The Liberal Party of Canada, the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party and the Green Party of Canada have each released their 2025 election promises. Here is what they say about child care. 

Liberal Party

The Liberal party platform promises that a Carney-led government will:

• Protect and strengthen $10-a-day Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) system to create 100,000 new spaces by 2031. This will increase the supply of not-for-profit and public early learning and child care, getting more families off wait lists, and saving families money. It will also create 35,000 jobs for early learning and child care workers.
• Ensure ELCC providers have good wages, which is critical to keeping child care centres staffed. We will work with provinces and territories so that workers have predictable wage increases and investments in pensions and benefits programs.
• Require provinces, territories, and municipalities to expand child care in public infrastructure wherever possible, including in schools and community centres, and in community infrastructure that receives federal financing, so families can get child care close to home.
• Link child care with housing development on sites that receive federal financing or affordable housing funds. When child care is considered from the start of the development process, it ensures spaces grow alongside communities, saving time and money, and giving more children and families access, earlier.

The Liberal Party’s costing of the program says federal transfers to the provinces to support the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Program will be increased by $250.6 million in 2027-28 and $508.7 million in 2028-29, as announced by Justin Trudeau’s LIberal federal government immediately prior to the election call.

Conservative Party

In the Conservative party plan, child care is mentioned under its short promise to ‘Fix Healthcare and Support Caregivers:”’ 

We will honour current federal health transfer agreements to fund the healthcare all Canadians deserve, preserve existing dental care coverage and honour existing deals with provinces and territories on child care and pharmacare.

The Conservative party’s costing of its platform neither increases nor decreases the current federal transfers to the provinces and territories for child care.

The Conservative platform says nothing about what the Conservative Party’s approach to child care would be if elected. For example, the Conservative Party platform does not commit to maintaining the dramatic fee reductions that parents who use licensed child care have enjoyed since 2021. Without a commitment to maintain lower parent fees, it is possible that fees could rise under a Conservative government.

Furthermore, Pierre Poilievre said during the election campaign that his party would “give more freedom and flexibility to parents, providers and provinces to support the child care of all the kids.” This suggests that under a Conservative government federal transfers to the provinces and territories could be used to fund unregulated child care arrangements, and/or take the form of child care allowances of one kind or another paid directly to parents. 

This approach has failed to advance high quality, affordable child care in Canada in the past. Also, federally funded allowances to parents, such as the one introduced by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, do not increase the supply of licensed child care and therefore will not reduce wait lists. 

NDP

The NDP plan does not mention child care, however, the NDP’s costing confirms it will keep in place the previous Liberal government’s funding commitments. 

Under their Pillar to Work Toward Truth and Justice for Indigenous Communities, they also state: “We will ensure equitable access and self-determination over land, culture, language, housing, child care, income security, employment, education, and physical, mental, sexual, and spiritual health”.

At various times during the election campaign, the NDP has stated it proposes to strengthen the $10-a-day child care program but has not provided details about how an NDP government would do this. In the last Parliament, the NDP successfully moved to amend the federal early learning and child care legislation to provide for the building of a primarily not-for-profit or public child care system.

Green Party

The Green Party plan sets out an ambitious plan for strengthening the $10aDay child care plan as set out below. It is not clear from the Green Party’s proposed federal budget how much money the Green Party is proposing to allocate to such improvements. 

• Strengthen and expand the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care system, ensuring long-term, stable funding to maintain affordability and accessibility.
  • Ensure that federal funding commitments continue beyond the current agreements to support universal child care as a permanent public service.
• Address workforce shortages by increasing wages and improving working conditions for child-care professionals.
  • Develop a national child-care workforce strategy, including higher wages, better training, and improved career pathways.
• Expand access for underserved communities, including rural areas, Indigenous communities, and families with children with disabilities.
  • Ensure that every region in Canada has adequate child-care spaces, with priority for historically underserved areas.
  • Fully fund the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework, ensuring that all Indigenous-led child care programs receive adequate support.
• Ensure child-care facilities remain climate-conscious, energy-efficient, and located near public transit.
  • Provide targeted federal funding to retrofit and build child-care centers with green building standards and climate resilience in mind.
• Eliminate all remaining financial barriers to access.
  • Ensure that additional fees, waitlist costs, and administrative hurdles do not prevent families from accessing the $10-a-day child care system.