In the House of Commons late last year, Liberal MP Blair Wilson made this statement re autistic children and "medically necessary" ABA/IBI:
For the child's humanity, treatment is necessary.
Then he said:
It is time Canada took action against autism, a blight on society. We must support this bill.
To ensure that no one has any cause to wonder if this was really what Mr Wilson meant to say, Mr Wilson highlighted this statement on his website--in large, bold letters:
It is time Canada took action against autism, a blight on society. We must support this bill.
"This bill" is Prince Edward Island Liberal MP Shawn Murphy's private member's bill C-304. This bill's main purpose is to alter the Canada Health Act to single out autism as a disease for which ABA/IBI is prescribed and mandated as "medically necessary" treatment. This bill has the effect of legislating physician-equivalent status for behaviour analysts, of legislating ABA/IBI as "medically necessary" for those diagnosed with Rett's, and of legislating all autistics as not only sick but "suffering". This will be the law. But back to Mr Wilson.
According to Mr Wilson, autistics who have not had "medically necessary" ABA/IBI from very early in life--in order to stop us from blighting society--have no humanity. Most autistics in Canada have not had ABA/IBI from an early age, for many reasons, including that we are too old. We grew up before ABA/IBI was easily or at all available. There are very likely at least 150,000 autistics in Canada who have not had early and unlimited ABA/IBI. That number exceeds the entire population of Prince Edward Island, including Shawn Murphy. Mr Wilson has stated that a group of Canadians more numerous than all Prince Edward Islanders do not have humanity and are therefore not human.
When I spoke with Mr Wilson's office, these statements of Mr Wilson's were vigorously defended. They are true, I was told, because FEAT says so.
FEAT--Families for Early Autism Treatment--recently stated in the Globe and Mail that autistics who do not undergo unlimited "medically necessary" ABA/IBI starting early in life must be institutionalized by the time we reach adolescence. We must live in restraints and have our teeth pulled.
The ethicist Margaret Somerville--who was not aware of FEAT's prominent recommendations--has recently written in the Globe and Mail,
May we redesign disabled people to make them easier to care for? They used to take out all the teeth of mentally ill people so they couldn't bite their caregivers, but we are rightly appalled by that now.
But no one is appalled or even raises an eyebrow when it is recommended that most autistics in Canada (a population larger than that of Prince Edward Island, including Shawn Murphy) be abused this way. Certainly not Mr Wilson, who forcefully supports and promotes FEAT. Mr Wilson has used his full power and influence to inform Canadians that most autistics in Canada are, unlike criminals and terrorists, not even human. We have no humanity. Those who are not human have no human rights. And those who have no human rights can be grossly abused with impunity. This is an experience shared by many of us.
Other Liberal MPs have had additional ideas about how to write off autistic Canadians who they see as blighting the country.
Ruby Dhalla has stated the Liberal Party of Canada position--a position shared by the Conservative government and the NDP--that ideally there would be no autistic people at all in Canada. In order to sensationally raise alarm about a "shocking" autism "epidemic", she has also rejected the broad scientific consensus that there has been a high, stable rate of autism. Instead, she insists that in 1996 and before, there were only 1 in 10,000 autistics. She and her office have repeatedly claimed that this figure, forcefully promoted by FEAT, is true, and further, that it comes from multiple expert researchers. Her "expert" autism epidemiology, a work of pure and absurd anti-scientific fiction, has the effect of eliminating the existence of more than 150,000 autistic Canadians--more than the entire population of Prince Edward Island, including Shawn Murphy. But Ms Dhalla does not care. She is sticking to her guns. She does not want most autistics in Canada to get any services at all, or even to be acknowledged. We don't exist--because she says so.
The supposed "debate" about Shawn Murphy's bill C-304 resumed yesterday. In this "debate", Liberal MP Brian Murphy stated that autism is
no less detrimental than the diagnosis of terminal cancer
and is therefore fatal if not treated. According to Brian Murphy, most autistic people in Canada are dead. We have not had the one "medically necessary" treatment he claims with absolute certainty is the only way to save us from our terminal disease.
The above statements represent the major achievements of autism advocacy in Canada. Autistics have officially been declared diseased, a blight on society, subhuman, actually and ideally non-existent, and dead. The organizations and individuals applauded for representing us demand that we be institutionalized, be kept in restraints, and be permanently mutilated if we don't sufficiently become normal. Not one of our federal parties, not one Canadian MP or Senator, has expressed even a whisper of protest against any of this.
Canada is officially a country which hates autism, and therefore hates the existence of autistic people. No fact will be permitted to get in the way of this hideous and irrational hatred. No genuine debate about autism, no genuine assistance for autistic Canadians, can emerge from this gratuitous, dangerous and unopposed outpouring of denigration and dehumanization.