Good practice

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

Canada · Ottawa · See the Canada profile

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.

Data sources

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

C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-07-05
Employment and Social Development Canada (federal government, with provincial/territorial bilateral agreements) — accessed 2026-07-05
Canada.ca — Toward $10-a-Day: Early Learning and Child Care Backgrounder — accessed 2026-07-05
The Globe and Mail — More moms in work force, increased GDP as result of national $10-a-day child-care program — accessed 2026-07-05
The Globe and Mail — Five years into $10-a-day national child-care plan, many of its promises remain unfulfilled — accessed 2026-07-05

Quality score: 96/100

How is this calculated?

Evidence: Observational / pre–post

Top 4% in this catalogue (719 scored practices)

Scores cluster high, so position within the catalogue is often more telling than the number alone.

Evaluation

Evaluated by C-NAPSE

Score profile — the dimensions behind the score — how it's computed

Transferability / replicability2/3

A federal-cost-shared bilateral-agreement model transferable to other federations, though it depends on a specific fiscal-transfer architecture not all countries have.

Impact on gender equality1/1

Maternal labour-force participation with young children rose to a record 79.6% (2023) from 75.8% (2019), concurrent with the fee cuts, per government and independent reporting.

Effectiveness1/1

Average child-care cost as a share of after-tax family income fell from ~16% to 5% (Jan 2025), directly achieving the programme's affordability objective in most jurisdictions.

Efficiency1/1

Delivered through existing federal-provincial transfer mechanisms rather than a new delivery agency, though the Auditor-General found space-creation lagging targets, reflecting execution costs.

Evaluated outcomes1/1

Centre for the Study of Living Standards' independent June 2026 econometric analysis (Ali Shariati) quantified 29,000 jobs and CAD 2.7B/year in GDP using Labour Force Survey data.

Sustainability1/1

Multi-year bilateral agreements plus a further CAD 36.8 billion committed for 2026-27–2030-31 with built-in 3% annual escalators indicate durable federal funding commitment.

Achievement / evidence1/1

Concrete, government- and independent-verified milestones: 8 jurisdictions at $10/day, record maternal employment, and a quantified GDP/employment effect.

Gender-mainstreaming embedding1/1

Explicitly designed and marketed as a maternal-employment policy, with government tracking disaggregated by mothers of young children, showing gender is central to programme design.

Curator validation1/1

Figures cross-verified between the federal government's own backgrounder (canada.ca) and an independent economist's analysis reported by The Globe and Mail, converging on consistent employment estimates.

Cite this

Evidoria. Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care System ($10-a-Day Child Care). Persistent ID: 08cc62ac-431b-4c88-b6b2-88a4c68f7932.

Export as decision brief (PDF)

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