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Supporting job seekers pursuing jobs in early-childhood education
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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While universal child care was the on-again, off-again promise of federal elections for decades, for several years now, we’ve seen genuine progress in making this a reality.
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Five years ago, most public places were shut down as Canada was plunged into the global COVID-19 pandemic. It quickly became obvious that smooth distribution of food and basics, functioning transportation, and access to health care were essential to basic well-being, public health, and the economy. And, as most child care services were shut down by public health authorities, it also became obvious that child care to support parents who provide these goods and services was also essential.
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It took a pandemic to put the paradox of child care in 21st-century Canada in sharp relief, showing both the fragility of our child care provision and how critical reliable child care is to our economic activity.
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This period powerfully demonstrated that child care is not merely “nice to have”—parents working at essential jobs and those working from home both struggled to work at all without it.
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The pandemic years also highlighted pitfalls in Canada’s long-time failure to tackle child care problems by developing a public system, as many other OECD countries have done over the past 30 years.
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Five years later, Canadian child care has changed dramatically and substantively.
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Last month, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) published their latest report on the subject titled: ‘The price is not right (yet): $10-a-day child care falling short of target’. It notes, the experience of the pandemic generated broad recognition that prosperity requires reliable, affordable child care.
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The authors believe this paved the way for the federal government’s decision to back an ambitious child care plan—the first Canada-wide child care initiative to move past intentions to implementation.
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The $10-a-day child care plan and parent fees
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In its 2021 budget, the federal government announced Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC, or the $10-a-day plan), which would be backed by substantial multi-year funding.
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While British Columbia had been moving in this direction since 2017 and Quebec has had supports in place for decades, over the next year, all the provinces and territories came on board, agreeing to collaborate (albeit with some variation in enthusiasm) with the federal government to transform Canada’s child care market into an early learning and child care system.
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Every jurisdiction had signed an agreement by March 2022, accompanied by a first round of action plans agreed to between the two levels of government.
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CWELCC was initiated by the federal government, and the responsibility for it is shared with multiple levels of government.
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Provinces, territories and Indigenous governing bodies have the main responsibility for implementing CWELCC, with the federal government providing much of the funding and high-level policy considerations as it does with Medicare, housing, and other social programs under provincial or territorial jurisdiction.
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The 2021 budget promised no less than a transformation of Canadian child care, setting out a vision and commitment to put a universal system “for all” in place based on the principles of affordability, accessibility, quality, flexibility, and inclusivity. These principles were integrated into the first Canada-wide child care legislation, which was passed into law in March 2024.
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According to the CCPA, the federal government’s overarching goal is “to ensure that all families have access to high-quality, affordable, and inclusive early learning and child care no matter where they live.” It is “a plan to drive economic growth, secure women’s place in the workforce, and give every Canadian child the same head start.”
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Parent fees were the first barrier to be tackled under the CWELCC plan, with two initial fee targets. For the first target, the federal government required the provinces and territories to lower fees by 50 per cent (on average) by December 2022, using 2019 as the baseline year (with the exception of Ontario, which did not sign on to the plan until 2022; therefore 2020 was Ontario’s baseline).
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For the second target, provinces/territories have agreed to reduce parental fees to an “average of” $10 a day by April 2026, less than a year away.
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Where are we at in 2025?
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Parent fees have dropped radically everywhere, and federal funds have replaced them as the main revenue constituting child care centres’ budgets.
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Services have expanded, with an increase of about 150,000 licensed child care spaces since 2019. The low wages and poor working conditions of the child care workforce—a mainstay of Canada’s traditional approach to child care operation—have finally been acknowledged as barriers to quality and expansion. Addressing these workforce issues has begun, although they are still far from solved.
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The CCPA has said their tenth annual child care survey, is likely to be the last of its kind as Canada moves rapidly toward much lower, set child care fees. With the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care plan’s next fee reduction milestone—average $10-a-day fees for all children aged 0 to 5—coming up in April 2026, officials with the CCPA wanted to take stock of how close (or far) parent fees are from meeting that target.
