OTTAWA - Federal money earmarked to fight the tragedy of fetal alcohol disorders has been quietly chopped back year after year, says a new report.
"Each year the initiative has received only a portion of the dollars allocated," says an internal evaluation. "It is unclear why this cutback has become the norm."
The Public Health Agency of Canada has been budgeting $3.3 million each year for its fetal alcohol spectrum disorder initiative, but consistently spends only about two-thirds of the cash, says the report.
The evaluation, completed last year, was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
The disorder, the result of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, causes a broad range of physical, mental and behavioural disabilities.
It's believed to affect 300,000 Canadians, costing about $24,000 annually in social services and health care for each afflicted child, many of whom suffer severe learning disabilities.
The federal initiative dates to 1999, and the $205,000 internal evaluation by Public Works investigators examined spending since April 2004, including some projects extending into this year.
Investigators concluded the initiative is badly needed and should continue, but program funding has been unpredictable, despite commitments in the agency's annual budgets.
"Even the funds that are released ... are done so gradually throughout the year (that) managers are uncertain about the budget they have to work with until the final quarter of the fiscal year," says the report.
Projects funded under the initiative take about 11 months to get approved, with most of the time taken up awaiting the OK from senior managers.
And in 2006-2007, officials were forced to return $300,000 because they couldn't get a green light to order key research, which the report says is sorely needed in Canada.
In other years, money that might have similarly lapsed was hastily provided to the provinces to avoid returning the cash to federal coffers, without officials properly taking into account the initiative's national goals.
The federal initiative is small compared with some $27 million spent by the provinces and territories each year on fetal alcohol disorders, which were first identified in the medical literature in 1973.
However, more than half that sum is spent by British Columbia ($10 million) and Manitoba ($7.5 million), while Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador spend nothing at all, the report found.
Health Canada also contributes $1.7 million annually to fetal alcohol programs through its First Nations and Inuit Health Branch.
Each individual damaged by prenatal alcohol exposure requires an estimated $1.5 million in services and programs over a lifetime, say the authors, extrapolating from U.S.-based research. The prevention of even one case not only averts a personal tragedy but can cut social-service costs significantly.
The report also notes that Health Canada's position -- that there is no safe amount of alcohol that can be consumed during pregnancy -- was not clearly understood by almost two-thirds of Canadians surveyed in a 2006 poll, suggesting more education is needed.
Investigators found as well that "information on the projects funded by the contributions fund made available to the regions has not been collected over the course of the initiative in a systematic and centralized way," making any evaluation of effectiveness difficult.
The Public Health Agency of Canada did not respond to questions about why money has been cut repeatedly from the fetal-alcohol initiative.
But a spokeswoman said the program will continue with its $3.3 million budget in 2009-2010.
"The FASD Initiative has a full work plan for the coming fiscal year," Jirina Vlk said in an email.
She added the agency has "undertaken numerous activities in response to the recommendations" of the report, including meetings with the provinces and other departments this year to better co-ordinate efforts.
