Mike Lake

[Business of Supply, May 18th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the member should know that the Canadian autism partnership working group travelled from coast to coast and worked with every government. In fact, CAP is endorsed by governments across the country. This is the very mechanism the member spoke of when he asked his question. CAP is designed to work with governments, in their jurisdictions, on issues facing families with autism. I can assure him that it will make a very real difference for those families.

[Business of Supply, May 18th, 2017]

moved:

That, given that: (a) Autism Spectrum Disorder (“autism”) is widely considered the fastest growing neurological disorder in Canada, impacting an estimated 1 in 68 children; (b) it is a lifelong diagnosis that manifests itself in a wide-range of symptoms, including difficulty communicating, social impairments, and restricted and repetitive behaviour; (c) individuals with autism and their families face unique challenges over their lifespan, often leading to families in crisis situations; and (d) Autism Spectrum Disorder is not just a health issue — it has overarching implications for Canadian society as a whole; accordingly, the House call on the government to grant the $19 million over 5 years requested by the Canadian Autism Partnership working group, Self-Advocates advisory group, and the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorders Alliance, in order to establish a Canadian Autism Partnership that would support families and address key issues such as information sharing and research, early detection, diagnosis and treatment.

Mr. Speaker, today is a very important day. I believe today is the first time the House has spent a full day talking about the challenges faced by Canadians living with autism and their families.

I am going to start by thanking a few people. Obviously, I am going to start by thanking my son, Jaden, who, to me, is an absolute superhero. This is a 21-year-old who is non-verbal, yet the way he communicates with people on a one-to-one basis is unlike anyone I have ever seen. He has a way to connect with people, without speaking, that we have trouble with in our regular lives.

I want to thank my amazing daughter, Jenae, who turns 18 this week. She is graduating from high school this month as well. It is hard to believe.

I speak for a living and do interviews for a living, but Jenae probably gave the best answer I have ever heard to an interview question when she was 13 years old. She was asked by Steve Paikin, in an interview about her brother, if she ever wished her brother was “normal”, like every other kid. Jenae's response was that since Jaden was diagnosed with autism before she was born, she didn't exactly know what a normal brother was like, so Jaden, having autism, kind of was her normal. Steve asked her if she liked him just the way he was. She said that if Jaden did not have autism, or was cured or something, he would not be the same as Jaden was then. Jenae was very wise at 13 years old talking about how Jaden has impacted her life.

I also want to thank Jaden's mother, Debi. We have been apart for several years now, but Debi is an absolute champion for Jaden and has been a champion for Jaden throughout his life. When it came to advocating for him at a young age for early intervention, when it came to working through the school system and in the battle to try to get an aide for him, she was a pit bull for him in terms of that advocacy. We were able to get the help he needed every step of the way because of her advocacy and her championing of his interests.

I have a few more people to thank. I want to thank my staff, who put in tireless hours month after month. We work on a lot of big things: the global autism partnership; the Canadian autism partnership; global maternal health and the rights of women and girls around the world; managing the largest constituency in the country, out of 338 constituencies; and working with constituents. I thank them.

I am going to go back a little in time and thank Stephen Harper, the prime minister in 2015, who initiated the Canadian autism partnership working group, along with former finance minister Joe Oliver and our health minister at the time, who is now our current Leader of the Opposition. In budget 2015, there was $2 million put in place to establish the Canadian autism partnership working group.

There were some staff members at that time who were critical in helping me understand the road to getting there. I will thank Rachel Curran, Sean Speer, and David van Hemmen, in particular, for their help in getting there.

In my global work, I get to work with some key individuals and global organizations that have come to support the Canadian autism partnership. Huge thanks go to Save the Children, Plan International Canada, World Vision Canada, and UNICEF Canada, which have really stepped up on social media to support this initiative.

Global Citizen is an organization that works to alleviate poverty and fight inequality around the world on behalf of the world's most vulnerable. Global Citizen in Canada has chosen, as its first domestic initiative, to champion the Canadian autism partnership, recognizing the challenges faced by Canadian families living with autism. A huge thanks goes to the folks at Global Citizen for the great work they have done.

