Canada will give priority to early childhood educators and assistants for permanent residence status

On February 27, 2025, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced that applications for permanent residency from early childhood educators and assistants will be given priority consideration in 2025.

The Government of Canada determines which skilled workers should get priority consideration for permanent residency based on labour market demands, and uses “express entry” mechanisms to address labour shortages.

Child Care Now sees the Canadian government’s inclusion of early childhood educators and assistants in the express entry category as a positive step forward in addressing the need to recruit and expand the ELCC workforce to meet the demand for child care since the launch of the $10aDay Child Care Plan in 2021.

However, Child Care Now Executive Director Morna Ballantyne, cautions immigration, including the granting of permanent residency, must be viewed as only one element of a comprehensive strategy to address the problem of recruitment and retention in the early learning and child care sector.

“We want federal, provincial and territorial governments to work together to create better compensated early learning and child care jobs because that’s the only way to ensure high quality and stable programs,” she said. “It’s bad policy and also immoral to keep compensation low and then use refugees, temporary foreign workers, or those on track for permanent resident status to serve as a cheap source of labour.”