QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Families, Children and Social Development
National Child Care Program
April 27, 2022
Welcome to the Senate of Canada, minister.
Last year in Budget 2021, the government announced its $30 billion child care plan, which has committed to creating 250,000 child care spaces and 40,000 child care positions for a five-year period ending March 31, 2026. However, there’s no information available indicating how many of these child care spaces and child care positions will be created in each of the five years leading up to 2026.
Given the significance of the $30 billion cost of the program and the need to monitor the implementation of the new child care program, when will you be releasing your plan indicating how many child care spaces and child care positions will be created each year leading up to 2026?
It is a wonderful question, so thank you very much for asking it. In fact, this information is generally available on the Government of Canada’s website.
We have published almost all of the bilateral agreements that we’ve signed with the provinces and territories, as well as their accompanying action plans, and it will be in the action plan where you will be able to track how many spaces each province and territory has committed to creating each year.
We did two-year action plans so that we could assess, reevaluate and pivot as needed. For example, Alberta has committed to create 10,000 spaces this calendar year, so by the end of 2022.
We will be ensuring that we’re tracking the progress in each of these agreements.
I’m speaking about Alberta because I was just there and we were talking about it so it is fresh in my mind, but that would be the case for each province and territory. They will have specific goals and objectives and targets for each year. So for example, in Ontario, they’ve committed to creating an additional 86,000 spaces over the next five years, 23,000 of those within the first two years. So each province and territory has milestones and objectives, and those are and will be — if they are not already, because they are just going through the translation process — up on the website and publicly available.
