Excerpts
Federal parties on child care
In 2021, the Liberal government, with support from the NDP, launched a $30 billion, five-year early learning and child-care system to create 250,000 new affordable spaces. It said the plan would cut the costs of those spaces to $10 a day by 2025-26. Every province and territory signed on except Quebec, where affordable child care was already available.
The federal government says families are saving from $2,800 to $16,200 a year per child, depending on where they live in the country.
Critics say the plan hasn't met its targets yet due to labour shortages, inflation and the program's complexity. Parents have complained about long waitlists and the program only applying to young children who go to licensed centres full-time.
This year, Ottawa signed agreements with 11 of 13 provinces and territories to extend and raise child-care funding to 2031. The federal government says it's on track to meet its goals, with provinces and territories planning to add 150,000 additional spaces by next year.
The Saskatchewan government says it's still negotiating the terms of the deal.
Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says that if his party forms government, it will honour the agreements with provinces, but slammed the program, saying it has led to fewer child-care spaces, private daycares shutting down and money being wasted on bureaucracy.
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"This $10/day subsidy is great, but none of that even matters if we don't help our [early childhood educators] and have those people that want to work in those places and continue taking amazing care of our kids."
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