Roadmap
to a Quality
Early Learning and
Child Care System in
Alberta
ii
November 2021
Acknowledgements
Ms. Jane Beach served as the lead researcher for
the policy roadmap. Ms. Beach also designed
and facilitated the virtual engagements with
stakeholders held during summer 2021.
The roadmap partners would like to thank the
stakeholders who participated in the virtual
engagements. Their insights and experiences
informed the roadmap and provide the basis for
building an early learning and child care system
in Alberta that meets the needs of all children and
their families.
iii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................................ii
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................... 1
Why do we need an early learning and child care system? .......................................................................................... 1
How the roadmap was developed ........................................................................................................................................ 2
Indigenous early learning and child care ............................................................................................................................ 3
The roadmap document ............................................................................................................................................................ 3
A Schematic Diagram of the Process for Building a Quality Early Learning
and Child Care System in Alberta ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Section 1. IDEAS AND VISION .............................................................................................................................. 5
The Alberta context ..................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Policy actions .................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Section 2. PUBLIC POLICY, PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT ................................................ 9
The Alberta context ................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Policy actions to advance governance and policy development ............................................................................ 11
Policy actions to address expansion ................................................................................................................................... 12
Policy actions to support public input and engagement in system building and future system
operation .......................................................................................................................................................................................16
Section 3. FINANCING ...............................................................................................................................................18
The Alberta context ................................................................................................................................................................... 19
Policy actions related to nancing ....................................................................................................................................... 20
Section 4. WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT ........................................................24
The Alberta context .................................................................................................................................................................. 25
Policy actions to advance the qualications, certication and ongoing professional learning of early
childhood educators .................................................................................................................................................................26
Policy actions to address sta compensation and
working conditions ....................................................................................................................................................................28
Policy actions to address data collection, monitoring and evaluation .................................................................. 29
NEXT STEPS ........................................................................................................................................................................... 30
1
Introduction
The massive disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted for many Canadians the
vital roles that governments can play in shielding them from economic and social hardships. They
further revealed for governments the importance of strong economic and social policies not only
as stabilizing inuences during a time of crisis, but also as the foundations for recovery as families,
communities and businesses look to the future and potentially new ways of working together.
Not surprisingly, early learning and child care has taken central stage in much of the discussion of
Canada’s economic and social recovery. Governments at all levels have recognized what child care
researchers and advocates have long known and argued: that high quality early learning and child
care remains an essential foundation for modern societies and economies given its support for young
children’s development and well-being, the full participation of women in the labour market and the
building of equity and social inclusion.
The federal Budget 2021 - A Recovery Plan for Jobs, Growth and Resilience placed early learning and
child care at its heart. It outlined a bold and innovative vision for the federal government to work
collaboratively with provincial and territorial governments to transform the current patchwork of
services into a publicly funded and managed system that will meet children’s and families’ needs in
ways not previously seen in much of Canada. Budget 2021’s historic new spending of $27.2 billion over
the next ve years, which are added to the previous federal commitments under the 2017 Multilateral
Early Learning and Child Care Framework, represents the most signicant investments in child care in
Canadian history.
Seven provinces and one territory reached system building agreements to work with the federal
government prior to the fall federal election. British Columbia was the rst province to do so in
July 2021, with the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan signing agreements in August. The
Government of Alberta signed its historic system building agreement on November 15, 2021 at the
YMCA Shirley Stollery Child Care in Edmonton.
These are exciting times for Alberta’s early learning and child care sector. Over the next ve years,
the federal government will transfer $3.8 billion to Alberta to support early learning and child care
system building. These investments have the potential to transform early learning and child care in
the province and make high-quality, aordable regulated child care available to all young children
and their families. And while building an early learning and child care system will involve a signicant
amount of work, for many partners, over an extended period of time, the benets will extend for
generations.
Why do we need an early learning and child care system?
Close to two decades of international and Canadian child care policy research show the limitations
of market-based approaches for organizing, nancing and delivering early learning and child care. In
Alberta, as in much of the rest of Canada, the primary reliance on child care markets has resulted in
challenges for both families and service providers. It has led to a child care sector that is underfunded
and which struggles to meet the needs of children and their families.
2
Regulated child care remains unaordable for many families and especially so for those with low-
incomes. Services are not available in some communities and unevenly distributed in others. Many are
of a modest quality. Private individuals, non-prot organizations, businesses and corporations take on
much of the responsibility for developing and operating services and rely on parent fees to cover the
bulk of service costs. Early childhood educators are modestly paid for their important work, commonly
face dicult and challenging work environments and lack the respect and recognition they deserve.
Simply increasing the number of regulated spaces and trying to make child care more aordable for
families through further investments in a market-based approach will not build a child care system,
nor will it ensure that high-quality services, staed by qualied educators, are equitably available to all
children and their families. New approaches are needed which recognize early learning and child care
as a ‘public good’ and place an emphasis on the public funding, planning and management of services
to meet children’s and their families’ needs. It is these approaches that are the focus of the current
roadmap.
