After reading about a family’s fight to get the Ontario government to pay for surgery in the U.S. that would save the sight of their 3-year-old son, Marcus Maguire knew he had to help.

So when he read in the Star last week that the province refused to pay for Liam Reid’s treatment in Michigan, Maguire got on the phone and easily convinced his boss they could — and should — step forward to lend a hand.

Without the surgery, Liam will go blind by the time he is 4. Liam has advanced bilateral persistent fetal vasculature syndrome, or Norrie’s disease.

Now Calgary-based AGAT Laboratories, where Maguire is the senior vice-president, has committed to pay for all of Reid’s medical bills related to the surgery and future treatment, expected to be around $45,000.

Kristina Reid, of Whitby, plans to accept the offer from AGAT if the government doesn’t pay for his surgery but they are “hoping the ministry will do the right thing.”

“We hope to have long-term care and we don’t want to keep having AGAT foot the bill. We have to do what is best in the long-run,” said Reid, who met Maguire along with her husband David on Wednesday at a Toronto pub.

Reid isn’t just trying to get her son the best medical care possible — she is also waging a war against a government bureaucracy that has inexplicably agreed to pay for another Ontario boy’s treatment in Michigan. He has the same rare condition.

While the unnamed boy has had 49 procedures paid for since 2002, each one of Reid’s requests for out-of-country care have so far been denied.

If the province does decide to fund Liam, AGAT will donate the money to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

“We’d like to help out as soon as possible so as to let you concentrate on what is required now — taking care of your son,” Maguire, the father of two young children, told the Reids.

Maguire said his parents would have “easily gone bankrupt or put them in a position to roll the dice with my future” if they had to pay the cost of his heart surgery. “And as a parent of a little girl around Liam’s age, that is a sickening thought.”

Reid’s next appointment is on July 9 with Dr. Michael Trese at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, MI. They are trying to keep the minimal sight Liam has.

Trese performed successful surgery in Reid’s left eye, giving him some vision — he can now see light and form. However, surgeons at the Hospital for Sick Children were unable to save Reid’s right eye.

Now, Reid said she is going to Michigan with a sense of relief: “Regardless of what happens we have the funding.”

Behind the scenes, the Ministry of Health was trying to contact doctors at Sick Kids to see if anything more could possibly be done here.

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Premier Dalton McGuinty told reporters Wednesday that “obviously we want to make sure that we are doing what we can to ensure that Liam and his family can access the best possible quality care here in Ontario.