6 thoughts on Todd Smith’s Listening Tour and his new autism file messaging
Today newly appointed Minister of Children, Community and Social Services, Todd Smith starts what he’s dubbing as a Listening Tour to meet with the Ontario autism community.
There was some very interesting messaging coming from Todd Smith out of July 15 The Intelligencer news article.
Here are my 6 thoughts on Todd’s messaging:
- I have to get this out of the way. When I hear “Listening Tour”, I can’t help but think of The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. I have images of Todd Smith riding the bus with that song playing:
Is waiting to take you away
Waiting to take you away
OK … with that out of the way, here are the 5 real thoughts:
1. It’s really the “Mixed Emotions tour” (and yes, that’s a Rolling Stones reference for the Minister of Cheers). The community has mixed emotions on the listening tour. On one hand it’s refreshing to have a minister actually want to meet with the community. That’s a huge thing given the animosity Lisa MacLeod had created. On the other hand, many people feel frustrated as they’ve already exhaustively given the government their viewpoint and just want to get on with a solution.
2. It’s time to get real. Patrick Monaghan says it well here:
Todd needs to experience moments like last week outside Roman Baber’s office where a mother broke down in tears and said she can’t take this anymore. It was gut wrenching. You don’t forget stuff like that. Lisa didn’t do this, and look at the results. Here’s the thing, everyone has been dealing with this tumultuous period differently. Some are loud, some are present at every public outing, some have a tough time keeping up with the changes due to their busy lives, while others have been dealing with the uncertainty more privately. But everybody is hurting. What’s occurred here since February has been traumatic. Hopes and dreams dashed, futures uncertain. And to rub salt in our wounds we had a pit-bull minister tell us not to have false hope, that her childhood budgets will be implemented. Todd, it’s caused strong people to breakdown. Enough's enough.
3. A new mandate. a new hope? In The Intelligencer article Smith says “We’ve been taking some steps, I met with the Ontario Autism Panel last week in Toronto and gave them a new mandate to move forward with and I’m really looking forward to talking with the families tomorrow.” Well this is significant. However, there’s a lot more details needed. I’ve been critical of the panel’s raison d’être as MacLeod and Porter just wanted the panel to come up with a way to “top-up” childhood budgets for those with higher needs. That approach was utterly flawed, extremely wasteful. So the real question is, does the new mandate call for a full reset to a needs based program as Roman Baber’s report requested? Roman seems hopeful:
4. Please elaborate on this quote: “I think just opening the lines of communication is really important to provide some more openness and transparency on this file, and making sure we’re moving more toward a needs-based type of program”. Well in the spirit of transparency I suggest that he elaborate on what exactly this new mandate is. Is this a full reset? Are age-caps being removed? Details please.
5. Walking back Lisa MacLeod’s Childhood Budget’s … in a very diplomatic way. Here’s what Smith had to say: “I think the intentions previously were noble and that all families do need some help when they have children with autism, but clearly there are families that need more than just that base funding. So that’s why the panel is working on providing more in a needs-based program.” I think this is a sign that the Childhood Budgets are history. Note that he says “the intentions previously”. Well up until Smith took over the file the latest intention was to clear the waitlist within 18 months, and to explore how to add a needs-based component. Smith has recognized that clearing the waitlist is a difficult thing to do, which is aligned with Roman Baber’s internal report. The last remnants of the Childhood Budgets was Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Hogg. It’s not clear whether last week’s #FireBillHogg twitter campaign had an impact, however the word is that Hogg has not been present at the advisory panel’s meetings this week. Hopefully this is a sign that Smith is cleaning house. Hogg needs to go the way of Porter and MacLeod and never be near a policy file related to vulnerable people ever again. Any openings over at Tourism?
Update since first publishing. Smith confirmed Hogg was out during his first Listening Tour date:
6. Honesty about the autism budget is a good thing. I could not for the life of me understand why Lisa MacLeod continued to lie about the autism budget numbers (the budget was at $321 million when the PCs took over). She continuously underrepresented the autism budget she inherited and then depending on which way the wind blew, gave different numbers on the current spend. For a while I thought it was pure incompetence, how could somehow lie about something that was so easy to refute? But I think Lisa just couldn’t resist trying to blame the Liberals for the financial mess. In many ways, the PCs have never got out of campaign mode. All they knew was how to say how bad the Liberals were. Lisa was really good at this in opposition. But governing is completely different, you cannot continue to place blame on the previous administration. Lisa has proven herself so incompetent as a Minister that she’ll have a tough time landing a decent job outside of politics as she completely lacks executive management skills and continues to exercise poor judgement, or as Eugene Melnyk puts it “You’ve got a loose cannon out there.” At any rate, enough about Lisa. Here’s what Todd Smith had to say on the autism budget: there is “a ton of money in this program. The previous Liberal government funded autism to the tune of $320 million. There is now $620 million in there. Premier (Doug) Ford wanted to live up to his promise, so he’s almost doubled the amount of money that is available for families with autism. Money isn’t the issue, it’s just how that money gets dispersed, which is what we want to solve.” Hey Lisa, see, it’s not that hard to tell the truth!