We have also had some support from friends in the hockey world. I formerly worked for the Edmonton Oilers for 10 years before I was elected. We have had support on social media from Hayley Wickenheiser, Elliotte Friedman, Steve Warne, right here in Ottawa, and Kodette LaBarbera. Again, they have huge platforms and are very busy at this time, and they have taken the time to make their point on social media in support of the Canadian autism partnership. I thank them.

Most important, probably, beyond my family, is to thank the stakeholders, the working groups, and the incredible group of self-advocates, adults living with autism who can articulate, in a unique way, what it is like to have autism.

I had a really great conversation with one of them, Patricia, this weekend. We talked about the importance of the Canadian autism partnership. Every single time I talked to a self-advocate, I learn something new. In Patricia's case, it was the word “autistic“ versus “having autism”.

I have always talked about Jaden having autism, because I have always thought it was something he has, not something he is, but Patricia reinforced for me that for some in the autism community, they like to be defined as autistic. It is who they are, not something they have. It is an important differentiation, and I got an understanding I did not have before we had that conversation this past weekend.

Of course, I want to thank people who come up to me in random places who appreciate the work we are doing and who work to understand. I remember one time a few years back, Jaden and I were in New York at the Radio City Music Hall. Jaden, Jenae, and I were watching a Kelly Clarkson concert. Jaden dropped a pin on the floor and was obsessed with this pin the entire concert, so the entire concert, for me and Jaden, was spent with Jaden rummaging around for the pin, bumping the chair in front of him. We never did find the pin, but during the entire concert, that was the case, with me trying to grab him and play with him and get his attention away from it. The person in front of us, whose seat he had been bumping the whole time, turned around afterward. I thought she was going to be upset, and she said, “You are the best dad in the world.” This complete stranger had noticed what was going on, and rather than being upset about it, rather than ignoring it and just walking away, she took time to let me know that she noticed and to let me know that she understood that it was difficult. I had tears in my eyes, as one can imagine, leaving that concert. She was someone I will never meet again. I never got the person's name. She never got my name, but in that moment, it was that level of understanding that, as parents of kids with autism or family members of people with autism, we need. We need that understanding more and more in our society when different things are happening.

When Jaden was three, as we were walking out of a restaurant, he grabbed a drink of someone's beer off a table, because he was thirsty, there was a glass there, and he did not understand that he was not supposed to have it. There was the time we were at an Oilers hockey game, when Jaden was nine, and he suddenly, out of nowhere, reached over the shoulder of the five-year-old girl in front of him and grabbed the ice cream off the top of her cone, as if he had a snowball, and started eating it out of his hand, with ice cream dripping down his fingers. I said to the dad, “I'm so sorry, Jaden has autism”, and he understood. Of course, the five-year-old girl did not understand at all. We explained it, we got her a new ice cream at the intermission, and everything was good. That is life with Jaden, and it can be challenging sometimes.

When I talk about the Canadian autism partnership and the work we do on autism here in this House, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that I am championing my son's interests. Jaden has lived in one of the best places in the world to live, Alberta, if one has a child with autism. What I am really championing is for every person living with autism in Canada to have the same opportunities Jaden has had.

When Jaden was two, we realized he had autism. It took a bit to get a diagnosis. It took a couple of months to get in and then maybe a couple of months to get treatment, but Jaden started his early intervention at about two and a half. At that time, he did not even recognize me. Folks in this House have seen Jaden interact now, and he has interacted with many of them. However, back then, his main interaction with me was that he would come into a room where I was, grab me, and drag me through the house to the pantry. He would grab my arm and push it up to the pantry door, push my arm into the pantry to the shelf where he wanted to grab the crackers he could not reach, and then pull me out and pull my arm down, like his own personal robot. He would grab the crackers he wanted, put them back in my hand, push my arm back up, back into the pantry, and then push me away. He did this as a two-and-a-half-year-old or three-year-old. I had served his purpose as his personal robot. He had his crackers. He would go back to playing with his pots and pans, lining them up, stacking them up, obsessed with them for hours, sometimes. He would take breaks to watch Barney videos or The Sound of Music, which he watched about 300 times. I liked The Sound of Music the first 100 times. I still like it now. Anyway, that was life with Jaden.

