Equity as Infrastructure Panel at CALS 2026

Takeaways from the powerful “Equity as Infrastructure: Community-Driven Autism System Design” panel at the Autism Alliance of Canada Leadership Summit

1. “What we pathologize was once understood — and celebrated.”

Tamara Angeline Medford-Williams, MSW, RSW, T.S. spoke about pre-colonial African contexts where there were thousands of ways to describe how people think, feel, and relate — including valued roles such as healers.

What have our systems erased in the process of standardizing care?

For Black autistic individuals, especially women and girls, behaviour is still interpreted through both racialized and ableist lenses:
rigidity becomes “hostility,” directness becomes “disrespect,” and difference becomes “dysregulation” — legitimizing exclusion.

2. Assessment itself is not neutral.

Terri Hewitt highlighted that diagnostic processes often fail to account for cultural and racial differences.
Inequity is built in at the point of entry into systems for help.

3. “Equity is owned by those who experience it — and we are not there yet.”

Grant Bruno pushed this further: we cannot claim equity at a systems level if it is not experienced at the lived experience level.

We must not pat ourselves on the back until those most impacted say the experience and outcomes are equitable.

As he noted:
“Once people are struggling to survive, there is little capacity left to make change.”

Sarah Johnson, Educational Director from Caribou Lake First Nation, added a critical truth:
when systems are not relational, equity is not occurring.

The Indian Act still governs people’s lives. It continues to legislate poverty today.
This reality must shape how we think about “equity as infrastructure.”

Senator Kim Pate brought this into another critical systems context: incarceration and human rights.

I asked how communities can action change for incarcerated neurodivergent adults when we already have solutions, have piloted them, and continue to face barriers to broader systems adoption.

She described Tona’s Law — an example of systemic change advancing accountability, human rights, and community-based alternatives.

NCF will explore opportunities to advance awareness and action on Tona’s Law.

The issue is not always the absence of solutions.
It is how systems fail to operationalize and support what communities have already shown can work.

That is the implementation gap.

So what does equity as infrastructure actually require?

This is where the conversation did not fully go — and where further work is needed:

• identifying system risks and vulnerabilities

• confronting colonial patterns and embedded bias

• co-designing solutions

What is missing is support to:
foster, test, resource, and scale innovation.

NCF is actively engaging in this space and grateful to have participated in this significant event.