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Executive Summary

Growth by Design was a three-year research project (2023–2026) focused on understanding the barriers and opportunities to expanding not-for-profit and public child care in Canada. Led by Child Care Now and funded through Employment and Social Development Canada’s Early Learning and Child Care Innovation Program, the project was undertaken at a pivotal moment in the build out of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system. The project aimed to generate knowledge about child care expansion under CWELCC and identify the policy tools needed to build a universal, high-quality and accessible child care system.

Project achievements

Growth by Design generated knowledge about child care expansion through multiple complementary streams of research and policy analysis. Over the three years of the project, the Growth by Design team:

Tracked pan-Canadian child care growth trends in two reports, the first examining trends from 2008-2021 (pre-CWELCC) and the second from 2022-2025 (post-CWELCC). The most recent report shows that Canada added more than 168,000 licensed spaces for children aged 0-5 years between 2022 and 2025, and that roughly two-thirds of these new spaces were created by for-profit operators.
Conducted detailed investigations of child care expansion in seven jurisdictions (Nunavut, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia) through document reviews, key informant interviews, focus groups with frontline staff, and site visits. This research revealed important insights about the factors that influence not-for-profit and public expansion including growth planning, funding models, not-for-profit sector capacity, and workforce challenges.
Highlighted promising practices and initiatives in child care expansion in the provinces and territories visited as part of the case studies, including Manitoba’s Ready-to-Move modular construction initiative, Newfoundland and Labrador’s regulated family child care model, and a municipally run Early Years Centre in PEI.
Produced in-depth analyses on key issues relevant to child care expansion, including: a review of the capital funding programs in every province and territory; an analysis of the role of physical environments in child care quality; a scan of international approaches to ensuring universal child care access; and a deep dive into the current state of publicly delivered child care in Canada. The project team also commissioned external experts to develop research papers on the intersections between child care and the community housing sector.

Together, these outputs offer the most detailed picture to date of how child care expansion is happening across Canada and of the most promising levers for supporting not-for-profit and public growth.

Recommendations for supporting not-for-profit and public growth

The project’s findings demonstrate that while CWELCC has driven meaningful growth in child care spaces, expansion is largely happening in an ad-hoc way. Without more intentional planning and targeted investment, the high-quality, universal, and accessible system envisioned under CWELCC will not be realized.

The Growth by Design project team and Advisory Committee built on these findings to develop targeted recommendations for action, anchored in three core principles: public accountability for expansion planning to ensure equitable access; prioritization of not-for-profit and public operators as the sector grows; and sufficient, sustainable funding that reflects the true costs of delivering quality care.

Building on these principles, the recommendations call on:

The federal government to ensure accountability and align federal investments in CWELCC with these core principles
Provincial and territorial governments to take an intentional approach to growth by mandating and resourcing local public authority (school authorities and local government) to develop child care expansion plans grounded in community needs and demand, and to establish a publicly accountable process for building of not-for-profit community child care facilities that are publicly owned, publicly funded, and aligned with best practice design guidelines.
Both levels of government to work together on a robust data strategy to measure and equitable access to child care, and to put in place democratic engagement mechanisms to ensure the voices of the ELCC sector, families, and communities are incorporated in expansion planning.

Reflections and what’s next

Growth by Design has helped to fill important gaps in data, research, and public reporting on expansion. At the same time, the project has made clear that more work is needed beyond what a single three-year initiative can accomplish. Key priorities going forward include:

Continued research and analysis into how jurisdictions are approaching expansion amid fiscal pressures and a shifting policy landscape
Continued research and analysis to flesh out the project recommendations and build evidence to guide implementation
Ongoing mobilization of the project’s findings and recommendations with governments, the ELCC sector, and the broader public through webinars, targeted briefings, and sustained sector engagement

The experience of Growth by Design underscores that realizing CWELCC’s promise will require continued investment to understand how expansion is happening and to identify the steps needed to ensure that this expansion prioritizes accountability, quality and accessibility.