How the roadmap was developed
The ‘Roadmap to a Quality Early Learning and Child Care System in Alberta’ is a collaborative eort of
the Canadian Child Care Federation and its Alberta Leaders’ Caucus, Child Care Now and its Alberta
Chapter, the YMCA of Northern Alberta and the Muttart Foundation. Its focus is on regulated early
learning and child care for children 0 to 6 years of age, although the roadmap partners recognize the
importance of school age care, regulated and supported through the Ministry of Children’s Services,
and Early Childhood Services, funded through the Ministry of Education. Both of these will need to be
more closely integrated with child care as the province builds a comprehensive early learning and child
care system.
The roadmap reects the ndings from virtual engagements with early learning and child care
stakeholders, held in summer 2021, as well as the many years of Canadian and international research
and policy development in respect to system building. It further incorporates ideas and learnings from
three similar policy roadmaps in support of system building: the Roadmap for $10aDay Child Care in BC,
developed by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC and Early Childhood Educators of BC in spring
2021; the Roadmap to Universal Child Care in Ontario, prepared by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child
Care and the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Ontario in July 2021; and the national policy
roadmap developed by Child Care Now, Canada’s Roadmap to Aordable Child Care for All, and its
10 elements of system-building. Four of the roadmap partners further participated in parallel work in
summer 2021 to draft a policy roadmap for the province of Saskatchewan.
The roadmap is a forward-looking document. It is intended to promote discussion and generate
further ideas about how Alberta can build an early learning and child care system. The roadmap
cannot and does not cover all of the policy actions required to move toward a comprehensive system
of early learning and child care. The policy actions it recommends are essential starting points, each of
which will be strengthened and informed by further discussion over the coming months.
The roadmap partners recognize that building an early learning and child care system will take time
and will require the ongoing review and analysis of the best approaches needed to meet the needs
of all children and their families. They further anticipate that the provincial and federal governments
will work closely with other levels of government, early learning and child care stakeholders including
parents, and other interested groups throughout the system building work in ways that are transparent
and meaningful.
3
Indigenous early learning and child care
The roadmap does not propose specic policy actions linked to Indigenous early learning and child
care. The roadmap partners recognize and arm the rights of Indigenous governments to design
and develop early learning and child care systems and services that are distinctions-based and self-
governed, consistent with the vision and principles set out in the Indigenous Early Learning and Child
Care Framework and commitments under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples.
The Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework lays out a shared vision, principles and a path
forward for Indigenous early learning and child care across Canada. Its overarching vision includes a
distinctions-based approach that recognizes the unique priorities of First Nations, Inuit and the Métis
Nation.
Moving forward, the roadmap partners call on the Alberta government and all early learning and
child care stakeholders to ensure that provincial system building work is guided by meaningful and
collaborative discussions with First Nations, Inuit and Métis governments, as well as with Indigenous
organizations and communities. The work that lies ahead must respond to the calls to action of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the calls for justice set out in The Final Report of
the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
The roadmap document
The roadmap is organized into four sections:
Section 1: Ideas and vision proposes a vision and principles to guide early learning and child care
policy development and provision.
Section 2: Public policy, planning and management outlines the role of government in system
building, including governance, expansion and service delivery.
Section 3: Financing examines system nancing, considers aordability for parents and families, and
proposes new funding approaches and accountability measures to support program sustainability and
quality provision.
Section 4: Workforce development and support discusses and proposes policy actions to support
the essential roles well-prepared, and appropriately compensated early childhood educators play in
the delivery of high-quality early learning and child care.
Each section includes background information, a summary of the current Alberta context and the
proposed policy actions in support of system building.
4
A Schematic Diagram of the Process for Building
a Quality Early Learning and Child Care System in Alberta
Ideas, vision and
principles
Public policy, planning
and management
Financing
Workforce
development and
support
Who pays? How much?
How do they pay?
How is capital funding
allocated?
Who owns facilities developed
with public funds?
How does child care get there?
Who should operate child care?
What is aordable?
How do we ensure equity?
How do we ensure quality?
What data are needed?
What is the purpose of child
care?
Who is child care for?
What are our values for children?
What is fair compensation?
What qualications are needed?
How are working conditions
determined?
How can job satisfaction be
improved?
Multiple Stakeholder Involvement
Engagement • Participation • Collaboration
Alignment with Parental Leave and Other Child and Family Supports
Professional Associations
Communities of Practice
Pedagogical Networks
Regulation
Accountability Mechanisms
Conditions for Funding
Public Reporting
Ongoing System Review and Renements
Quality, aordable, equitably available,
inclusive, culturally safe, exible, regulated
child care for children and families
The above diagram shows the stakeholders, key areas for consideration and core issues that will form
part of the process of building an Alberta early learning and child care system. Early learning and child
care system building is complex and involves both technical and value considerations. It demands a
vision of the system as a whole, as well as a consideration of the linkages between dierent system
elements. It further requires the engagement and input of many dierent stakeholders.
5
Section 1. IDEAS AND VISION
A high quality ELCC system should begin by articulating the ideas that will dene
it. The ideas will be contained in a conceptual framework that begins with a
statement of the values held by the society and what it wants for its children. The
values statement is based on implicit societal values and beliefs about the nature
of the child and childhood. It is coloured by the history, circumstances and context -
economic, social and cultural - in which the society exists.
