Question Period Note: THE CANADA-ONTARIO CANADA-WIDE EARLY LEARNING AND CHILD CARE AGREEMENT, 2021-2022 to 2025-2026

What are the details of the Canada-Ontario Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care agreement?

• The Canada-Ontario Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement provides the province with $10.2 billion over five years.

• This agreement is an important step in ensuring that all families in Ontario have access to high-quality, affordable, flexible, and inclusive child care.

• The Agreement seeks to reduce child care fees in the short term, deliver $10-a-day child care for Ontario families, and create 86,000 new licensed early learning and child care spaces in the province.

If pressed on reduction of child care fee

• As a first step, the Agreement will reduce licensed child care fees for children under six years old by 25 per cent on average, retroactive to April 1, 2022, saving Ontario families an average of about $2,200 per child per year.

• By the end of the year, fees will be further lowered, and families will see a total reduction of 50 per cent on average, saving them an average of about $6,000 per child per year.

If pressed on Official Language Minority Communities

• The Government of Canada is working with provinces and territories, experts and communities, to ensure that child care is fully inclusive of the needs of all children, including children in official language minority communities.

• The Canada-Ontario Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement will allocate funding to ensure Francophone spaces are created in proportion to the Francophone presence in the population as Ontario grows its system.

If pressed on for-profit operators within the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care System

• The federal government is working with provinces and territories to support the growth of quality child care spaces across the country, while ensuring that families in all existing licensed spaces benefit from more affordable child care.

• New licensed spaces will be created predominantly among not-for-profit, public, and family-based child care providers.

The Government of Canada made a transformative investment of over $27 billion over five years, as part of Budget 2021 to build a Canada-wide early learning and Child Care system with provinces and territories. Combined with other investments including in Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care, up to $30 billion over five years will be provided in support of early learning and child care. Adding previous investments announced since 2015, this means that as of 2025-2026, a minimum of $9.2 billion will be provided every year – permanently – for Early Learning and Child Care and Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care.

The goal is to bring fees for regulated child care down to $10 per day on average within the next five years. By the end of 2022, the Government is aiming to reduce average fees for regulated early learning and child care by 50 per cent to make it more affordable for families. These targets would apply everywhere outside of Quebec, where prices are already affordable through its well-established system.

The Canada-Ontario early learning and child care agreement is a five-year deal to reduce child care fees in the short term, deliver $10-a-day child care for Ontario families by March 31, 2026, and create 86,000 new licensed early learning and child care spaces in the province by December 31, 2026.

The agreement will reduce licensed child care fees for children under six years old on average by 25 per cent as of April 1, 2022, saving Ontario families an average of about $2,200 per child. By the end of the year, fees will be further lowered, and families will see a total reduction of 50 per cent on average, saving them an average of about $6,000 per child per year. This agreement will deliver on average $10-a-day child care for Ontario families by the end of March 2026.

With the signing of this agreement, the Government of Canada has signed agreements with every province and territory to deliver on its promise to build a Canada-wide affordable, inclusive, and high-quality early learning and child care system. More than half of Canada’s provinces and territories have already seen reductions in child care fees and, by the end of 2022, average fees for regulated early learning and child care spaces will be cut in half across the country.

In total, the Government of Canada is aiming to create approximately 250,000 new child care spaces through Canada-wide agreements with provinces and territories, and already achieved its goal of creating 40,000 more affordable child care spaces before 2020 through the 2017-18 and 2019-20 Early Learning and Child Care Agreements. These new spaces will be predominantly among licensed not-for-profit, public, and family-based child care providers.
Provincial and territorial child care systems offer a range of options for families with differing needs, with some provincial and territorial models relying more heavily on for-profit child care providers.
The ratio of not-for-profit to for-profit child care providers in Ontario is 70%/30%.Through the Canada-Ontario Canada-wide ELCC Agreement, Ontario committed that federal funding will be used to predominantly support the creation of not-for-profit child care spaces. Ontario is implementing a cost control framework for all providers who opt-in to the Canada-wide ELCC system. This approach is to ensure the sound and reasonable use of public funds, ensuring that costs and earnings of child care licensees that opt-in to the Canada-wide ELCC system are reasonable and that surplus earnings beyond reasonable earnings are directed towards improving child care services.

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