1. Introduction

This report summarizes the findings and learnings from Growth by Design, a three year research project (2023-2026) on child care expansion in the not-for-profit and public sectors. The project was led by Child Care Now and funded through Employment and Social Development Canada’s Early Learning and Child Care Innovation Program.

Through policy analysis and engagement with the Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) sector, Growth by Design investigated the barriers and opportunities to increasing the supply of not-for-profit and public child care in Canada. This report:

Summarizes findings from the project’s multiple streams of research and policy analysis on ELCC expansion
Provides recommendations for decision-makers, based on the project findings, for supporting growth in the not-profit and public child care sectors
Summarizes what was learned through the project about the future research, policy analysis, knowledge mobilization and advocacy needed to support the expansion of high-quality ELCC in the not-for-profit and public sectors

Background and context

In 2021 the federal government committed to building a Canada-wide system of ELCC in partnership with the provinces, territories and Indigenous governments. The 2021 federal budget specified that the government would work with provinces and territories to “support primarily not-for-profit sector child care providers to grow quality spaces across the country.”¹

Achieving the goals of CWELCC requires an intentional approach to the expansion of child care services guided by the principles of quality, affordability, accessibility and inclusivity. Growth by Design sought to address gaps in knowledge about how expansion is currently happening across Canada, the challenges and barriers to not-for-profit and public expansion, and the opportunities and promising practices to support expansion going forward. The project had four key goals:

Identify the barriers and facilitators that impact the capacity of public and not-for-profit providers to expand licensed ELCC
Engage the not-for-profit ELCC community, ELCC allies and public stakeholders in innovative thinking and capacity building to expand access to affordable, accessible and high quality ELCC
Identify, describe and assess innovative practices and public policies that support the expansion of not-for-profit and public ELCC
Increase awareness and enable knowledge transfer about the effective mechanisms and innovative practices to support the expansion of quality, affordable, accessible not-for-profit and public ELCC

The work of Growth by Design was overseen by a core project team and supported by an Advisory Committee of experts in the ELCC sector.

About this report

The report development was informed by:

A detailed review of the Growth by Design project outputs and publications
Observations and notes from a 1.5-day session with the project team and Advisory Committee in March 2026
Follow-up conversations with project team members

2. Project outputs and findings

The Growth by Design project included multiple streams of work to explore the enablers and barriers to expansion of not-for-profit and public ELCC expansion.

Stream 1: Tracking growth – The project team produced two comprehensive reports summarizing data on child care expansion over time in Canada (the first from 2008-2021, the second from 2022-2025). The reports provide a detailed examination of growth trends across jurisdictions, age groups and auspice.

Stream 2: Provincial and territorial research – The project team conducted in-depth investigations of child care expansion in seven Canadian jurisdictions (Nunavut, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia). Through this work, the project team identified some important cross-cutting themes about the barriers and opportunities to expansion of not-for-profit and public delivery, as well as some innovative practices and approaches.

Stream 3: Spotlighting key issues – The project team also conducted in-depth research and policy analysis on specific issues that are key to understanding child care expansion including:

Capital costs – Detailed tracking of how each province and territory is funding the capital cost of expanding regulated child care
Physical environment – Overview of the importance of physical infrastructure in high-quality child care delivery
International targets – Scan of policy mechanisms and targets used in other countries to enable the delivery of high-quality universal child care
Public delivery – Overview of the current state, barriers and opportunities for publicly delivered child care in Canada
Intersections with housing – Externally commissioned research papers on the intersections between child care and the community housing sector to identify lessons learned and opportunities for child care expansion

Together, these outputs paint a comprehensive picture of what is happening in child care expansion across Canada, and the opportunities to support growth in the not-for-profit and public sectors. The remainder of this section provides more details on the outputs and findings from each stream of work.

