The Liberals aren’t the only ones moving in on Doug Ford’s policy void to score points in the federal election campaign.

The federal Conservatives are preparing to wade into the politically fraught territory of autism – a policy zone that has put the Ontario premier on the defensive for months now, and which the federal Liberals have opted to steer clear of in their election platform.

In the Conservative Party platform expected to be made public this week, Andrew Scheer will commit to putting $50 million over five years to pull together a national autism strategy, the Star has learned.

The party will promise to put the money towards working with autistic Canadians, their families and provincial governments towards a strategy that will be people-oriented, culturally appropriate and make sure to include remote, northern and Indigenous communities.

That’s a victory for many autism organizations who have fought for years to have federal heft fill in the gaps at the provincial level.

And it’s an interesting turn for Scheer.

Backing national strategies has long been anathema to the federal Conservatives. Former prime minister Stephen Harper mainly avoided them for fear of being sucked into lengthy discussions with all and sundry, with few deliverables in the near term and prohibitively expensive outcomes over the long term.

And his government was leery of adopting policy that overlapped with the provincial sphere, even though many federal governments over time have been active in health and education by developing narrowly defined initiatives for national funding.

Towards the end of his time in office, Harper tiptoed into the autism funding realm. In the 2014 budget, his government put $11 million over four years towards vocational training. In 2015, the Conservatives launched a working group to figure out where to go next — and promised to listen. The Liberals continued with the piecemeal approach. In their 2018 budget, they put $20 million over five years to support families. And Budget 2019 included $12 million over three years for community projects.

But that’s a far cry from previous commitments. The Liberal Party, in its 2016 policy convention, passed a resolution calling for full public coverage of autism treatment, including applied behaviour analysis (ABA) therapy which can cost individual families millions over a lifetime and would likely cost Ottawa billions to implement.

An autism coalition, backed by the three opposition parties and some Liberal MPs, lobbied loud and hard in 2017 for the Liberals to allocate $19 million over five years to develop a national strategy. They were turned down because, the Liberals said at the time, there was no unanimity among autism advocates.

Still, many autism organizations had hoped to see a commitment in the Liberal platform during the campaign – perhaps not ABA but something akin to the blueprint put together by the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorder Alliance last spring. The blueprint urges federal leadership in coordinating support for Canadians on the spectrum, and targets immediate help in access to care, employment, housing and more research. After all, many Liberal MPs signed a letter in support of the blueprint just before the campaign began, with some of them actively endorsing it.

But when the Liberal platform was made public at the end of September, it was not there.

“Disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about no mention of a national autism strategy in the Liberal Party platform. Parents, advocates and myself are shocked,” tweeted Independent Liberal Sen. Jim Munson, a long-time and tireless advocate for autism support.

So far – despite the temptation to make commitments in every area where Ford in Ontario has pulled back – the Liberals have responded with their “still more work to be done” tag line that they use for so many policies in this campaign. They point to their campaign promise to double the benefit for children with severe disabilities.

Meanwhile, the NDP included plans for a national strategy in their platform. And now, the Conservatives are going there too – with more money on the table than anyone dared ask for.

Mike Lake, the Conservative candidate for Edmonton-Wetaskiwin and father of son on the autism spectrum, has spent years knitting together areas of agreement among disparate autism advocates, and now has his party onside.

“This has been a long process. It’s been a lot of work to bring people from all sides together,” he said in an interview.

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The platform will state that 500,000 Canadians of all ages – one in 66 under the age of 17 – have been diagnosed with autism, and children with high needs can cost families up to $80,000 a year. The federal government can, and should, take a leadership role in assuring that services in every corner of the country are available according to need.

The commitment may well lead to other funding and plans down the road, Lake says, with the goal of improving the quality of life for autism families and the country at large, with autistic Canadians contributing to their full potential.

“There has to be leadership at the federal level to get it right.”

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