Primary responsibility for early learning, preschool and child care in Canada rests with the 13 provincial and territorial governments. The federal role is governed by the Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, enacted in 2024, and involves a national scheme of transfer payments to those governments, who in turn use it to fund low-cost regulated spaces. To this end, the Act requires the federal government to enter into bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories, which form the backbone of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system. The goal of the scheme is to provide universal, high-quality care to the Canadian population of children, while facilitating the social mobility of parents.
Since 1984, advocates had engaged in a number of unsuccessful attempts to establish a national child care system. By 2019, about 60% of children who were 0 to 5 years-old participated in day care arrangements. Of these, 52% were in formal day care settings and 26% were cared for by a relative in an informal setting. About 40% of parents had difficulty finding child care arrangements. As of 2016, 30% of child care operations in Canada were for-profit, which includes large single-owner corporate chains. Some federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal public funding of child care is limited to not-for-profit child care operations.
In the spring of 2021, the federal government announced the creation of a national child-care system, with $30 billion over five years in federal funds to "cut child-care fees to an average of $10 per day" across Canada. All ten provinces and three territories have signed onto this national child care program. Contemporary issues relating to child-care in Canadian politics include lack of sufficient early childhood education workers, driven by low wages, lack of benefits, and high stress, as well as controversies about the role of the government in child-care, and the status of for-profit operators.
Overview Under Canadian federalism, the 13 provinces and territories have the "main responsibility for early learning and child care (ELCC)". The division of powers between federal and provincial governments was first established in the Constitution Act, 1867. Early learning and child care were not specifically identified as provincial matters in 1867, but fall within the broad scope of provincial power, along with many other social programs. Especially since World War II, national social programs were developed in which the federal government led the initiative or collaborated with the provinces. Between 1984 and 2005, numerous attempts were made at establishing a national child care strategy, but true national child care strategy was not implemented until 2021 when the federal budget included "$30 billion over five years to cut child-care fees to an average of $10 per day across the country" by 2025-26.
Enacted in 2024, the Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act sets out the federal government's long-term commitment to providing transfer payments to the provinces and territories, who directly fund and regulate daycare spaces. The Act requires this funding to be disbursed through bilateral agreements, which must be consistent with certain principles, including universality and official bilingualism. These agreements constitute the backbone of the national system.
Prior to 2021, child care services were "organized on a market model." According to the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC), this resulted in "unaffordable parent fees, inequitable and inadequate availability of services, and, too often, of low or modest quality." The exception was the province of Québec, which implemented its Québec Educational Childcare Act in 1997 which provides publicly subsidized child care for children ages 0 to 12.
Child care in Canada includes formal care, such as day care, and informal child care arrangements that allow some parents to be actively engaged in the labour market. Prior to the implementation of the CWELCC, about 60% of children who were 0 to 5 years-old participated in day care arrangements, as of 2019. Of these, 52% were in formal day care settings and 26% were care for by a relative. About 40% of parents had difficulty finding child care arrangements. According to a Statistics Canada 2019 report, based on the "Survey on Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements" (SELCCA), "[c]hild care is an important economic contributor for families since provision of non-parental child care is a necessity for some parents to engage in the labour market or to study."
Leading up to the implementation of a national child-care program, a 2019 CCAAC report summarized the major challenges in the delivery of child care services as a "severe shortage of spaces, unaffordable fees, poor working conditions for early childhood educators (ECEs), service gaps that have led to the expansion of for-profit services, and programs of questionable quality." The report listed the most significant barriers that impeded the implementation of a national strategy for ELCC as "Canadian federalism, an unwillingness to allocate sufficient public funding, and the contested historical belief that publicly-funded child care should be treated as "welfare" rather than a universal entitlement."
History
According to the Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU) 249-page annual report, "Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2019", which was partially funded by the federal government's Employment and Social Development Canada's (ESDC) Social Development Partnerships program, past attempts at advancing child care programs have been made in 1984, 1987, 1993, 2003, and 2005. In spite of this, by 2020 Canada never had a "comprehensive national strategy or policy" as changes in governments repeatedly intervened.
The Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada was founded in 1983 as part of the massive women's rights movement in Canada putting pressure on the Liberal government of then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau for a national child care program. By 1983, with approximately a million children needing child care outside the home, "only 1 in 10 was registered in a licensed day-care center." With the debate on child care in Canada heating up, then Prime Minister John Turner appointed a task force on the state of daycare across Canada which resulted in the 428-page 1986 report.
A national day care system was one of Brian Mulroney's promises in his 1984 Canadian federal election campaign. He unsuccessfully attempted to pass Bill C-144, which would have "shifted federal-provincial responsibilities for daycare and allowed for direct funding of commercial day centers." The Canadian Day Care Advocacy Association heavily critiqued Bill C-144 in a news release, arguing that the bill failed to meet the needs of low-income Canadians and worsened the overall quality of care. By 1992, the Conservative caucus shifted their focus from child care to child poverty in response to a national survey.
In a 2004 review of Canada' child care system, the OECD identified "adverse effects of fragmented governance" on the quality of child care and recommended that provinces merge "early education, child care and family support services under a single ministry".Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2006). Starting Strong II: Early childhood education and care. Paris: OECD. In 2004 none of the 13 provinces and territories had merged departments. By 2017, only Alberta, Manitoba, Newfoundland, the Yukon Territories had not merged departments.
The 2005 Canadian Federal Budget during the premiership of Paul Martin, included CA$5 billion over five years for a national day care program similar to Québec's child care system. The federal and provincial governments signed bilateral agreements "Moving Forward on Early Learning and Child Care". This allowed individual provinces to access the new federal funding. Both Saskatchewan and Manitoba signed agreements through which they committed to expanding only in the non-profit sector. Ontario did not. In 2005, the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, said that there needs to be support for "more and better before and after school learning and care opportunities for children 6-12". The Coalition also noted that the agreement was not binding on Ontario in regards to additional funding from the province to child care. Without both federal and provincial funding, longer-term child care is unsustainable in Ontario. When Stephen Harper won the 2006 Canadian federal election, the new government eliminated the bilateral agreements on child care as their first act of power. The Harper government replaced the Liberal early education and child care plan with the Universal Canada Child Benefit (UCCB). This consisted of parents with young children receiving CA$100 a month, along with tax credits for private or profit care. A maximum of CA$250 million a year was set aside to create child care spaces all across Canada.
In 2008, Canada ranked at the bottom of the list of 25 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries based on benchmarks of ELCC delivery, according to an often-cited UNICEF 2008 early childhood education and care. Since 2008, while other OECD countries continued to develop child care systems, Canada "barely improved".
A November 2012 TD Economics special report recommended that federal and provincial governments should make investment in early childhood education a "high priority", noting that "public spending" on early childhood education was lower in Canada than in "many advanced economies".
Following the election of Justin Trudeau in 2015, child care policy became a renewed area of focus. In 2016, the federal government combined the Canada Child Tax Benefit and the Universal Canada Child Benefit into an enhanced Canada Child Benefit, a means-tested cash transfer to most Canadian families. The federal government began negotiating Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework agreement with provinces and territories in 2017. These three-year bilateral agreements "set how much federal funding for early learning and child care would be allocated and spent by each jurisdiction." The 2021 federal budget tabled by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland marked a new era in child care policy, though it built on the earlier Multilateral Early Learning and Child Care Framework agreements. The budget included approximately CA$30 billion over 5 years for a "Canada-wide early learning and child care plan". The funds will "offset the cost of early learning and child care services" towards the creation a national child-care system. The stated goal of the child care plan was to reduce the average cost of child care by 50% by 2022 and to make $10-a-day child care universally available by 2025-26. As child care falls under provincial jurisdiction, his national program required all provinces and territories to sign onto the program. British Columbia was the first province to sign onto the plan in the summer of 2021, but all provinces and territories have now signed onto the plan.
On March 6, 2025, Trudeau announced that a $37 billion, five-year deal had been reached with all provinces and territories except Alberta and Saskatchewan to extend the child care program until 2031, with annual 3% funding increases after new deal's first year in 2026-27. Organizational and logistic issues with starting the program, inflation, and labour shortages meant that at the time of the announcement, only 150,000 of the originally announced 250,000 spots had been created, with the remaining spaces planned to be created within the first year of the new deal.
Types of child care