Summary: Growth by Design project findings

There has been strong overall growth in child care spaces under CWELCC
The majority of new spaces have been created by for-profit operators
Growth is mostly occurring in an ad-hoc way, without strong public planning and oversight
Gaps in both operational and capital funding are making it difficult for many not-for-profit and public operators to take on the risks associated with expansion. These challenges are exacerbated by ongoing workforce shortages and capacity building needs in the not-for-profit sector.
There is a gap in research and data on access to child care, and specifically whether and how growth is ensuring equitable access
There are opportunities to support not-for-profit and public sector child care growth through the scaling of innovative practices and approaches including:
- Locally led expansion planning that is guided by clear principles and best practices for design, quality and accessibility
- Collaboration with other service systems to find practical pathways to expansion through shared infrastructure and co-location of services, most notably through the education system, with the community housing sector identified as another promising partner
- Modular construction as a potentially faster and more efficient pathway to develop new child care spaces on public land (although the evidence base is still limited)
- Regulated family child care that offers strong workforce support and quality standards to address child care needs particularly in rural and remote areas

Stream 1: Tracking growth

Growth by Design produced two reports examining growth in child care spaces: one looking at trends in growth prior to the implementation of the CWELCC agreements (2008-2021), and one looking at growth after the implementation (2022-2025).²

The first report (Pan-Canadian growth of Early Learning and Child Care since 2008) found that:

The total number of centre-based spaces for 0-12 year olds almost doubled between 2008 and 2021, from 728,775 to 1,381,216
In the same period, regulated family child care spaces decreased by 24%
Before and after school spaces increased at a faster rate than spaces for 0-5 year olds (122% increase in before and after-school care, versus 62% increase for 0-5 year olds)
For-profit child care expanded at a faster rate than not-for-profit childcare (119% increase in for-profit versus 81% increase in not-for-profit)
There was a decrease in part-day spaces for children 0-5 years in most provinces and territories between 2008 and 2021.
The proportion of children aged 0 to 5 for whom there is a full- or part-day licensed centre-based space increased (from 20% to 28%)

The second report (Growth Report: Tracking expansion of licensed child care in the first phase of Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care) found that:

Canada added more than 168,000 licensed spaces between 2022 and 2025, including more than 111,000 spaces for children aged 0 to 5 years.
Roughly two-thirds of all new licensed spaces created between 2022 and 2025 serve children under six. However, there is substantial variation across provinces
Although the public, not-for-profit and for-profit sectors have all expanded, approximately two-thirds of all new spaces for children aged 0-5 years were created by for-profit operators
Participation in CWELCC is nearly universal among not-for-profit providers, very high among public providers and lower among for-profit providers
Between 2022 and 2025, more than 2,200 additional licensed facilities opened across Canada. Most of this growth occurred among for-profit operators
More than one-third of licensed schools for children aged 0-12 are located in public schools, and approximately 600 additional school-based facilities opened between 2022 and 2025
Regulated family child care grew by more than 34,000 spaces nationwide

The two growth reports draw on different data sources: the first growth report drew on data presented in the Childcare Resource and Research Unit’s (CRRU) Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada series, complemented by a review of secondary sources including media releases and related policy documents and reports. The second report drew on a new proprietary database, Child Care Licensing and Accessibility by Region (CLAR), developed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Stream 2: Provincial and territorial research

The Growth by Design project team conducted in-depth investigations of child care growth in seven Canadian jurisdictions, drawing on:

A thorough review of government websites and documents, policy frameworks, and public reports related to ELCC
Compilation and analysis of relevant data from successive editions of Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada
Key informant interviews and meetings with provincial government officials, provincial child care associations, ELCC administrators and other interest holders
Focus groups with child care operators and frontline staff to gather perspectives on workforce, funding, service delivery challenges and expansion plans
Site visits to a range of early learning and child care programs, providing insights into local implementation, infrastructure, and experiences with expansion

Based on this work, the project team published case study reports with a comprehensive overview of the current state of child care expansion in five jurisdictions:

The team also published in-depth spotlight reports diving deeply into innovative practices used to support growth in Manitoba, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Prince Edward Island:

