Child Care Now calls for more federal funds to expand $10aDay Child Care program
Child Care Now is recommending to the House of Common Finance Committee that the federal fall 2025 budget fund and plan the expansion of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program to give at least 65 per cent of children under the age of 6 in every province and territory access to $10-a-day child care.
Morna Ballantyne, Executive Director of Child Care Now, says the target can be achieved over the next five years if the federal government boosts the existing Early Learning and Child Care Infrastructure Fund by $15 billion over the next five years. Additionally, the federal government would have to allocate $10 billion to expanding and supporting the Early Learning and Child Care workforce.
Recommendations and calls for investment are supported by decades of evidence
In its submission to the Finance Committee, Child Care Now applauds the federal government 2021 budget that allocated almost $30 billion over five years to start the development of the Canada-wide early learning and child care (CWELCC) program for children under 6 years.
The benefits of this program have been measured by economist, Dr. Jim Stanford, who reported in November 2024 that the first three years of the CWELCC program generated “significant job creation in the child care sector, big improvements in the wages of child care employees, and more full-time work in the sector.” The study also found that the labour force participation of core-age (25-54) women grew 1.4 percentage points, translating to 110,000 additional workers between 2019 and 2024.
Further progress must be backed by a commitment to support public and not-for-profit expansion
Child Care Now continues to emphasize the importance of limiting publicly funded expansion of child care to the not-for-profit and public sectors. As the brief to the Committee states, “Public capital funds should be limited to increasing the supply of not-for-profit and publicly owned and operated child care. This is the only way to ensure that public capital funds are used efficiently and that publicly funded facilities are not sold off (and programs lost) for commercial gain. Public money must be used to develop public assets that serve the public interest.”