The Globe & Mail reports that Ontario’s acting provincial auditor examining an Ontario government program for autistic children has found “chaos… lax oversight, millions of dollars in dubious spending and 1,200 children losing precious time on a waiting list”

”Think of how many more kids could have gotten services with $16.7-million if the government had been properly monitoring and running and overseeing this program.”

Dongjoon Kim might have been one of them. Nearly 6, the severely autistic boy sat on the waiting list for two years before his mother, Youngshin Kim, got word this week that he had been approved for 30 hours a week of intensive behavioural therapy.

…

While the total budget climbed from $4-million to $44-million over the past five years, the number of children receiving funding has barely budged. In some cases, money was spent on new computers and furniture without the ministry’s knowledge.

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At the three agencies it audited — the ministry was unable to provide accurate information for all nine — the cost of putting money straight into the hands of parents was as little as one-sixth the cost of funding the agencies to provide the service. It cost one agency $126 an hour to provide treatment, while parents living in the same part of the province managed to hire private therapists for an average of $20 an hour.

There is still no Canadian politician willing to admit that government administration of health care creates waiting lists, and causes suffering for those that it is supposed to serve.