Policy Monitor

Excerpt: "Creating more opportunities for Nova Scotians who want to pursue a career in early childhood education will strengthen and develop the workforce and help meet the needs of families with young children. Government is working with the Nova Scotia Community College to create 135 new seats in the early childhood education program over the next three years. The total investment is $1.45 million."

Excerpt: "With a $350,000 investment over three years, the B.C. government is helping UBC add a new part-time early childhood education (ECE) certificate program online for 72 students. The first group of 36 students will begin in September 2018 and the second will begin in January 2019."

The 2018 G7 Summit held in Charlevoix, Quebec in June made important commitments towards gender equality including several promises relating to to child care and parental leave.

Excerpt: "The ELCC Centre Initiative is positively impacting family and child well-being. The quality of care at ELCC Centres is providing children with a solid foundation for their growth and development, advancing children’s growth and development and improving children’s behavior. Additionally, the ELCC Centre Initiative is enabling parents/caregivers to return to school or work and to exercise more freedom of choice regarding their career and work arrangements. It is also reducing parents/caregivers’ stress and providing them with peace of mind as well as contributing to reducing the financial burden of daycare that families’ face; thereby enabling them to make ends meet, pay off debts, save for the future and afford to do fun activities with their children."

Excerpt: "Growing Together: Ontario’s Early Years and Child Care Workforce Strategy is our plan to build a stronger, more robust workforce by recruiting and retaining more educators in the early years and child care sector. It is our plan to better care for the educators who care for our children. The strategy includes the following five initiatives to support educators: 1. Establishing fair compensation, 2. Improving working conditions, 3. Enhancing skills and opportunities, 4. Valuing contributions, 5. Increasing recruitment."

Excerpt: "Building more child care spaces and making child care more affordable will give parents, especially women, more choice about when and if they return to work, which will help close the gender wage gap and grow Ontario's economy."

Excerpt: "Premier Rachel Notley announced 82 locations where existing programming will soon transition to $25-a-day child care. Another 18 new centres will be added in future months as additional programs are licensed and obtain not-for-profit status. In total Budget 2018 supports 7,300 affordable child care spaces in communities all across the province."

Excerpt: "The Government of Saskatchewan has now allocated nearly 600 of the 1,015 licensed child care centre spaces committed to through the Canada-Saskatchewan Early Learning Child Care Agreement. Signed earlier this year, the agreement provides Saskatchewan with nearly $41 million to improve early learning and child care over three years, including 1,500 licensed group and family child care home spaces."

Excerpt: "Ontario is funding Canada's first dedicated care centre for fetuses requiring high-risk medical care and in-utero surgeries. The new Ontario Fetal Centre will support expectant families with increased access to world-renowned specialists and ground-breaking surgeries."

Excerpt: "The agreement allocates just over $136 million, over three years, to Alberta for early learning and child care investments. Funding to the province will focus on increasing access to quality, affordable, flexible and inclusive child care through the expansion of Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Centres across the province. In 2017, the Government of Alberta launched 22 pilot ELCC Centres, based on a maximum fee for all parents of $25 per day to support children and their families accessing affordable, quality, flexible and inclusive child care. With this new funding, approximately 78 additional Early Learning and Child Care Centres will be launched across Alberta in 2017–2018, an increase of more than 350%."

Excerpt: "There is also $20.8 million in new funding from the federal government through the recently signed Canada-Saskatchewan Early Learning and Child Care Agreement. The funding allows for the continued support of more than 16,000 licensed child care spaces and for the addition of 2,500 more by 2020."

Excerpt: "$17.6 million to add about 130 new pre-primary classes, as part of a plan to have it available across the province; $15.5 million (federal funding) to add up to 1,000 new regulated child care spaces and to expand the subsidy to make child care more accessible, affordable, and inclusive."