By: Asvini Uthayakumaran

In 2021, the federal government announced the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system. CWELCC is a transformative system that promises high-quality, affordable, inclusive, and accessible child care for children under the age of 6 across Canada. By March 2022, Ontario signed a five-year CWELCC Agreement with the federal government. The province would receive $10.2 billion over 5 years to support Ontario in achieving the CWELCC initiatives, which include the implementation of $10 a day child care by March 2026. As of March 31, 2024, 92% of licensed child care programs have enrolled in the CWELCC program, and the cost of licensed child care has been capped at $22 a day. 

Current state of CWELCC in Ontario:

However, there is still more work to be done; the reduced cost of licensed child care has caused waitlists for child care to grow. In Kawartha Lakes, children are now expected to wait an average of 6.4 years for licensed child care, an increase from the 3.7 years average in 2022. One of the objectives of the Canada-Ontario CWELCC agreement was to create 86,000 new child care spaces by 2026. As of March 2024, only 27,993 new spaces of the proposed 86,000 have been created. A shortage of Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) has further added to the pressures of expansion in Ontario. ECEs are a chronically underpaid and overworked group of professionals. The objective of increased accessibility to affordable and high-quality child care will not be met if the working conditions of ECEs are not improved.

While there are still challenges on the path to a high-quality universal child care system in Canada, it is important to recognize that hundreds of thousands of families have already benefited from the CWLECC program. Parents and caregivers across the country have received significant financial relief. Women have benefited from increased labour force participation, and more children have been receiving education in the crucial early years of childhood. The province must continue to build on this momentum and work with the sector in transforming how child care is delivered in Ontario by addressing these issues (this is a manufactured crisis). The federal government has offered 5-year extensions of the CWELCC program to all provinces and territories. Despite the significant strides that have been made so far, Ontario has yet to sign the extension that would secure continued funding for high-quality, affordable, accessible, and inclusive child care.

At the same time as the province, the municipalities and the child care organizations have been working hard to implement this bold new program, loud and critical voices have been heard from the “anti-woman-working” community and the for-profit operators.  

One of the alternatives proposed by opponents of CWELCC is the “family allowance” (or the similar tax credit) approach that would provide parents with a monthly allowance that can be spent towards a child care arrangement of their preference. In his report, “Giving Parents Money doesn’t Solve Child Care Problems”, Dr. Gordon Cleveland overviews why this approach is an inadequate alternative to the current CWELCC program. For starters, to provide a family allowance, the federal government would have to eliminate the funding that has been directed towards $10 a day child care. Without this funding, Ontario would experience even higher staff shortages and a return to inflated prices for child care. An end to CWELCC would mean an end to publicly regulated child care that guarantees low fees. With a family allowance, operators would be free to set high fees that reflect current shortages.

Relying on a family allowance will also have adverse effects on gender equity. Women who have children will experience significant losses in earnings after the birth of a child. Universal child care has been found to substantially reduce these losses by enabling mothers to return to the workforce. Accessible and affordable child care is a crucial step in increasing gender equity. 

CWELCC is the best option for universal, publicly funded child care that is accessible, affordable, high-quality, and inclusive. Let’s make sure that Ontario protects families in Ontario by giving the child care sector the crucial support they need to ensure that expansion is possible. Let your voice be heard by signing this letter from Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care.