The early intervention completely changed his mind. It started with putting a spoon on the table and getting him to give us the spoon. It was to have him recognize what a thing was and, hand over hand, have him hand us the spoon. We would then celebrate it by clapping and giving him a Smartie as a reward. Over and over again, we would do this one thing, and then eventually, it was a spoon and a fork or something else. This continued and got better. We started to help him build social interactions and recognize other things over the course of that time. Some of Jenae's earliest memories, as someone three and a half years younger, were, when she was two, learning English by watching Jaden do his early intervention and sometimes doing it with him.

There is video of Jenae with a car and a big stuffed Zoe, and Jenae loves Zoe. She would say, “Jaden, give me Zoe”, and Jaden would give her Zoe. That is the way she learned language, by interacting with Jaden over the course of time. That is really important.

As Jaden got older, he went to school, and we had to deal with trying to get him a full-time aid. Jaden has a photographic memory. Jaden knows where the swimming pool is, and he loves swimming, but he does not understand traffic at all. Even at 21, he does not understand traffic. We have to work with him to navigate that. He could leave the school and know where the swimming pool was, but it would be very dangerous for him, so we had to have someone with him at all times. That took a bit of education with the school system.

Jaden now, at 21, is in a program at the Centre for Autism Services of Alberta. It is called Quest for Independence. He went to school until last year, but now he is sort of transitioning. The goal, of course, is to get him into a vocation of some sort, but that is a challenge. It is a challenge across the country getting people who have gone through the school system into a vocation of some sort and into the training they need. There is also the mitigation of some of the challenges they might have, depending on where they are on the spectrum, navigating a job interview and that kind of process, which is very abstract for people with autism.

Of course, the question we then have is what happens as Jaden gets older. Right now we have an agreement that Jaden will live with one or the other of us, and we are good with that. However, there is going to come a time, and this is the hardest question for every parent of a child with autism, or any developmental disability in this country, when we are not there anymore. My hope is that we have built a society in this country that is so supportive of people who are different, people who need some level of support, that we need not fear that and we have built an environment that goes beyond family.

Jaden has only one sibling. Jenae cannot be expected to take care of Jaden for the rest of his life. Certainly she knows that she is his only sibling and is prepared for whatever responsibility she has as his sister, and she loves him very much, but we need to build a support system around that for families.

That brings us to the Canadian autism partnership. There has been a history to get here, working with the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorders Alliance, CASDA, and stakeholders from across the country. There had been a call for a national autism strategy for many years. We got to a point where we started asking the stakeholders what they actually want. What is it they are looking for? Many of the things the autism community is looking for are provincial in nature. They are provincially delivered, such as education, health care, and social services, and the provinces are responsible for them.

In 2014, we saw that there was a role to play in vocations, so in budget 2014, Jim Flaherty, at the time, put in place funding for a CommunityWorks program and a program called Ready, Willing & Able, two programs to help people with autism in the vocational world. In budget 2015, we worked with CASDA and other stakeholders to ask for the Canadian autism partnership, and as mentioned earlier, $2 million over two years was given to a working group to establish that partnership, with a clear indication, at the time, that the partnership would be funded once this expert working group had done its work, along with the other stakeholders and self-advocates.

They did incredible work. They worked for years on that. They submitted their business plan and then asked the government of the day, this past fall, for $19 million over five years, or $3.8 million a year. As I mentioned in this House yesterday, $3.8 million a year is one dime per Canadian. It is a dime per Canadian for a Canadian autism partnership.

I have to say that there was an expectation that this was a no-brainer and that it would be funded for sure. How could one not support an evidence-based business plan, put together by stakeholders from across the country, that would help hundreds of thousands of Canadians as vulnerable as those living with autism? Inexplicably, it was not in budget 2017. It was rejected.

Now we have moved forward, and we are asking that it be funded anyway, that the government find a way to find that dime per Canadian to help Canadians living with autism. We have come to this point where we have an opposition day, a full day in this House, dedicated to a single question. It is not like a budget, where there are a whole bunch of other things thrown into the mix. We are just going to debate this one idea of a Canadian autism partnership. In the end, probably a couple of weeks from now, we will vote on it. Every single member in this House will vote on this. It is an important opportunity.

John Wooden, a famous NCAA basketball coach, has one of my favourite quotes. He said, “You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” That is a fantastic quote and is applicable in some way today.