Spotlight: Manitoba’s Ready-to-Move initiative – The Ready to Move (RTM) initiative is a collaboration between the governments of Canada and Manitoba, First Nations governments, local municipalities, and JQ Built – a not-for-profit Municipal Participation Corporation focused on infrastructure delivery, and not-for-profit child care operators to delivering centres that are of modular, hybrid construction, with standardized designs. RTMs are intended to increase child care supply in a short period of time, and to support expansion in small, rural and remote communities.
Spotlight: Regulated family child care in Newfoundland & Labrador – Regulated family child care operates under a unique structure in Newfoundland and Labrador, where a single family child care agency manages all providers across the province. Under this structure, providers are well-compensated, have access to medical benefits and are compensated for holidays, vacations and professional development days. This structure positions family child care to play an important role in the province’s ELCC growth particularly in rural and remote areas.
Spotlight: Kinkora’s municipally run child care in Prince Edward Island – In 2021, the rural municipality of Kinkora became the first municipality in PEI to operate an Early Years Centre. The centre has been highly successful in meeting community needs and even attracting new families to the area, demonstrating that municipal leadership can deliver high-quality and sustainable child care.

The project team identified seven cross-cutting themes from this provincial and territorial research about the enablers and barriers to child care expansion in the not-for-profit and public sectors (see below).

Cross-cutting themes from provincial and territorial expansion efforts

1. Planning: In most jurisdictions, child care expansion has been reactive rather than planned. Governments have set targets and opened funding streams, but in practice nobody is actively steering where growth goes at a systems level, or tracking whether it provides equitable access to care. Pockets of more intentional planning do exist, led by bodies such as local governments and school authorities, that could potentially be scaled to address child care needs. There is also a persistent tension between universality and targeting in child care growth. CWELCC was designed to make child care a public good accessible to all families, yet most provincial and territorial agreements also direct new resources toward vulnerable or underserved populations. As fiscal constraints tighten, this tension will intensify.
2. Capital funding: Capital funding approaches and amounts vary enormously across the country, from minimal support to 100% of project costs. This funding often falls short of what building a new centre actually costs, with gaps in funding for needs assessments, site preparation, project management, and increases in construction costs over a project life course. In most jurisdictions, capital funding cannot be used to purchase land, meaning that expansion depends on the availability of existing public land or buildings (in some jurisdictions, funding can be used for renovations to privately owned and rented facilities with required time commitments for providing child care). New schools, surplus school space, and school board partnerships appear repeatedly across the case studies as the most practical pathways for expansion. When public land is not available, even well-resourced not-for-profits struggle to expand. Modular construction has shown real promise in some jurisdictions as it offers faster deployment, reduced local project burden, and potential to support public ownership models; on the other hand, its suitability varies by region and climate, and the evidence base is still limited. In some jurisdictions, capital funding does allow for
3. Operational funding: Operators in every jurisdiction identified the same core problem with operational funding: funding models rarely reflect the actual costs of delivering quality child care. In particular, there are gaps in support for the operational start-up period. When delays push back opening dates, operators who have already hired staff incur significant costs. In addition to issues with the amount of funding, many operators are reluctant to expand without stronger signals that they can rely on stable, predictable, ongoing operating support. Several jurisdictions are allowing operators to charge extra fees (for example, for snacks or field trips) that effectively increase costs above stated fee caps.
4. Sector capacity and risk: Not all not-for-profit child care operators are equally well positioned to expand. Single-site not-for-profits typically lack project management capacity, reserve funds, development expertise, and the board continuity needed to see a multi-year capital project through. Multi-site child care operators are better positioned because they can pool resources, share administration, absorb delays, and manage staffing more flexibly. But even large organizations face operational funding risks that make boards reluctant to take on new projects. Multi-service organizations (those for whom child care is one of several programs) may have the greatest untapped potential, given their real estate capacity, diversified funding, and administrative infrastructure. Public delivery by school boards, municipalities, universities, and other public bodies is an important and underutilized solution, particularly in underserved communities.
5. Workforce: Workforce shortages are a significant constraint on expansion in every jurisdiction studied. Programs are limiting enrolment, operating below licensed capacity, or declining to expand because they cannot find and retain enough qualified educators. While wages have improved since CWELCC was introduced, and a number of provinces and territories have introduced wage scales, none have been negotiated with the sector; other jurisdictions continue to rely on a patchwork of wage supplements tied to different funding streams. Several provinces (NL, PEI, NS, MB) have introduced province-wide benefit programs, and some have added pension supports, which are meaningful steps, but do not yet add up to a coherent compensation framework. Workforce challenges are closely tied to broader policy issues: housing costs that prevent educators from living in the communities where they work, immigration policy shaping the supply of internationally trained ECEs, and the persistently low compensation and status of school-age program staff.
6. For-profit growth: For-profit child care has grown faster than not-for-profit and public care since CWELCC began. Most (not all) jurisdictions continue to provide operating funding to both existing and new for-profit providers, with few mechanisms to prioritize not-for-profit or public expansion. In jurisdictions where operating funding is available to any licensed provider who opens a centre, and where capital funding for not-for-profits is unavailable or unpredictable, for-profit operators who are motivated to expand will continue to capture more spaces. Nova Scotia stands out as an exception that has taken deliberate steps to limit the growth of for-profit delivery and direct public investment exclusively toward new not-for-profit and public operators.
7. Data, monitoring and evaluation: Public reporting on child care expansion is very limited. It is unclear what data are regularly collected, how they are used, and who they are shared with. There is little evidence of systematic evaluation of CWELCC’s impacts on family access, workforce stability, or the financial sustainability of the sector, as well as aa lack of meaningful and transparent engagement with the ELCC sector to share updates and identify emerging trends and issues.

