The Government of Canada has announced a new $5.4 million investment to support early childhood educators (ECEs) across Canada. While recognizing the importance of strengthening the ECE workforce is welcome, the scale and focus of this investment is not enough to address the current ECE workforce crisis.

The federal government announced the funding on August 10 through its Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program. The investment will run until March 31, 2027, and is intended to support the hiring and retention of ECEs and remove barriers facing the workforce. But much of the funding will support research, standards and workforce tools, rather than directly improving the conditions that determine whether an ECE enters and stays in the profession. 

The federal investment will focus on three main areas:

• Updating the National Occupational Standards for early childhood educators to ensure they reflect current competencies and evolving sector needs. 
• Developing labour market information (LMI) to assess workforce supply and demand, identify persistent recruitment and retention challenges, and inform targeted workforce planning in the ELCC sector. 
• Designing and delivering mentorship programs and supports that strengthen skills development and promote meaningful knowledge transfer across the ECE workforce, resulting in improved retention and career advancement for ECEs.
• Promoting information on career pathways toward certification, including education and training requirements, credential recognition, and progression opportunities, to empower current and prospective ECEs and enhance labour mobility.

However, none of these measures are sufficient to solve the current workforce shortage that is hindering child care expansion across the country. 

Ontario and other provinces are trying to expand access to affordable child care while operators continue to struggle to recruit and retain enough qualified staff to operate existing programs and open new spaces. ECEs need wages that reflect the importance and complexity of their work. They need access to benefits, pensions, paid professional development and reasonable working conditions. Operators need sufficient and predictable funding to provide those wages and supports. These are the conditions that influence whether someone chooses to become an ECE, and whether they remain in the profession.

This issue becomes even more important as governments continue to expand the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care system. Ontario’s CWELCC agreement includes a commitment to create tens of thousands of new child care spaces. Expanding physical infrastructure without simultaneously building the workforce needed to operate those spaces will leave governments with a significant gap between the number of spaces they promise and the number of spaces families can actually access.

This is a challenge B2C2 has repeatedly identified through its research with child care operators. Workforce shortages are consistently identified as one of the major barriers to expansion, alongside the lack of capital funding and concerns about sustainable operating revenues.

The federal government has already recognized that child care is essential to Canada’s economy. If Canada is serious about expanding access to affordable child care, it must make equally serious investments in the people who provide that care. That means working with provinces and territories to ensure that CWELCC funding can support:

• Competitive wages and wage grids that recognize the education, responsibility and expertise of ECEs
• Benefits and pensions that make child care a sustainable long-term career
• Accessible education and training opportunities for new and existing ECEs
• Paid professional development and mentorship
• Recruitment and retention initiatives targeted to communities experiencing the greatest shortages
• Sufficient operating funding so that child care providers can afford to employ and retain the workforce required to expand.