Fee vows to be special needs advocate
KITCHENER — One fateful decision by the Liberal government two years ago prompted Amy Fee to seek a local Progressive Conservative Party nomination.
Now, the mother of four is headed to Queen’s Park. She will represent local constituents and become an advocate for special needs children and their families after winning the new riding of Kitchener South-Hespeler Thursday night.
The former Catholic school board trustee is a newcomer to provincial politics, but said the Liberal decision in 2016 to roll out changes to the Ontario Autism Program, which meant children over age of four would be cut off from intensive therapy funding, was the “ultimate blow” for her.
“It felt like the futures of those children had been ripped away,” said Fee, whose 10-year-old son Kenner has autism.
The Liberals backtracked on those changes after parents protested, but the damage to public opinion was done.
PC Leader Doug Ford, whose party won a majority, has been criticized for his comments about people with special needs, allegedly saying in 2014 that a home for special needs kids in his neighbourhood had “ruined” the community.
But Fee said her party is committed to improving the lives of those with special needs. She was the candidate the party selected last month to promise $100 million in increased funding for the Ontario Autism Program in the 2018-2019 fiscal year. By comparison, the Liberal’s had committed to investing $62 million in new funding for the program over the next year in the 2018 budget.
“I was very honoured,” to make that announcement.”
The PC party will also work to expand the use of autism service dogs in schools across the province, Fee said. Her family went to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in 2017 after Kenner was denied the right to bring his service dog to school, but they lost.
Former Kitchener-Conestoga PC MPP Michael Harris brought forward a private member’s bill in 2016 to change the law, but it never got past first reading.
When the polls closed at 9 p.m. it was clear early the PCs had won, but the local race went back and forth for much of the evening. It wasn’t until about 10 p.m. that Fee began to pull away from NDP candidate Fitzroy Vanderpool. She was declared the winner just before 10:30 p.m. with 16,510 votes, or about 39 per cent, just 769 more than Vanderpool. Fee recognizes the divide it represents in the community.
“I’ll have to work extremely hard to represent everyone in the riding,” she said. About 57 per cent of the 74,773 registered voters in the riding voted. Provincial turnout was 58 per cent, the highest in almost 20 years. The PCs won a total of 76 seats, followed by the NDP (40), Liberals (7) and the Green party, which won its historic first seat in Guelph.
Fee first won office in 2014 when elected as a Catholic school board trustee for Kitchener Wilmot. She’s also a board member at Bridges To Belonging Waterloo Region, an roup that supports people with disabilities.