Stream 3: Spotlighting key issues

The project team also conducted in-depth research and policy analysis on specific issues that are key to understanding child care expansion in Canada.

Capital costs

The project team tracked the funding programs available in each jurisdiction to support the capital costs associated with child care expansion:

Initial report analyzing capital funding opportunities (April 2024)
Updated report reflecting changes in capital funding programs (August 2025)

Physical environment

The Spotlight: Why physical environment matters in child care report was prepared by the project team as a resource for policymakers, providers and other interest holders highlighting why physical space matters for quality, identifying key design considerations, and providing recommendations for expansion that prioritize high-quality physical environments. The report recommendations focus on updating and aligning provincial regulations to align with best practice design guidelines, providing funding that incentivizes the development of high-quality child care infrastructure, and enhancing collaboration in design planning.

International targets

The Spotlight on targets and policy tools needed to achieve universal access report highlights some of the key targets and mechanisms other countries (Sweden, Norway, Portugal and Germany) are using to advance the goals of universal child care. It highlights legislative entitlements, sustained investment, and local accountability as important strategies for child care expansion.

Public delivery

The Spotlight on public delivery report provides a deep dive overview of publicly delivered child care, including the benefits and barriers to more direct public delivery of child care. The report highlights three strategies for enabling more public delivery: removing legislative barriers, strengthening government and public understanding of the benefits of public delivery, and harmonizing wages and benefits across all types of operators.

Intersections with community housing

The Child Care Now commissioned two reports on the intersections of child care and community housing. The first paper, by Craig Jones of the Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project at the University of British Columbia, examines the legal frameworks, financial mechanisms, and organizational infrastructure that shape how community housing grows, to identify relevant lessons for the child care sector. The second paper, by Carolyn Whitzman of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, examines the merits and opportunities of co-locating not-for-profit child care with non-market community housing. This research highlighted some targeted policy recommendations for child care expansion, including prioritizing government land for both community housing and not-for-profit child care, integrating social infrastructure including schools, libraries, health care and child care centres, and providing long-term infrastructure funding for new facilities.