For the members, and Canadians who might be watching this, if we do something for people with autism, they will be able to repay us. That is the point. People with autism and other developmental disabilities are capable of way more than we give them credit for, but we have to invest in them, just like we invest in everyone else in our society. We have to believe in them. Sometimes it means we have to work a little harder to understand some of the challenges, like the difficulty dealing with the abstract. Why is 85% on the spectrum not employed? Let us work hard to understand that and to figure out how we get the opportunity to benefit from those skills and abilities.

If people have just met Jaden and he gives them a high five, it is really easy to underestimate him. However, if they see him working in the library, putting books away, it is astonishing how much he is capable of. He will be putting books away. He will have them all in order and will be running around the library putting the books where they belong, never making a mistake. However, as Jaden is running around the library, if he sees a book that has been put in the wrong spot, he will grab it without skipping a beat and put it in the right spot. He sees the world differently, but he will not be able to use those skills if we do not pay attention to them, if we do not hard wire our society to look for that. The Canadian autism partnership is all about that.

The Canadian autism partnership recognizes jurisdiction and brings experts together from across the country to deal with families with autism. Then it advises governments in the jurisdictions. It might take a look at something like early intervention or diagnosis. Right now In Quebec, families are facing a two-year wait for diagnosis and then a two-year wait for treatment. Their kids are two years old. They know they have autism, yet they cannot get them diagnosed until they are four and they cannot get the evidence-based treatment they need until they are six. Families are mortgaging their houses to get this evidence-based treatment.

The Canadian autism partnership would work with the Government of Quebec and show it what evidence shows will work. It would be a trusted adviser with the Government of Quebec, or any other government. Multiple governments across the country are having difficulty in various areas. Education, housing, transition to employment, all of those things are challenging. The Canadian autism partnership would bring the best information from across the country and around the world and ensure it would be distributed in a way that policy could be executed right now so we would not have to wait for this.

As I wrap up, I will use one more quote. JFK said, “Things don’t happen, they are made to happen.” That is where we are right now.

For folks in the autism community who might be watching this right now, or anyone else who has heard what I have said and understands its importance, we need to act. I believed, and I think stakeholders believed this as well, that budget 2017 would contain the funding for the Canadian autism partnership. It seemed like a no-brainer at the time. However, it did not.

Quite honestly, when I stood and asked my question in the House of Commons yesterday, I believed that maybe at this point, knowing the motion was coming, the minister might stand and say that the government had thought about it, that it had made a mistake, and that had decided it would to do it. That did not happen.

I firmly believe that if Canadians speak up and make their voices heard, through the Global Citizen action, directly to their members of Parliament, when the vote comes on this in a couple of weeks, members of the House will vote the right way. People from all parties get elected because they want to make a difference in the lives of people. This is a clear motion, a clear opportunity to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadians.

I want to thank members of Parliament for hearing me out on this. I look forward to the debate today. If people watching have any questions, or want to take part, my Facebook and Twitter handle are “MikeLakeMP”. Pinned to the top is the Global Citizen action. I ask them to take action and help our elected officials make the right decision.

[Health, May 17th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, that sounds like a no to me, so I will try this again. The Canadian Autism Partnership Working Group, along with a team of amazing self-advocates and the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorders Alliance, worked for almost two years on this. They are requesting $3.8 million per year, a dime per Canadian, a dime, to fund a partnership that will meaningfully improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadians.

Will the Liberal government commit today to funding the Canadian autism partnership?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1, May 5th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the concern that my colleague has always had, both privately and publicly, for families living with autism.

I am fortunate. My son Jaden is 21, and having grown up in Alberta, he has had solid support from the time he was two years old. However, the situation facing some families in this country depends on where they live. In some provinces, they know that their child has autism at two, but they cannot get a diagnosis for two years because they are on a wait list until the child is four. They cannot get treatment until the child is six. Certainly that is provincial jurisdiction.

What this Canadian autism partnership would have done, again for $3.8 million a year in the context of a $52 billion deficit, is bring experts together, renowned world-class experts who are right here in Canada, to advise governments in their jurisdiction on things like early intervention, education, housing, transitions and employment, all of those things that are real challenges for families living with autism, people living with autism across this country.

Again, we are talking about a minimal investment and two years of work by an expert panel that reported to the government on this, and it was rejected in the budget.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1, May 5th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, some of the youngest populations in Canada are on reserve. When we look at where the burden will be because of the $52 billion in just two years in deficit that the government is running, the biggest burden will be on our younger people.

