Question Period Note: EARLY LEARNING AND CHILD CARE

What is the federal government doing to support early learning and child care?

• The pandemic has exposed what parents have long known. Without access to affordable child care, parents, most often mothers, can’t work. This is a universal issue that is resonating across sectors, regions, and income brackets.
• Investing in early learning and child care offers a jobs-and-growth hat trick: it provides jobs for workers, the majority of whom are women; it enables parents, particularly mothers, to reach their full economic potential; and it creates a generation of engaged and well prepared young learners.
• The Government of Canada made a transformative investment close to $30 billion over the next five years to build a Canada-wide early learning and child care system.
• This investment, to make child care more affordable, allows governments to work together toward an average parent fee of $10 a day by 2025–2026 for all regulated child care spaces, starting with a 50 percent reduction in average fees for regulated early learning and child care spaces by the end of 2022.
• Since we introduced our plan for early learning and child care in April 2021, we have worked tirelessly to conclude agreements with nine provinces and three territories, covering roughly 60 percent of children in Canada, to deliver a 50 percent cut in child care fees next year, and deliver an average of $10 a day care in five years or less. Six provinces have already announced fee reductions.
If prompted
• Canada has signed an asymmetrical agreement with Quebec, where prices are already affordable through its well-established system.
The Government of Canada recognizes how important affordable, inclusive, and high-quality child care is for families in Ontario. That is why we are working hard with the Government of Ontario on reaching an agreement quickly.

The 2020 Fall Economic Statement announced key early investments to lay the groundwork for a Canada-wide child care system, in partnership with provinces, territories and Indigenous peoples. This includes investments to establish a federal secretariat on early learning and child care; supporting the existing federal Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Secretariat; making the early learning and child care funding announced in Budget 2017 permanent at 2027-2028 levels; providing $420 million in 2021-2022 for the provinces and territories to support the attraction and retention of early childhood educators; and an additional $75 million in 2021-2022 to improve the quality and accessibility of Indigenous child care programs.

Building on investments announced in the 2020 Fall Economic Statement, 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 Government of Canada is making a transformative investment to build a Canada-wide early learning and child care system in partnership with provincial, territorial and Indigenous partners. 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.

To make immediate progress for children with disabilities and children needing enhanced or individual supports, the Government is providing $29.2 million over two years, starting in 2021–22, to Employment and Social Development Canada through the Enabling Accessibility Fund to support child care centres as they improve their physical accessibility.

As of January 2022, Canada-wide early learning and child care agreements have been signed with nine provinces and three territories for a total funding of close to $17 billion, representing 62.4% of total funding dedicated to provinces and territories. Negotiations with Ontario are ongoing.

Canada has signed an asymmetrical agreement with Quebec, where prices are already affordable through its well-established system.

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