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, many 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 of close to $27 billion over 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 this year.
• Since we introduced our plan for early learning and child care in April 2021, we have signed agreements with all provinces and territories, and we are already seeing results.
• Ten provinces and territories have already announced fee reductions, in addition to the $10-a-day care that is already available in Yukon and Quebec, and we are on track to reach an average 50% fee reduction by the end of this year.

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 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.

Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements have been signed with all provinces and territories, including an asymmetrical agreement with Quebec, where prices are already affordable through its well-established system. Fee reductions have already been announced by British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Northwest Territories.

• Canada has signed an asymmetrical agreement with Quebec, which has its own well-established and long-standing affordable system.