I would respond to the hon. member by saying when we look at the record, the historic levels of spending that the government is undertaking right now by borrowing money to do so, it will be the very people he is talking about who will pay the price down the road, because there will be a bill coming down the road. We just have to look at history, a former Trudeau government, to see what that price will be.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1, May 5th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand on behalf of the 160,000 constituents in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, the largest constituency in terms of population in the country, with Leduc-Nisku at the heart of it, the heart of Canada's energy sector as well. I want to talk a bit about that energy sector, because, as I look at budget 2017, there is significant concern in the sector and with our biggest competitor, the U.S., cutting red tape and taxes. The Liberal government, of course, continues to jack up taxes, making the Canadian energy sector less competitive.

I have a couple of quotes from experts in the sector. The first is from Tim McMillan, the president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, who stated:

I am disappointed and I think it sends a bad signal and further puts us at a disadvantage in terms of the capital we are trying to attract from global markets compared to the U.S., which is our biggest competitor for that capital.

He went on to say:

The government is very concerned with the middle class. Our industry hires the middle class.

Successive Liberal budgets and policies have been devastating to the middle class in my riding of Edmonton—Wetaskiwin.

Jack Mintz from the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary had this to say:

I think this competitiveness issue is a huge issue for Canada coming down the road and I'm surprised they took actions right now on this when they will be needing to deal with a much bigger set of changes next year.... The U.S. is going in a completely different direction on carbon and major U.S. tax reform. That's in addition to the measures being taken on carbon in Alberta. You start adding it all up and it's not a healthy climate. Businesses are taking their money elsewhere.

This Liberal fiscal approach is of great concern to my constituents, with $52 billion in deficit over the past two years, $52 billion. I had the chance to host four round tables with constituents. More than 60 constituents came to the round tables during the last break. There were six main concerns that permeated the discussion at the round tables. Two of them were refugees and marijuana, but the other four were all financial concerns. Deficits and spending was one of them. Pipelines was another one. The carbon tax was another one. Seniors care and benefits was another one.

One of the questions that I ask at round tables is: For the $52 billion in deficit spending that we have had over the two years, with no real end in sight, no plan to get back to balance, does anyone feel that he or she is better off? I would say that of the more than 60 people at my round tables, there was one couple who said yes, they were better off, but then they went on to explain that their life circumstances had changed and they were better off because of changes in their life circumstances. It was certainly not because of anything the Liberal government had done for them. Again I ask that question: Is there anybody in Canada who is really better off for this $52 billion in deficit spending over the last two years?

One thing we do is look at history. History provides us a really good lesson in terms of where we are going under the current government. We can look at the previous Trudeau government back in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when the prime minister of the day ran budget deficits in 14 out of 15 years over that course of time. The results of those deficits, of course, in the mid-1980s were that interest rates were so high in Canada and employment was a challenge in Canada. If we look at the result over the next nine years, the Mulroney years, while the government of the day pretty much spent what it brought in, the interest payments on the Trudeau debt were astronomical and provided some of the biggest deficits in Canadian history because of the debt that Trudeau ran up during those years.

We fast forward to 1993 when a new Liberal government came into power. What did it have to do? It had to cut transfer payments for social services, health care, and education. It cut spending across the board, cut international development spending, things that are really important to people in Canada and abroad. They were devastating cuts. We remember the tough decisions the provincial government had to make in Alberta. The provincial government in Ontario and provincial governments across this country had to make very difficult decisions because $35 billion in transfers were cut right out from underneath them for that important spending.

We fast forward to today and look at the current government. We take a lesson that down the road, someone is going to have to pay for this deficit. Down the road, difficult decisions are going to have to be made. Let us look at the demographics we are talking about when we are considering how those decisions are going to be made.

In the mid-1970s, there were seven people working in this country for every senior citizen. Today, that number is four. There are four people working for every senior citizen today. With the demographics changing, by 2030, we are going to have two and a half people working for every senior citizen. That is two and a half people paying the taxes and sharing the burden. Of course, seniors pay taxes as well, but in terms of people working before their senior years to pay the burden of this debt that is being racked up right now, it is going to be the younger generation who is going to pay for that. It is going to be our kids who are going to have to pay for that, much like the taxpayers in the mid-1990s had to pay for decisions made by the Trudeau government of the 1970s. Those cuts were devastating at the time.

