yes she was recently diagnosed with autism spectrum. Although that is not why I miss Canada.

This wasn't our exact experience. Allow that the mother of my daughter is a very effective lobbyist and hasn't worked outside the home since the autistic child was born. Lobbying for her child is her job.

The first thing is learn the system. In Ontario everything to do with children is categorized as Catholic, Other, Anglophone, Francophone. Note that we were dealing with someone who didn't speak and, in my view, is unlikely to have an unexpressed opinion on the supreme deity. She can be anything, so long as it's not a Chelsea supporter.

Funds are allocated per head of population. At the time there weren't any Catholic francophone autistic children in Ontario (at least not declared ones) so that's what our daughter became. That tapped into a big pile of unused money. Enough that the school built a Snoezelen room and a building to house it, arranged a horse riding program, signed up a dedicated teaching assistant. All the supports one could ask. I'd argue that none of that actually does anything about the autism, autism is what it is, but certainly there was all kinds of support and riding makes autistic kids happy.

There's also an allocation of government money for "respite care". This allows the parent of an autistic child to pay someone, indirectly, to look after the child. We used that money when I had to attend conferences in Florida and Arizona to bring someone along in a child minder role. Similarly, there's transportation money, our daughter went back and forth to school in a limo due to being unsuitable for school buses.

So, in Ontario, if one can work the system, there are facilities for autistic children. There's even a great school, with built-in car wash, in Etobicoke but it's anglophone other so there's a huge waiting list.

Some problems are:

- schools are obliged to keep autistic children until they reach age 21. They don't want to do this so every year there's a huge fuss and you have to threaten to litigate, or actually initiate, litigation
- at age 21, that's the end. Now you have an autistic person in your house 24/7. That person will be unnaturally strong (in Chicago our daughter had her forearm tapped to a board with wide surgical tape, for an infusion, flexed and broke free), that person may be given to frightening tantrums, biting themselves, scratching their face. There are ways to deal with all of this but what if you also have to have a job?
- maybe you can deal with all of that. What happens when you drop dead?

I think there's a broader point to be made here. The UK is, traditionally since the war and pre-Johnson, a society in which the state assumes a level of responsibility for its citizens. Canada is not. On a spectrum with New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries at one end and the US at the other, Canada is very close to the US.

I think the basic fact to take home, as with anything here, each province is different from evey other one as they are responsible for their own programmes in almost everything. The Feds take no part in legislating anything to do with health, education, etc.

I know that BC and NS, and probably the Prairie provinces do not have anything like that range of educational options.

The UK has such a range of social programmes to take care of its citizens from birth to death that is not found anywhere else in the Commonwealth, and few other countries.

All your points are valid. We are just coming to terms with the diagnosis. She is quite on mellow side, sometimes she plays with her older sibling but most times she plays on her own or cling to mummy. To get her to concentrate is another thing. But we will take one day at a time.

Also, when the government asks your religion, you're Catholic. Maybe you're Jewish-Catholic or Muslim-Catholic but governmentally, you want to be Catholic.