3. Recommendations

In March 2026, the Growth by Design project team and Advisory Committee met to review the project outputs and collectively identify recommendations based on the findings. Together, these recommendations offer a roadmap to supporting the growth of not-for-profit and public child care in Canada. The recommendations are anchored in a set of core principles:

Public accountability for expansion planning to ensure that growth is resulting in equitable access for families
Supporting the expansion of not-for-profit and public operators, not to replace existing for-profit delivery, but to ensure not-for-profit and public child care is prioritized as the child care sector grows
Sufficient and sustainable funding, including both capital and operational funding, that supports quality and aligns with the true costs of expansion

Building on these principles, the project team and Advisory Committee identified some specific steps governments can take to support not-for-profit and public expansion:

Federal government:

Establish and enforce accountability for the core principles, and ensure continued investments in the CWELCC program to align with these principles

Provincial & territorial governments:

Take an intentional approach to growth by mandating, resourcing and supporting local public entities (e.g. municipalities) to develop child care expansion plans, relying on community needs assessments and demand forecasting to determine where new not-for-profit and public child care spaces should be located, how many, and what kinds. These local planning decisions can be rolled up to an overall provincial/territorial growth plan that is informed by well-defined principles and priorities for growth.
Establish new publicly accountable agencies to oversee and manage the process of building new not-for-profit community child care facilities. These agencies should partner with developers and other partners to establish new facilities based on the needs identified in local plans. New facilities should be publicly owned, with capital costs 100% publicly funded, and align with best practice design guidelines. Promising pathways to the efficient development of new facilities (i.e. using school land, modular construction) should be prioritized where appropriate.

The federal and provincial governments should also work together to ensure a robust data strategy to track growth and ensure equitable access to child care, and to put in place democratic engagement mechanisms to ensure the voices of the ELCC sector, families and communities are reflected in expansion planning.

4. Areas for further research and investigation

While the Growth by Design project has made significant contributions to collective knowledge and insights about expanding not-for-profit and public child care, the scope and complexity of the topic means there is still more work to be done. The project team and Advisory Committee also identified some important areas where further research and investigation could help inform expansion planning.

Understanding the current state

The Growth by Design project has highlighted that policies around child care expansion are rapidly evolving, vary widely across provinces and territories, and are sometimes interpreted and implemented differently at the local and organizational level. The project team and Advisory Committee identified some specific areas where more investigation into the current state could help inform expansion planning, including:

Assessing how each province and territory is navigating the tension between universality and targeting in allocating CWELCC funding, and how these decisions are impacting child care operators and families
Continuing to explore, document and share the more intentional approaches to expansion planning that some local public entities have adopted, including the principles and mechanisms they are using to ensure quality and accountability in delivery
Reviewing existing data sources to see what insights can be drawn about access to child care and identifying the key data gaps

Continuing to build a roadmap to expansion

The project team and Advisory Committee also identified some additional areas of research and analysis needed to flesh out the recommendations outlined in Section 3, generate additional evidence to support their implementation, and continue to build a clear roadmap to the expansion of not-for-profit and public child care.

How should operational funding models be structured to ensure quality delivery (beyond just funding to minimum regulations and standards)? Relatedly, what are the core components of a high-quality publicly funded child care program (for example, should preparation of meals be included)?
What parameters and guidelines should guide local planning processes? Are there case studies or models from other sectors that provide lessons?
What models could be used to build the capacity of not-for-profit and public operators to grow (for example, shared infrastructure for single-site operators)?
What are the relative costs and benefits of different capital financing mechanisms for the development of new community child care facilities (i.e. loans versus grants)?
What are the components of an effective data strategy for tracking equitable access to child care across Canada?

Assessing regulatory frameworks

There has been little attention paid to the impact of regulatory frameworks on child care growth. More research and analysis are needed to explore:

What adjustments are needed to provincial and territorial child care regulations to ensure quality is maintained and increased as the child care sector expands
How other provincial and local regulatory frameworks (such as building codes, zoning restrictions, and public health requirements) can be better aligned to support and enable quality child care expansion

Intersections with other policy areas

The work of the Growth by Design project team highlighted that questions about how to expand not-for-profit and public child care intersect with and are influenced by other policy domains. Some of the questions for further investigation identified include:

What role could the expansion of full-day kindergarten for all 4- and 5-year olds play in supporting expansion planning?
How does parental leave impact demand for child care?
How do changes in housing policy and housing affordability influence needs and opportunities for child care expansion?
What changes are needed in the post-secondary system to build a stronger pipeline of graduates with the expertise needed to steer child care expansion in the future?