If we are concerned about things like seniors care and benefits that my constituents brought up as one of the six issues that they are concerned about, for seniors living in a generation from now, having to face the cuts that are inevitable, given the unprecedented level of spending of the government, it is going to be tremendously difficult. Then the younger generation, the people who are just starting to vote now, are the ones who are going to have to pay the lion's share of the burden to pay off that debt. It is very concerning, to say the least.

Let us look at a couple of the other issues, such as the pipelines issue that my constituents bring up because it is very important. Let us take a look at energy east and, again, take a look at the perverse nature, I guess, in the sense of the government's decisions as they relate to the fiscal situation of the country. More than 600,000 barrels of oil come into Canada from outside Canada, from countries like the U.S., Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Algeria, and Angola. We have more than 600,000 barrels every single day coming into Canada from those countries by ships and by rail, instead of just having the political will to set in place a process that allows energy east to happen. It does not even require government spending. This is something that the private sector would build and the government just needs to get out of the way. If the government did that, we would see jobs come back to Alberta, jobs come back across the country, in terms of the building of the pipeline. We would see taxes being paid and revenues within the government increasing, not by raising the percentage, but just by creating wealth in the country. We would see transfers for things like health, social services, and education go up because of the impact of that. The government just needs to get out of the way.

I also want to talk for a second about something that is very personal for me. In all of this $52 billion of deficit spending the government has done, it could not find $3.8 million for a Canadian autism partnership. One in 68 Canadian children today is diagnosed with autism. It is a significant issue. If we think of an average family being four people, that is one in 17 Canadians living in a family with someone with autism.

We had an expert working group work for two years to establish a plan for this, report to the government with a budget ask that was incredibly modest, $19 million over five years, $3.8 million per year, and that budget ask was rejected. With $52 billion in deficit spending, hundreds of millions of dollars in spending overall, $3.8 million could not be found for some of the most vulnerable Canadians in our society. That is unconscionable. Something needs to be done about that.

I see that my time is winding up. I look forward to questions from my hon. colleagues. I am sure the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader will stand, as he usually does, and I look forward to his question.

[Health, April 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, in response to an earlier question on autism from the Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister talked of his government “highlighting the work that we continue to do.” The trouble is, his government is doing the exact opposite.

In 2015, our government funded a world-class Canadian autism partnership working group. The Liberal budget just rejected the request for funding to allow that critical work to continue.

Could the Prime Minister please explain how his government can find nearly $400 million for a company that says it does not need it, and not find $4 million a year to help Canadian families living with autism who desperately need it?

[World Autism Day, April 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, April 2 was World Autism Awareness Day and 19 years since my son Jaden was diagnosed, at two. Jaden is not special because he has autism, nor is he special despite having autism. He is just really and truly special.

When people are with Jaden, he does not require them to be anyone they are not. He simply loves the fact that they are with him. He does not care at all what party people are with, whether someone is the Prime Minister, a backbencher, a staff member, or even a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

He likes people and trusts them. If they do him wrong, he will probably like and trust them all over again before they have completed their next breath.

Too often our society views such naïveté as weakness. Having had the privilege of learning from Jaden for 21 years, I would argue that the opposite is true. If we can adapt our thinking to include and embrace more of the raw honesty and vulnerability we see in people like Jaden, we will all be better off for it.

[Health, March 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, in Alberta there has long been significant government support for people with autism. Other Canadian families have not had the same experience, some mortgaging their homes to get help they desperately need. In 2015, our government appointed a dozen world-leading Canadians to develop a Canadian autism partnership. After two years' work, they presented the health minister with a strong plan and a relatively modest budget ask. As the government continues to spend with such reckless abandon, can the minister please explain why the Liberals decided to take a hard line toward Canadians with autism?

[Health, December 13th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, in our balanced budget of 2015, Prime Minister Harper and finance minister Joe Oliver established an expert working group tasked with the creation of a Canadian autism partnership to support those living with autism, their families, and caregivers. The current leader of the opposition, who was then health minister, officially launched the working group that summer. This world-leading team of Canadians has completed its work and reported back to the Liberal health minister with a business plan and a request for support

Can Canadians living with autism and their families count on the minister's support for this important initiative?