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As in previous years, their survey has assessed progress in achieving the affordability goals for full-time, licensed centres and regulated family child care for infants, toddlers and preschool-aged children up to the beginning of kindergarten.
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The CCPA phone survey gathered data on child care fees in 37 cities across Canada, together with other variables, including how fees have changed since the federal government introduced CWELCC in 2021.
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Most jurisdictions have set fees, but we’re not at $10 a day yet
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Child care fee reductions for parents are now well under way in all provinces and territories. However, by April of 2026 many parents with children in CWELCC-supported spaces will still be paying more than the $10-a-day target.
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However, the federal objective of “an average of $10 a day” is quite different than a maximum parent fee of $10 a day. “Average” does not provide the transparency provided by a set or capped fee. This means some parents may continue to pay higher fees.
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The CCPA claims they are most concerned by the lack of details on the final stepdown in April 2026 to even “an average of $10 a day” in Alberta, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia. This past July, there were no additional details of how or if fees in these provinces will change further from where they stood as of April 2025.
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Key Findings from the 2025 Report
- Six provinces/territories have already met or exceeded the CWELCC final target of $10-a-day child care in advance of the April 2026 target: Nunavut, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
- Nine Provinces/territories already have set fees. These include the six $10-a-day jurisdictions above but also New Brunswick, Alberta and Ontario whose set fees are more than $10-a-day. Additionally, British Columbia has a minority of spaces at $10-a-day.
- Provinces and territories still using market fees but reducing them by a set amount are Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia and British Columbia (most BC spaces continue to use market fees).
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Generally, the higher child care fees were to begin with, the larger the savings for parents brought about by the CWELCC fee reduction. Smaller savings generally meant the jurisdiction had a better public program before CWELCC began.
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The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives argues, in its final phase, CWELCC is going to have to work on a second, more difficult to solve challenge: meeting much higher demand for lower fees. This necessitates the rapid creation of more child care spaces, but with equity in mind—to provide better access in what they call child care deserts.
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Officials with the Centre believe this requires a publicly led and funded expansion, much like we see in the K–12 school and health care systems. Recruitment of early child care educators is part of the picture, but so is the retention of current employees. Set fees are the answer to lower fees, but set wages, via wage grids, is likely the key to staffing the expansion.
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Government can spend all the money it wants on making child care more affordable. This will certainly increase the demand but if there aren’t early childhood educators pursuing jobs in the sector, we will never have a truly universal system.
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British Columbia offers a $6 per hour Early Childhood Educator Wage Enhancement for those working in eligible licensed child care facilities. This brings the median wage for Early Childhood Educators up to about $28 per hour, which makes it a more attractive alternative for many job seekers.
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It’s not to say this is the only solution, but in the final analysis, we need to not only make child care more affordable but more attractive to educators as well.
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For my part, I once thought we would never see a universal child care program and while we’re still in the incubator phase, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
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Supportive child care for parents and caregivers who want to work is essential as we enter into a multi-generational skills shortage. I believe career development organizations, educators, government and job developers will play a critical role in helping develop this workforce, provide the necessary skills and establish a well-funded, well-regulated sector..
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We’ll be discussing the best approach to share employer insights at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday August 18th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
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On the morning of Monday August 18th 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
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'Developing a Comprehensive Approach to Effective Job Development'
WORKSHOP
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Just a heads up, next week, August 28th is going to be your last day to register for ‘Developing a Comprehensive Approach to Job Development’, and still benefit from the 20% discount on registration. If you or your colleagues haven’t yet registered, just visit: www.jobdevelopment.org/pro-d where you can register and learn everything you need to know.
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'National Networking Day for Job Developers'
NETWORKING IN LOCAL COMMUNITIES
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We’re also getting very close to our National Networking Day for Job Developers, on September 19th. This is the last week to come on board if you want to host a session in your community. Let us know by this Wednesday, August 20th if you would like to host a session in your town or city. To learn more, just visit: www.jobdevelopment.org/sponsors
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