Autism Speaks Canada shuts down in January. Good.

By Autistics for Autistics

As Canada’s autistic-led advocacy group and an international affiliate of the Autistic Self Advocacy Organization, we are relieved that Autism Speaks Canada will be shutting down in January of 2025.

Autism Speaks Canada has long sponsored a pseudoscientific “autism gene” project that collected 10,000 Canadian autistic children’s DNA, without their consent, for use in a shared database by scam artists around the world to develop genetics-related products–including prenatal tests that do not truly detect autism and that lead to the termination of healthy, planned pregnancies. Their DNA boondoggle has never found an autism gene (surprised-NOT), but it has certainly promoted the idea that we don’t deserve to be born.

As well, Autism Speaks Canada held back progress on Canadian inclusion and disability access by lobbying for a National Autism Strategy that would allocate the lion’s share of federal autism funding to a consortium of less than 5 autism orgs through sole-source contracting, without any opportunity for groups to apply. This left autistic-led groups and other local agencies without a seat at the policy table, unlike the US, who include autistic groups in their policy meetings.

Shockingly, in its farewell message Autism Speaks Canada actually highlighted those two projects as their major achievements. It perhaos reveals the real reason they failed: They were never able to focus donor dollars–or energy–on the needs and ideas of the community because they were caught up in “curing” autism & keeping control of funding dollars.

Harmon Pope, chair of ANLFO, an Ottawa-based rights group, has been monitoring & leading protest actions against Autism Speaks for the past 5 years. “I’d been noticing their local team in Ottawa slowly losing influence,” said Harmon, who emphasized the need to challenge other autism organizations in Canada that have similar policy positions to Autism Speaks.

This is an opportunity for autistics and our families to collaborate locally to build new, neuro-affirming spaces and projects. If you are interested in this, or in helping advocate to the federal and provincial governments, please contact us here. We also welcome donations of any size, here.

As A4A Board Member Gaby put it: “It’s a Christmas miracle, Charlie Brown!” Let’s take this opportunity to undo the damage Autism Speaks has done in our community, and create something better.

–The Autistics for Autistics Board of Directors