Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and support the motion put forward by the hon. member for Fredericton.
There are a few points that I would like to make. Sometimes people do not think of these points unless they know families involved in this issue.
One of the things that was just said concerned the failure to bond. Any parent knows the great joy of coming into a room, having their child smile at them and put up his or her arms, wanting to be picked up and hugged. Parents recognize the fact that the child has bonded with them. I am thrilled and pleased to say that my 11 year old grandson still does that. It is very difficult and hurtful for a family if a child is not able to do that easily. Sometimes these children can do so with their parents, but often not with other people in their lives.
We need a national autism strategy. We are in the process of getting a national strategy for cancer, although one could say it is a health issue so therefore it is a provincial issue. We now have leadership on a national cancer strategy and we could have a national autism strategy, and part of this debate has been about whose responsibility this really is.
We know about early intervention leading to success no matter what challenge a child may have. The earlier we can identify that a child needs support and the earlier that appropriate support can be provided, at the right time and in the right way for that particular child, it is a thousandfold more likely that the child will be far more successful than he or she otherwise would have been. Because they have had early intervention, we see children who are now in the regular school system and we see children graduating from high school.
As with any other challenge a child faces, autism has a variety of effects. Some children, with early intervention, will do very well. In particular, children with Asperger's will go to school and participate with their classmates. They may have a challenge when it is a bit unstructured, but they will do very well.
Some children will always need ongoing support in a significant way. If we do not do that, if we do not pay for the cost of a national strategy, the costs that we will pay down the road in health care, in the education system, in foster care and in group home support are going to grow at a rate that I cannot even imagine. This is why I am a bit worried about the amendment. It does not talk about those nice parts, about what the strategy should do.
We do pay for treatment for people in Canada, and while I will admit that the numbers are not large, these people are on drugs that cost the taxpayer $90,000 to $100,000 a year. Without those drugs, those people would not be able to function. We spend that much money on these other people to enable them to be the best they can be during their growth. Therefore, I think the economic argument fails. If people have no moral support for this, then the economic argument should move them. I hope both would.
We are seeing increased numbers in regard to autism now. I am not sure that we know all the reasons for the increase. They are increasing dramatically, more in some places than in others. Sometimes we see more than one child in a family being affected. We have not figured out all of the pieces, which is certainly why research is so important, but the research may not be available to us for five or ten years. I do not know. I have no idea how long it will take.
However, I do know that today there are parents at home who cannot leave their home because they cannot find someone to care for their child. If someone says to them that there is a great movie on and they should go to see it, they cannot, because they cannot get a babysitter who is able to meet the needs of their child. Their world becomes quite insular, although they do amazing things. They were on the steps of the legislature and they were out advocating to every MP, MLA and municipal councillor, every place they could, and they have been doing so for some time.
They manage to do that, but they do it against such odds that I do not know if all of us would be able to do it. If we can support the needs of children with autism, not just with our good feelings or a strategy, but also with financial resources, then we help not only the child with autism, although that is the first and most important thing, we also help their brothers and sisters, because their brothers and sisters may then have a little more time with mom and dad.
Moms and dads have to spend a lot of time with their children who have autism, particularly if they are children who may not yet be able to go to the bathroom independently or feed themselves independently or even tolerate the feeling of most foods in their mouth because of their tactile defensiveness. So this support is not just for the child; it is for their moms, their dads, their grandparents and their siblings. They will all benefit from our ability to support families not just with a national strategy, which I do support, but also with financing.
There is another thing I would say about a national strategy. When we talk about children with autism, because we have been talking about it for 10 years, 12 years or 15 years at the most, we talk about children, and that is where we focus, but we need a national strategy that looks beyond when they are 12 months old, 2 years or 5 years of age, or in elementary school or high school. How do we get past that early age and successfully into the teenage years, which are even more difficult for any child with a challenge, and then into adulthood? These are children who will be adults in our communities and they need support. We need to look at that strategy about the kind of support or kinds of resources that will be needed, not just for them as children but lifelong.
As somebody who has worked with people with disabilities for 40 years now, I can say that if we do not do this for children with autism, if we do not do something now and those children and adults are not in our community, we lose too, because they bring something to us. It is not just about us giving. They bring their special gifts and talents into our community, so we lose if we do not provide support.
There are many families looking at us to see what will happen with this motion. I hope that every member of the House will be able to support this strategy but I hope too that members understand when they support it that it is not only a strategy; it is a strategy with the pieces that were in the original motion, which I have to say I liked better.
If the member who proposed it agrees, then so be it, but the fact is that it will take funding for related services. It will be in cooperation with provincial governments that will have a surveillance program and that right now are probably desperate because we are seeing such increasing numbers of children with autism. The numbers are increasing in ways that I cannot imagine with any other kind of health or disability issue. Without proper surveillance and research, we will have no idea of how to stop this increase in numbers or about what it is in our environment that is causing this and then causing us to see it in a second child in the family.
I would hope that supporting the national autism strategy will also mean that people understand that what goes with that support is the costing for treatment, education, professional training and support for the parents.