the rollout of the Ontario Autism Program like it once did,” spokesperson Patrick Bissett said in a statement.

Bissett did not respond to follow-up inquiries asking for more of an explanation and if that meant those numbers would ever be provided again.

NDP critic Monique Taylor called that “shameful.”

“That’s not transparent and that’s not what families need or want,” she said. “They have such a failure of a program happening and they have such a failure of a rollout that now they’re hiding.”