5. Mobilizing findings

The Growth by Design project has generated important findings and insights that are relevant to a range of interest holders including governments, ELCC associations, child care operators, families and the broader public. The project team and Advisory Committee identified some key messages stemming from the project findings to guide knowledge dissemination and mobilization, as well as some targeted strategies for sharing the findings and learnings from the project.

Key messages

The public sector can and should play a central role in child care expansion. Without public investment and intentional planning, it will be impossible to achieve the high-quality, universal and accessible system of ELCC envisioned under CWELCC.
Expansion is currently happening in an ad-hoc and unplanned way, leading to ongoing gaps and inequities in access.
Positive progress has been made in child care growth; now it’s about finding the right tools to complete the job. A more proactive approach to expansion planning will help ensure equitable access, improve quality and consistency, and strengthen accountability.
More robust democratic participation and public engagement in decision-making will help ensure child care expansion is aligned with family and community needs.

Strategies for sharing key messages

The Growth by Design project team and Advisory Committee identified some important strategies for mobilizing the project findings and learnings with interest holders including:

Engaging the ELCC sector to share key findings from the growth report, case studies and examples of successful expansion
Mobilizing project recommendations with government decision-makers and other interested audiences through webinars and targeted briefings
Building interest in project findings within the broader public policy community, highlighting the connections between child care expansion and other social and economic priorities

6. Conclusion: Reflections and learnings

The Growth by Design project has made a significant contribution to knowledge and understanding about child care expansion at a critical time in ELCC system-building, and helped to fill in gaps in data collection, research, evaluation, reporting and accountability.

At the same time, the project has highlighted how much more work there is to be done, and that this work goes beyond the scope of what can be completed in a three-year project. Growth by Design has demonstrated the complexity of expansion, and the need for more public investment to:

Track and analyze how jurisdictions are approaching expansion, especially given fiscal pressures and the constantly changing landscape of ELCC policy
Clarify the steps that need to be taken to prioritize growth in the not-for-profit and public sectors and ensure quality and accessibility

In reflecting on the project’s achievements and lessons learned, the project team and Advisory Committee identified some other important takeaways:

It is important to track both what is happening at a policy level to support child care expansion, and what is happening on the ground in communities – and understand the gaps that sometimes exist between the two
Expansion planning needs to be responsive to the unique challenges of different regions and organizations
Engagement with Indigenous governing bodies and organizations is important to ensuring that child care growth plans address reconciliation in a meaningful way
Inequities in access and quality in child care threaten progress towards the universal system of child care envisioned under CWELCC; the only way these inequities will be addressed is through better policy and government support.

Acknowledgements

This report was commissioned and authored by Kelly Pasolli.

Funded in part by_with_Wordmark_Canada(ELCC)-EN

The ideas, views and opinions in this publication belong to the authors. They may not reflect those of the Government of Canada.

Department of Finance Canada (2021) Budget 2021: A Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan ↩︎
It’s important to note that the two growth reports draw on different data sources: the first growth report draws on data from the Childcare Resource and Research Unit’s (CRRU) Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada series, complemented by a review of secondary sources including media releases and related policy documents and reports. The second report uses a new proprietary database, Child Care Licensing and Accessibility by Region (CLAR), developed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The differences between the two datasets limit the extent to which findings between the two reports can be directly compared, and highlight the need for more public investment to support accurate, consistent, and timely data collection about child care across Canada. ↩︎

ISBN 978-1-997048-23-7 (web)

Growth by Design: Expanding Early Learning and Child Care in Canada – Project Summary Report