A Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan - What this means for you.

What is the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan?

In April of 2021, Chrustia Freeland, the Minister of Finance, announced that in the federal budget there would be a historical investment of $34B injected into childcare. The most notable policy advancement for Canadian women, children, and the economy of this generation. This historic investment will help towards the long-sought-after goal of affordable, quality, inclusive, and accessible childcare. This investment will also immensely help and strongly put the childcare system within Canada after the repercussions of the pandemic. This plan also includes the equally essential funding for the Indigenous Learning and Childcare Framework.

Since the announcement of the $34B investment into childcare, the Canadian government has negotiated Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) agreements with most Canadian territories (You can see a full list of completed agreements in figure 1). The agreements are based on the policy and the goals that have been set out by the Canadian government. These goals include:

• The affordability of childcare services for families and reducing service fees by 50% by the end of 2022. This plan will then progress to service fees of $10/day by 2025/26
• Funding to support ELCC staff includes salary and benefits, professional development programs, and career pathways. 
• Expanding childcare space and improving the access to childcare services for families that are in not-for-profit and public sectors.
• Improving the quality of care and services, while ensuring affordability and inclusive access for families.
• Providing opportunities for systemic change to help meet the needs of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation communities to give affordable, high quality, and culturally appropriate ELCC to Indigenous children and families.

Figure 1 - Province/ Territories ELCC agreement status

Why is this funding so important now and what does it mean for childcare?

Over the last 2 years, the pandemic has affected all of us. The fallout from COVID-19 has and still is making access to early learning and childcare infinitely more difficult. With the closures and reduced capacity of childcare centres and schools intermittently since 2020, many parents have had to reduce their working hours or even leave their jobs. This means many parents have kept their children out of childcare due to them being home or not being able to afford to send their children to childcare. This has made it more difficult for childcare centres to run at full capacity when they have been able to do so, therefore, negatively affecting the childcare community. From an economical standpoint, with less income coming into childcare centres, many of these childcare centres have not been able to afford new important equipment or staff salaries, which has led to some centres shutting or downsizing. This has, in turn, created a snowball effect, and some centres may still have to shut down in the future.

With less growth and closures of many childcare centres, there has been a social and educational deficit for younger children. Childcare is an essential social infrastructure for children. Childcare provides children with the opportunity to develop fundamental skills and learn from an early age, childcare also offers children the opportunity to play and interact with other children building key social skills. This early learning and socialisation are important to a child's lifelong development. Research has shown that childcare has improved many areas of a child's later life, including but not limited to, better grades, better development of life-long skills, understanding and acceptance of social equality, and has even been shown to increase lifetime earnings.

How We are Supporting Childcare Centres

It is important to understand what the plan and goals set out in the ELCC are, but it is equally important to know how to reach those goals.

At Scholar's Choice, we are here to support families, childcare centres, and staff in this plan to help support and enhance childcare across Canada. We have the expertise, products, and training facilities to help support every childcare centre, as they aim to achieve the goals set out in the ELCC agreements in each province/territory.

How we are helping childcare centres get the right equipment

We have thousands of top products hand-selected by our team of experts in the field of childcare and education. We will not only help you reach the goals set out by the government but will also make your centre stand out for prospective new parents of children and staff. We have a wide range of furniture, outdoor products, toys, games, learning resources, indigenous learning products, loose parts, plus much more. Take a look at all the products Scholar's Choice has available here.

How we are helping to train staff

We provide professional training and certification for educators to help them to learn and work on their professional development. We hold FREE training courses every month with different professionals in the field of education. You can learn more about our training here.

How Our Knowledgeable Staff & Their Years of Expertise can Help Guide Childcare Centres to Reach their Goals

We have a team of experts that are committed to supporting educators and childcare centres in their goal of creating the best environment for every child. Speak directly to one of your regional sales representatives here, and let us know we can support you and help guide you to reach the goals set out by each province's/territory’s ELCC agreements. Together, we can give every child a reason to love learning, so they can grow up to achieve their hopes and dreams.