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Delivering early childhood education (ECE) through public schools has garnered increasing attention due to its potential to address systemic challenges within the early education workforce. These series of papers explore the benefits of integrating early childhood programs into public school systems, focusing on how this approach improves workforce conditions, enhances professionalism, increases professional learning opportunities, and promotes equity across the sector.

The graph presents Early Childhood Educator (ECE) earnings across Canada, comparing them to provincial and territorial poverty thresholds using the Market Basket Measure. The data reveals significant wage disparities, with ECE salaries falling below the living wage in most regions and, in some cases, barely exceeding poverty thresholds.

- Poverty Threshold Comparison: In many provinces and territories, ECE wages hover near or just above the poverty line, highlighting the financial instability of the profession.
- Living Wage Gap: Only a handful of jurisdictions—with stronger wage policies—offer ECE salaries that meet or exceed the local living wage. In most areas, ECEs struggle to afford basic necessities despite their essential role in early learning.
- Regional Variations: Provinces with higher government investment in child care and workforce compensation tend to have narrower wage gaps, while others lag behind, exacerbating challenges in recruitment and retention.

This data reinforces the urgent need for wage grids, increased public investment, and stronger workforce policies to ensure fair compensation for ECEs and enhance workforce stability.

Excerpt: "Low wages deter new graduates from entering the child-care field and drive away those already employed. Of the 4,200 early childhood educators that Ontario colleges graduate annually, fewer than 60 per cent enter licensed child care, and only 40 per cent remain after five years. Small wonder for the exodus. One in five child-care staff responding to our survey told us they hold a second job to make ends meet. Over 55 per cent of couple families, and 83 per cent of lone parent families, are concerned about their housing."

Excerpt: "La penurie d'educateurs de la petite enfance (EPE) qualifies a freine les efforts d'expansion des places dans le cadre du systeme pancanadien d'apprentissage de la petite enfance et de garde des jeunes enfants (système d'AGJE). Cette pénurie d'educateurs a incite certains decideurs politiques de l'Ontario a chercher des raccourcis, notamment a remettre en question la necessite d'un diplôme de deux ans pour être admissible comme educateur de la petite enfance. La reduction des qualifications des éducateurs ou d'autres stratégies de déqualification, comme l'augmentation des ratios, ne sont pas des solutions."

Description: A comprehensive collection of Canada-wide legislated qualifications of child care centre supervisors, ECE qualified, and non-ECE qualified staff.

Excerpt: "The shortage of qualified early childhood educators (ECEs) has stifled space expansion efforts under the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) plan. This scarcity of educators has caused some Ontario policymakers to look for shortcuts, including questioning the need for a two-year diploma to qualify as an ECE. Reducing educator qualifications or other de-qualification strategies, such as increasing ratios, are not solutions. ECEs are critical to positive child and family outcomes and are the foundation of a high-quality early learning and child care system."

Excerpt: "The world is witnessing some of the highest levels of conflict in decades, with more than 110 armed conflicts occurring across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Europe. The impact of these wars on children is vast and multifaceted. The trauma inflicted is enduring and will shape the rest of their lives — and by extension, the societies in which they, and we live. As researchers who study how public policies can intervene to reduce adverse outcomes for children, we contend that wars are not bound by geography. Airstrikes terrorize children in conflict zones, while those living in the nations involved in these conflicts also experience trauma in the form of poverty, neglect, and discrimination."

Resources for Truth and Reconciliation

Dr. Petr Varmuza

Excerpt: "Ontario’s first “Service Plan for Child Care Services” (1992) came into existence as a negotiated response to successive provincial governments’ dislike of Toronto’s long-standing effort to move beyond the administration of the child care subsidy system and equitably manage the provision of services across, what was then, Metropolitan Toronto. Additionally, the provision of municipally operated child care centres was a special target, as it is now, regardless the important function they played in the most disadvantaged communities.

Since then, service plans became a provincially mandated documents usually produced on a five-year cycle consisting of listening to the service providers and soliciting public input primarily from parents searching for child care or child care subsidy. Rarely there is a formal, public review of the accomplishments since the approval of the previous plan, including the full range of successes and failures. Once approved by the municipal authority, they often undergo minimum public scrutiny, ongoing evaluation and review."

Submission to the Government of Canada's Guide on Building a Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care System, August 2024

The Atkinson Centre urges the Government of Canada to ‘get it right from the start’ by enforcing the principles governing the building of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Child system. Profit has no place in child care. Quality does.

This is the 5th edition of the Early Childhood Education Report (ECER). Established in 2011, the report is released every three years to evaluate provincial/territorial early years services against a 15-point scale. Results are populated from detailed profiles of each province and territory. The ECER scale is organized around 5 categories with 21 benchmarks forming a common set of minimum criteria contributing to the delivery of quality programming. This report captures changes to early years services from March 2020 to March 2023. As such, it is able to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on service provision, as well as the funding and requirements of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements (CWELCC) at the half-way mark.

Excerpt: We estimate that in 2008 universal access to low-fee childcare in Quebec induced nearly 70,000 more mothers to hold jobs than if no such program had existed - an increase of 3.8% in women employment. By our calculation, Quebec's domestic income (GDP) was higher by about 1.7% ($5 billion) as a result. We run a simulation of the impact of the childcare program on government own-source revenues and family transfers. We find that the tax-transfer return the federal and Quebec governments get from the program significantly exceeds its costs."