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Good practice Imported

Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care System ($10-a-Day Child Care)

Canada · Ottawa · See the Canada profile · See the Ottawa profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 12% 96/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2021 Canada has struck bilateral deals with every province and territory to cut regulated child-care fees toward $10/day, correlating with record maternal labour-force participation and an estimated 29,000 additional working mothers by late 2025.

~16% → 5%
Child-care spending as share of after-tax family income (2021-2025)
75.8% → 79.6%
Labour-force participation, mothers with young children (2019-2023)
29,000
Additional mothers employed attributable to programme (2021-2025)
112,000 of 250,000+
New child-care spaces created vs target (by 2024/25)

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Employment and Social Development Canada (federal government, with provincial/territorial bilateral agreements)
Period
2021–present
Keywords
care economy, childcare, early learning, labour force participation, federalism

Context

Since 2021 the Government of Canada has signed bilateral Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care agreements with every province and territory, committing federal transfers (a further CAD 36.8 billion budgeted for 2026-27 to 2030-31) in exchange for cutting regulated child-care fees toward an average of $10 a day. By February 2025 eight provinces and territories were delivering care at $10/day or less and all others had at least halved fees.

Results

Parents' average child-care spending fell from just under 16% of after-tax family income before 2021 to 5% by January 2025, and labour-force participation among mothers with young children reached a record 79.6% in 2023. An independent Centre for the Study of Living Standards analysis (June 2026) estimated 29,000 additional mothers in employment and roughly CAD 2.7 billion a year added to GDP, while the federal Auditor-General found only about 112,000 of the targeted 250,000+ new spaces had been created by 2024/25.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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