The waitlist today
The current published counts, and what registration does not measure.
As of May 13, 2026, 91,974 children and youth were registered with the Ontario Autism Program. 20,711 held an active Core Funding Agreement and 71,263 did not, which is 77.5% of everyone registered. The figures come from the ministry's bi-weekly Core Clinical Services progress reports, released to the Ontario Autism Coalition under Freedom of Information. Ontario does not publish them itself. Registration counts only children who already hold an autism diagnosis, so children still waiting to be assessed are not in this total. An active funding agreement records a signed agreement on the reporting date; it is not proof that a child received therapy. Ontario publishes no province-wide average time from registration to first core funding, so no average should be attributed to these figures.
Source: MCCSS Ontario Autism Program figures, May 13, 2026, obtained by the Ontario Autism Coalition under Freedom of Information. Compiled in End The Wait Ontario, Fact Packs, https://www.endthewaitontario.com/press/fact-packs#waitlist-today
Figures behind this block: Registered with the Ontario Autism Program · Active Core Funding Agreements · Registered without an active funding agreement
The funding gap
What was allocated, what the FAO costed, and why the two are not comparable today.
The 2026-27 Ontario Budget allocated $965 million to the Ontario Autism Program. The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario estimated in 2020 that about $1.35B a year would be required to serve registered children at 2018-19 service levels, a difference of $385M. That estimate was costed for approximately 40,700 children. As of May 13, 2026 there were 91,974 registered, so the 2020 figure is a historical estimate rather than a current cost to clear the list, and should be described that way. An allocation is also not spending: the budget line states what was set aside for the fiscal year, not what was paid out. Ontario has published no updated cost-to-clear estimate since that projection.
Source: Government of Ontario, Ontario Budget 2026-27; Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, Autism Services (2020); MCCSS Ontario Autism Program figures, May 13, 2026, obtained by the Ontario Autism Coalition under Freedom of Information. Compiled in End The Wait Ontario, Fact Packs, https://www.endthewaitontario.com/press/fact-packs#funding-gap
Figures behind this block: Ontario Autism Program allocation, 2026-27 · FAO estimated annual cost to serve registered children
What enrolment does and does not mean
The distinction that separates a signed agreement from an accepted invitation.
The May 13, 2026 release is the first to report enrolment and funding separately. 24,417 children and youth were enrolled in Core Clinical Services; 20,711 held an active Core Funding Agreement. The difference, 3,706 children and youth, are families who accepted a Core Clinical Services invitation and had not exited the programme, including those still waiting for a Determination of Needs meeting and those waiting for an agreement after one. Enrolment means a family accepted a Core Clinical Services invitation and has not exited the OAP. It does not mean the child or youth has an active funding agreement or is receiving services. The enrolled share of registrations, 27%, is therefore not a better version of the funded share, 22.5%. Reporting the two side by side without this distinction reads as progress that has not happened. Ontario does not publish how long families wait between invitation, Determination of Needs, and a signed agreement.
Source: MCCSS Ontario Autism Program figures, May 13, 2026, obtained by the Ontario Autism Coalition under Freedom of Information. Definitions as published with the release. Compiled in End The Wait Ontario, Fact Packs, https://www.endthewaitontario.com/press/fact-packs#enrolment-meaning
Figures behind this block: Enrolled in Core Clinical Services · Enrolled without an active funding agreement · Share of registered children with active funding
Where the money goes
The published breakdown of one past fiscal year, with its attribution.
The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario put total Ontario Autism Program spending at $691.2M in FY 2023-24. Core Clinical Services, the therapy funding families wait for, accounted for $307.3M of that, under half. AccessOAP, the consortium that handles registration, intake, care coordination and payment reconciliation, accounted for an estimated $57.9M. That AccessOAP line item comes from an MCCSS spending breakdown obtained under Freedom of Information by The Trillium; the Financial Accountability Office's review confirms the $691.2M programme total but does not itself break out the administrator's figure, so the two should be attributed separately. These are FY 2023-24 figures. They are not a current-year contract value, and no finding about value for money is drawn from them here.
Source: MCCSS spending breakdown obtained through FOI by The Trillium, July 2024; program total cross-checked against the FAO MCCSS Spending Plan Review, June 2024. Compiled in End The Wait Ontario, Fact Packs, https://www.endthewaitontario.com/press/fact-packs#where-the-money-goes
Figures behind this block: Total Ontario Autism Program spending, FY 2023-24 · AccessOAP operations, FY 2023-24
Schools and special education
What the Auditor General found in the system families rely on while they wait.
The Auditor General of Ontario released a special report on special education needs on May 12, 2026, examining three school boards. At every board sampled, at least 90% of annual Individual Education Plan learning goals had no measurable criteria. Education assistants were absent on about 18% of school days, and 49-72% of those absences went unfilled. 39% of teachers surveyed said they had seen students with special education needs kept home or sent home without the exclusion being documented. Students with special education needs made up 16% of enrolment and 43% of suspensions. In 2023/24, 46 boards together spent $398M more on special education than the Ministry funded. The Ministry and boards agreed with 13 of the 15 recommendations.
Source: Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, Special Report on Special Education Needs (74 pages, ISBN 978-1-4868-9752-0). https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/specialreports/specialaudits/en2026/Ar_2026_SpecEd_EN.html. Compiled in End The Wait Ontario, Fact Packs, https://www.endthewaitontario.com/press/fact-packs#schools
Regional access
What Ontario publishes by region, and what it does not.
Ontario does not publish Ontario Autism Program registration, funding or wait figures by region. The bi-weekly Core Clinical Services progress reports released under Freedom of Information report province-wide totals only, so the 91,974 registered children and youth recorded on May 13, 2026 cannot be broken down geographically from any published record. This site therefore publishes no regional wait or funding estimate. What can be shown is where services are: the published Ontario Autism Program provider list, geocoded to city and postal-district centroids, together with the special-education contact route for every Ontario school board. A regional figure quoted from any other source should name the record it came from, because no provincial record supports one. Families in northern and southern Ontario are counted in the same total, and no released column separates them.
Source: MCCSS Ontario Autism Program figures, May 13, 2026, obtained by the Ontario Autism Coalition under Freedom of Information; Ontario Autism Program provider list as published. Compiled in End The Wait Ontario, Fact Packs, https://www.endthewaitontario.com/press/fact-packs#regional-access
Figures behind this block: Registered with the Ontario Autism Program