For years, families with loved ones who have autism have been pleading with the federal government to issue a national autism strategy, a frame work for how provinces and territories should deliver autism services.
That process is now one step closer to the finish line.
The Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) released its assessment of the autism report on Tuesday, outlining structural and systemic gaps facing people with autism and their families.
“It includes a lot of practical ideas about short and longer-term approaches to actually address these issues in substantive way” said Lonnie Zwaigenbaum, chair of the oversight panel that produced the report. He added that the report “highlights the importance of collaboration across sectors and within the community to move things forward.”
The 412-page report points to key findings that highlight much-needed supports for people with autism and their families. It focuses on five themes:
Diversity: The importance for autism supports to meet the extra needs that may come with some differences including, language, learning and housing needs.
Social inclusion: Generate ways for people to feel safe and accepted within the community including transportation, workplaces and job training.
Diagnosis and supports: Train more health professionals to diagnose autism, develop tools specific to a person’s needs, transparency on diagnosis wait times, more online supports.
Economic Inclusion: Government financing, financial support for families, easier access to government support, help for employers to hire and keep workers with autism.
Research: More research will help improve support, include diverse groups during research, and follow participants throughout their lives.
The report is the result of 19 months of work by an expert panel. CAHS calls the process unique, involving existing literature, emerging practice and unprecedented consultations with more than 6,000 people.
“It’s a window in terms of the breath of opportunities, as well as challenges that are experienced by autistic people and their families and a guide in terms of the way forward to enable positive change” said Zwaigenbaum.
The assessment comes months after its expected release in January 2022, and years after the Trudeau government committed to a national autism strategy in 2019.
Without a national strategy, some autism researchers believe Canada is failing this section of the population.
“We have so many gaps right now in how our services are delivered across the country, we have so much inequity in how autistic Canadians are accessing critical supports they need to live their best lives,” says Deepa Singal, the director of scientific and data initiatives at the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorder Alliance (CASDA).
Singal told CTV National News that “a child born in one province can have a completely different outcome and future depending on the services they were able to access, compared to a child born in a province that didn’t have those sorts of supports or were harder to access.”
This report, while not a full strategy, was highly anticipated for people within the autism community, giving them reassurance the government is committed to moving forward and that a strategy will soon follow.
Many Canadians say the federal government’s long-promised national autism strategy isn’t coming fast enough, with affordable and accessible support varying drastically between provinces and even communities.
Some families who have spoken with CTV News have moved to the United States for better care. Groups including Autism Nova Scotia say they have seen families move across the country in search for better services.
Autism Nova Scotia’s Executive Director Cynthia Carroll says the new report synthesizes the information that has been reported by people across the country. However, she says she would have liked to have seen “more direct and concrete next steps.”
The report points to key findings, but doesn’t offer any “recommendations” for a national strategy. Zwaigenbaum says their directive was to establish an assessment infused with lived experience.
“Ultimately recommendations should be informed by the assessment as well as the key community partners but it wasn’t the role of the academy to make specific recommendations. I think people will find if they read the report it’s quite clear what the next steps need to be,” he said.
Carroll believes the federal government and policy makers would have benefited from more specific recommendations.
“It may not have been their mandate to make recommendations, but if they’re not going to make recommendations after the extensive consolations and the fact they are some of the most esteemed researchers in Canada, who is going to make those recommendations?” she said.
PHAC says the report from CAHS will be considered “along with all other information gathered through a variety of mechanisms.”
When asked for a timeline on when Canadians will see a national strategy implemented, the government would not commit to a date, only pointing to a national conference in November “to build consensus on the priorities for action under a national autism strategy.”
“Addressing the complex and diverse needs of Canadians on the autism spectrum requires a coordinated effort with all levels of government and service providers,” PHAC said in a statement to CTV News. “We are working collaboratively with provinces, territories, families, Indigenous organizations and other stakeholders to accelerate the development of a national autism strategy.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
