May 2002
Toronto Star - Patricia Orwen social policy reporter

DELAYED REPORT SHOWS SURGE IN AUTISM CASES

The numbers of Ontario children diagnosed with autism are soaring, says a government study.

In 1998, nearly 800 kids younger than 6 were newly diagnosed with the neurological disorder, a 53 per cent jump over the same period two years earlier.

The study, completed in March 2000, by the provincial health ministry, was released at a news conference yesterday at Queen's Park hosted by Liberal community and social services critic Michael Gravelle.

"We don’t know why we're seeing this explosion, but we do know that it's a dramatic one and it has people worried ... if the numbers keep escalating and we don’t treat these kids, the results will be tragic ," said Dr. Ari Zaretsky, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Sunnybrook hospital.

"This is a shocking number, and the government is going to have to commit more money to treatment," said Gravelle, adding that the province has consistently refused to give him any statistics on autism. The 2-year-old report probably would never have become public without the persistence of University of Toronto professor Marianna Ofner-Agostini, Gravelle added.

Ofner-Agostini, the mother of a 2-year-old autistic child, began calling the provincial health ministry in January, asking for the report. The epidemiologist had learned through colleagues that the ministry had done a review of autism on OHIP data bases.

"After several weeks of me phoning them five times a day asking for it, I finally got a call. I was told (by a senior ministry official) that I couldn’t have the report and I couldn’t ask any questions about it", Ofner-Agostini said.

She finally obtained a copy from a researcher at Queen's University.

"The government has refused to release this report and downplayed the numbers of children with this disorder because they don’t want to fund the treatment," Gravelle said.

The study found that 2,863 children younger than 7 were diagnosed with autism between 1991 and 1998. The province is spending $39 million for intensive one-on-one therapy known as applied behavioural analysis for 500 children. Some 900 are waiting.

But once they turn 6, these children will no longer be eligible for the treatment, which costs $50,000 a year. At least a dozen families have filed human rights complaints.

Health ministry spokesperson David Jensen offered no explanation yesterday as to why anyone would have had difficulty obtaining the report.
He referred questions on treatment to the Ministry of Community and Social Services. Officials there weren’t available, but former minister John Baird has said Ontario's treatment program
"is the best in Canada."

Zaretsky said treatment is fully covered in the U.S. because of guarantees under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
He said researchers are seeing a similar surge in autism in other countries, but what environmental factors may be involved is unknown.