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Will Affordable and Available Child Care in Canada Boost the Labour Force?

Some commentators believe that Canada cannot benefit from a substantial boost in labour supply when we make child care much more affordable and available.  Labour force participation of mothers is already high in Canada they say.  There’s not much room for increase. But these judgements are wrong.  In fact, it is reasonable to believe that more than 200,000 additional mothers of young children will be in the labour force annually when child care in the rest of Canada becomes as affordable and available as in Québec.  And most of this new employment would be full-time. Right now, labour force participation …

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What is to be Done?  Lessons from Québec

                                                                                                                                                                   What are the priorities as we build early learning and child care in Canada?  There is much we can learn from Québec.  This blog looks at two priority lessons: 1. Child care capacity must increase rapidly to bring about its economic benefits, and 2. Reliance on for-profit child care weakens the ability to provide quality care for children Back in the late 1990s, Québec, without federal help, invested heavily in expanding  affordable child care services.  In 1998, the government of Québec published a 9 year development plan (up to 2005-6) to add 92,500 additional child care spaces.  Capital funding …

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Key Features of Early Learning and Child Care Supply

Early learning and child care is now recognized as a very significant part of the economy.  It was before, of course, but now the recognized dollar value of production is very substantial.  A recent Statistics Canada study put the value of ELCC services produced at $23 billion annually.  That includes both child care and kindergarten – what they call the early learning and child care industry.  The largest component of value comes from the child care side. The data is based on tax records and is current as of 2022.  The chart below shows these estimates of the total value …

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How Many Workers in Child Care Centres and How Much Education Do They Have?

Until the results of the Canadian Child Care Worker Survey are published by Statistics Canada, the Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services (CSPCCS) provides the most detailed information available about Canada’s child care workforce.  The CSPCCS is a relatively new survey, now collected every two years. The latest results available are from 2024.  It samples child care locations – child care centres and regulated/licensed family child care homes and unlicensed family child care homes, as long as these locations have annual income of at least $2,500.  We are particularly interested in the data provided by child care …

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Canada’s child care workforce – what’s happening?

Early childhood educators are the key to quality in early childhood education, and they are also key to growth in the availability of child care services.  So, let’s take some time to see how things are going. Let’s start with this chart. I’ll describe the data source in a minute, but look at what it tells us.  The number of workers in child care has tripled over the period from 2001-2025.  Also, we see that, in 2020, the pandemic drove over 20,000 workers out of child care.  But since that time, and especially with the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child …

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The Triumph of Ideology Over Policy Analysis

Parisa Mahboubi and Tingting Zhang wrote a pretty good policy analysis paper for the CD Howe Institute back in March 2026 entitled “From Promise to Practice: A Critical Review of the Federal Childcare Plan”.   I didn’t agree with all of it, but much of it was a reasonably balanced assessment of some problems with the universal child care system ushered in by the Liberal government in 2021 (known as the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program, or CWELCC).  Mahboubi and Zhang acknowledged the huge impact that the Quebec universal program had had on the labour supply of mothers 25 …

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Prominent Canadians Support Investment in Quality Child Care

Have a look at the website https://givekidsastrongstart.com/.  22 prominent Canadians have put their names to an open letter telling governments and citizens that more child care is good for business and the economy and good for children and their families. In other words, more child care is good for Canada.  The open letter calls on leaders from all sectors to join them in supporting early childhood education as a nation-building investment in Canada’s future.  And see these explanatory comments from prominent Canadians. The 22 signatories are a cross-section of senior Canadian corporate, financial, health, research and civic leadership, with multiple …

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Globe and Mail Fantasies

Did you see the Globe and Mail editorial last Sunday (June 28)?   The Globe has plans to fix everything that’s wrong with the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program.  A good objective, but I do wish the Globe would do some serious research before trotting out the same tired old solutions that have never worked for child care.  Their plan would return us to market-driven child care solutions with no controls on rising fees, no financial accountability for the expenditure of public dollars, and no preference for non-profit child care.  There would be financial assistance for low-income families but …

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ACE National’s New Proposal to Reduce Affordability, Access and Accountability in Ontario Child Care

ACE National is an organization that groups together child care operators, most of them for-profits, to lobby for reforms that serve their interests.  Their chair and most prominent spokesperson is Krystal Churcher, who owns a child care centre in Fort McMurray, Alberta, and also heads up the Churcher Group which is a consultancy firm supporting child care operators. ACE National recently published a report recommending 10 major reforms to CWELCC in Ontario. These reforms would apparently create “A Structurally Sustainable Framework for CWELCC” for the years 2027–2031. Unfortunately, their report is actually a slide deck – with 10 very briefly …

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My Submission to the Standing Committee on Finance, 2026

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance has been taking pre-budget submissions from whoever wants to contribute. I chose, unsurprisingly, to focus on funding child care, especially child care in Ontario. Here’s what I wrote: RECOMMENDATIONS TOPICS The benefits of universal child care Much has been written about the benefits of universal child care.  Two recent papers are especially important.   The first is by economists Michael Baker, Johnathan Gruber and Kevin Milligan.[1] They analyze universal child care in Quebec to show that: The second paper, again analyzing universal child care in Quebec, is by economists Montpetit, Carrer and …

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