Early learning and child care (ELCC) touches almost every family in Canada — and everyone who works with young children knows it is about far more than “daycare.” It is early education, family support, community development, and one of the strongest economic and social investments a country can make. In 2021, Canada set out to build something it had never had before: a Canada-wide system of affordable, high-quality, inclusive early learning and child care, backed by federal investments of more than $27 billion over five years — and over $30 billion when combined with related early years commitments — delivered through agreements with every province and territory.

Canada today: the system being built

The Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) plan set two headline goals: cut average fees for regulated care to $10 a day, and create 250,000 new spaces. Progress on affordability has been remarkable — Statistics Canada reports that average full-time, centre-based costs for young children fell by roughly a third between 2022 and 2025, and six provinces and territories have already reached or beaten the $10-a-day average. Expansion has been harder: analysts at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Child Care Now note that space creation has trailed the target as the first five-year phase wraps up, and that where and how new spaces are created matters as much as how many.

None of it works without educators. The Centre for the Study of Living Standards found that ECE employment fell tens of thousands of positions below pre-pandemic levels during the recovery, and Child Care Now estimates turnover in parts of the sector as high as 25% a year, driven above all by compensation and working conditions. There is movement: several provinces and territories now publish ECE wage grids, and Ontario introduced a wage floor for RECEs in 2025 — steps advocates describe as necessary but not yet sufficient. Recruiting, valuing and keeping qualified educators is widely seen as the deciding factor in whether the Canada-wide system reaches its goals. There is now a map for that climb: the National ELCC Workforce Policy Table’s Educators Matter vision and roadmap charts a 10-year path to a highly qualified workforce.

More sector data at a glance

Beyond the headline numbers above, Statistics Canada’s interactive dashboard lets you explore early learning and child care data for the whole country — enrolment, arrangements, costs and more.

Interactive dashboard reproduced courtesy of Statistics Canada. Source: Statistics Canada, Early Learning and Child Care Information Hub (Catalogue 71-607-X).

School-age care: the often-overlooked middle

When people say “child care,” policy usually hears “children under six.” But care does not stop at the kindergarten door. According to the Canadian Child Care Federation, drawing on Statistics Canada’s Survey on Before and After School Care, about 40% of Canadian children aged 4 to 12 — roughly 3.17 million children — take part in some form of before- or after-school care, with school-based programs the most common arrangement. The CCCF describes school-age care as Canada’s “missing middle”: essential to family life and parents’ work, yet largely outside the funding, planning and workforce strategies that CWELCC brought to the 0–5 years.

Indigenous early learning and child care

Alongside CWELCC, Canada and Indigenous partners co-developed the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care (IELCC) Framework, released in 2018. It sets out a shared vision for early learning that is led by Indigenous peoples and rooted in Indigenous knowledges, languages and cultures — recognizing these as the foundation from which children form identity and wellbeing. The Framework takes a distinctions-based approach, respecting the distinct rights, priorities and circumstances of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, including the right to design, deliver and govern their own ELCC systems. For educators and programs everywhere, it is also an invitation: to learn from Indigenous-led practice and to make culturally safe, respectful early learning part of everyday work.

Around the world: how Canada compares

Canada is a relative latecomer to system-wide, publicly funded early learning — but it is building fast, and it has a 25-year domestic benchmark to learn from. Here is a fair look at how our approach compares with systems often cited internationally. Pick a country below to see how it compares — every figure keeps its source link so you can dig deeper.

At a glance: spending and access across systems

System	Core promise	Public spending signal
Canada (CWELCC)	Average $10/day regulated care; 250,000 new spaces	$27B+ federal, five years, plus provincial funding
Quebec	Flat low fee since 1997	Long-standing provincial program, largely self-financing via mothers’ employment (Fortin)
Sweden / Nordics	Legal entitlement from ~age 1	ECEC spending above 1% of GDP (Sweden ~1.6%, Iceland ~1.7%)
France	Free, compulsory school from age 3	Above 1% of GDP on ECEC
England	30 funded hours from 9 months (working families)	Entitlement-hours funding
Australia	72+ subsidised hours/fortnight from 2026	Income-tested subsidy (CCS)
New Zealand	20 free ECE hours, ages 3–5	Per-child funded hours + national curriculum
United States	Targeted support (Head Start, state pre-K)	Among the lowest public ECEC spenders in the OECD

Spending figures are from the OECD Family Database (indicator PF3.1); entitlement details from the sources on each card. Canada has historically spent well below the Nordic benchmark on ECEC and is catching up quickly as CWELCC funding scales — the OECD’s often-cited benchmark for child wellbeing is public ECEC spending of at least 1% of GDP.

The honest summary: Canada’s affordability progress since 2021 is among the fastest anywhere, Quebec proved decades ago that universal low-fee care transforms family life and women’s employment, and the systems we admire abroad share three things Canada is still building — a guaranteed place for every child, a well-paid professional workforce, and continuity of care that does not end when a child starts school.

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