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      In 2021, the Government of Canada entered into agreements with each province and territory across Canada to move towards the creation of a national child care system. The Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements (the Agreements) aimed to create 250,000 new child care spaces, offer much-needed support to early childhood educators, and halve fees by 2022, reducing costs to an average of $10 a day by 2026.

      While the Agreements represent an unprecedented investment in Canada’s child care and early learning system, their success depends on coordinated action at the provincial and territorial levels. Governments, operators, and educators are working to translate national objectives into sustainable funding models, equitable access, and a qualified, supported workforce. Ongoing collaboration is needed to address local realities such as rural access, workforce pressures, wages and benefits, and supporting children with complex needs.

      Across the country, provinces and territories are increasing access and working to deliver more affordable, inclusive, and higher-quality child care for every family. Efforts focus on optimizing existing capacity, expanding where needed, and supporting educators as the foundation of the system, and KPMG has supported multiple governments in their journey.

      Michael Capus
      Michael Capus

      Partner, Advisory, Public Sector Solutions

      KPMG Canada

       Four focus areas of a new child care system

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      Affordable

      The purpose of this area of focus is to lower families’ costs for children to participate in licensed child care. While exact targets vary by province, overall, the agreements are intended to reduce the cost to families to an average of $10/day by 2026.

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      Accessible

      The Agreements are intended to increase the number of available child care spaces across Canada. Creation of new spaces should thoughtfully consider current gaps in child care spaces based on location, child need, demographics, hours of operation, etc. Each province and territory’s Agreements with the Federal Government identify specific space creation targets based on their population and unique context.

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      Inclusive

      It is important for a publicly funded child care system to be inclusive of all children and families, including intentionally addressing potential barriers to entry. From a child care perspective, inclusion should consider how children and families from diverse backgrounds and vulnerable situations, including those experiencing disability and/or economic exclusion, can be meaningfully included.

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      High quality

      The Agreements focus on quality in the context of the education and training of Early Childhood Educators (ECEs). There are several levels of certification for ECEs, and the Agreements aim to increase certification levels and access to training. Other measures of quality are also important to consider, and KPMG is working to identify measurable child care outcomes that demonstrate high-quality childcare, such as ECE engagement with children, access to pedagogical leadership, and kindergarten readiness.

      Benefits of child care for all Canadians

      Child care that is affordable, accessible, inclusive and high quality offers many important benefits, including:

      • Supporting children’s development with an enriched environment in which to play and grow
      • Enables workforce participation, allowing parents – particularly mothers – to continue working or return to employment
      • Reduces reliance on social programs by easing financial pressures on families
      • Helps break cycles of poverty, supporting greater economic stability and equity
      • Drives economic growth through stronger labour-force participation and increased productivity that benefits all Canadians

      Client success stories

      Supporting child care in Canada with innovative solutions

      KPMG works alongside governments and child care operators across Canada to establish a thriving, sustainable child care sector that meets the evolving needs of children and their families.

      Drawing on our experience in system transformation, funding model design, performance measurement, and workforce strategy, we help shape initiatives that enhance child development, strengthen access, and improve outcomes nationwide. Our goal is to support provinces and territories in creating affordable, accessible, inclusive and high-quality child care.

      Over the last five years we have worked with provincial governments and non profits across Canada to help them expand and strengthen their existing child care programs into a cohesive child care system. The following are examples of projects we’ve undertaken to support child care and early childhood education:

      • Affordable: Reducing out-of-pocket parent fees for child care services

        KPMG worked with a Canadian province to support the review and redesign of their Child Care Subsidy Program, determining a process and structure for fee reductions to achieve an average of $10/day by 2025-2026 for all provincially funded, regulated child care spaces. This project involved sector engagement, the establishment of working groups, an analysis of funding mechanisms, and recommendations for redesigning the subsidy program and exploring options to achieve fee reduction goals.
         

        Impact: While this province has yet to reach the $10/day target, median fees for parents have decreased by approximately $400 / month, significantly improving affordability for families.

      • Accessible: Expanding access into places where families have historically struggled to find care

        KPMG was engaged to support the transformation of child care in a province into an accessible, affordable and high-quality system. This project supported improvements in accessibility by examining the demand and supply of child care in the province, identifying child care deserts—areas in the province where child care was lacking—and developing space-creation strategies to address child care shortages in these areas, including identifying ways to expand the workforce to align with the newly created spaces.


        Impact:         Following these strategies, the province has rolled out multiple space creation initiatives, resulting in an estimated 31,000 new chid-care spaces that have been created. Further analysis is underway to measure how these new spaces address access gaps across the province.

      • Inclusive: Ensuring all families have equal access to child care services

        For one province, KPMG supported the development of a province-wide inclusion strategy to identify potentially marginalized populations[AS3] [LA4]  and the barriers to entry they may experience, and to tailor child care programs and environments to ensure these barriers are reduced. This work involved extensive sector engagement with emphasis on directly engaging centre leadership and communities through interviews and focus groups to ensure their perspectives were understood and informed the development of the strategy.

        The project also included a comparative review of inclusion policies, practices, funding and programs within all Canadian provinces and territories, and four international jurisdictions; the development of recommendations and options to address identified gaps and areas for development; and the development of inclusion strategies including benefits, risks, implementation considerations, cost estimates and key actions for implementing the top recommendations.


        Impact :         As a result of this work, the province is looking to fund a role within each child care centre responsible for promoting inclusion within that centre. These roles would be responsible for leading efforts to address the inclusion needs of the children, families and community.

      • High quality: Increasing support for child care providers so they can deliver high-quality care

        KPMG worked with a province to support the development of a strategy that supports improved professional learning for early childhood educators and care providers. As part of this project, KPMG conducted a data review, a jurisdictional analysis, and engaged with the sector through focus sessions and a survey. The resulting professional learning strategies included recommendations and implementation steps for providing funded professional learning days, enhanced pedagogical leadership and development of a centralized learning hub to increase access to needed content.


        Impact:         As a result of this work, the province is looking to implement paid professional learning days for Early Childhood Educators to support the delivery of high quality care.

      • High quality: Measuring the quality of child care

        KPMG worked with a province to develop a Performance Framework that lays out the targets and measures required for reporting on the Agreements, as well as other measures of quality. Development of the Performance Framework included review of all of the Agreements between that province and the Federal Government related to childcare, research into measures of quality used in other provinces and countries (e.g. Australia and the United Kingdom), and detailed mapping of the targets and desired outcomes, indicators, measures, data sources, roles and responsibilities, and reporting processes and templates. 


        Impact:         In alignment with the Performance Framework, this province was able to meet their reporting requirements for the Agreements and is now exploring expanded measures of quality to inform continuous system improvement.

      How we can help

      KPMG believes in the powerful impact of inclusive, high quality child care. Not only does high quality child care allow many of our team members to show up to work and deliver their best, we recognize its broader impact on families and communities. We are keen to support the thoughtful expansion and strengthening of child care across Canada.

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