Childcare Resource and Research Unit (2006:1)
Elements of a high quality early learning and child care system
Over the past two decades, international research has explored the purposes and goals for early
learning and child care and examined how dierent ideas and visions shape the ways in which services
are organized, nanced and delivered. Broadly, most countries support public spending on early
learning and child care both to enable parents’ participation in the labour market and to support
young children’s early learning and development. The emphasis they place on each varies, as do the
strategies they use to achieve their policy goals.
Countries with well-developed, high-quality, aordable and accessible systems of early learning
and child care understand and approach it as a ‘public good.’ They place a strong emphasis on child
rights and commit to provide all children and their families with equitable access to high-quality
early learning and child care. In these jurisdictions, which include the Scandinavian countries,
comprehensive systems of child care remove the nancial barriers to children’s participation and
support the active involvement of parents in their children’s care and learning.
The broad public goals and visions for early learning and child care in countries with comprehensive
service systems contrast with the more limited ones common in countries that approach early learning
and child care as a private service delivered through a child care market. This is the approach in much
of Canada. In these countries, governments support child care through targeted public spending,
which is often directed to children and families considered most in need. Children and their families
do not have an entitlement to child care. Instead, the emphasis is on supporting parents’ labour force
participation, but not necessarily in ways which provide all children with high-quality learning and care
experiences. Where families live, the type of child care they need and how much they can aord to pay
shape the services they can access.
The OECD review of early learning and child care in Canada, completed in 2004, highlighted the
importance of federal and provincial governments developing a ‘coherent, long-term vision’ for
services as the rst step to system building. The federal government’s 2021 budget commitment to
work collaboratively with provincial and territorial governments, to transform early learning and child
care sectors across the country into a pan-Canadian system, elevates the importance of developing
this vision and provides the opportunity to rethink both the goals and purposes of services as well as
how they are delivered.
6
The Alberta context
In common with other provincial and territorial governments, the Government of Alberta sets out the
nature and terms of its support for early learning and child care in a number of ministry documents,
in legislation and in agreements with the federal government. There is some variation in how this
support is described.
The new provincial child care legislation, the Early Learning and Child Care Act, which came into eect
on February 1, 2021, includes ‘principles’ and ‘matters to be considered by providers of child care programs,’
which set out parameters for the application of the legislation and the delivery of services. The ‘matters
to be considered’ require licensed service providers to take into account children’s early learning and
development, their diversity and cultural heritage, as well as the involvement of parents and guardians.
They also require them to ensure that children are protected from abuse. The Act does not provide
children and their families with an entitlement to service, nor does it commit the government to
support a comprehensive system of early learning and child care.
The Ministry of Children’s Services Business Plan for 2021-24 includes one specic outcome for child
care: ‘Albertans have access to early childhood education and child care options to enable participation in
the workforce’ with the supporting objective of improving access to child care ‘through initiatives that
support aordability, high-quality, safety, inclusion and parent choice.’ The accompanying performance
metric identies the government’s focus on ‘maintaining the safe operation of child care programs,’ given
the COVID-19 pandemic and downturn in the economy, while also identifying ‘anticipated future growth
in child care spaces inuenced by a combination of market forces and government supports.’
The Children First Act (CFA), introduced in 2013 under a previous Conservative government, includes
broader support for the recognition of children as rights holders – including provision for the minister
to develop a Children’s Charter that emphasizes the needs of children as a central focus in the design
and delivery of programs and services that impact them.
The Government of Alberta’s commitments to child care set out in its Action Plan under the Canada-
Alberta Early Learning and Child Care Agreement 2020-21, include a range of benets that it believes
quality, aordable child care can support including ‘positive early childhood development, labour
force participation of parents, women’s equality, social integration and inclusion of newcomers, and
poverty reduction - all aspects of social and economic growth.’ These broader benets extend beyond
the government’s descriptions of the value and contributions of early learning and child care
outlined in its own documents. Although they do align with some of the work previous provincial
governments undertook in support of Flight: Alberta’s early learning and care framework (formerly
named Play, Participation and Possibilities). The framework includes a shared set of values for early
childhood learning and care communities with a focus on democratic citizenship, equity, intercultural
competence and communication and environmental sustainability. Licensed child care programs are
not currently required to use the framework to guide their service delivery.
The Canada-wide system building agreement signed between the Alberta government and the federal
government provides the opportunity to develop a bold new vision for early learning and child care in
the province. Based on consultations with Alberta stakeholders and drawing on close to two decades
of international and Canadian research on early learning and child care and its benets for children and
families, the roadmap partners propose the following new vision and guiding principles to support the
building of a high-quality, aordable and accessible early learning and child care system in Alberta.
7
Policy actions
1. Develop and adopt a new vision and guiding principles for early learning
and child care in Alberta
Proposed vision
All children in Alberta, regardless of family make up, circumstance or geography are welcomed into
and have access to high-quality, inclusive, regulated early learning and child care that is responsive
to their needs and dispositions, culturally safe, and where they have opportunities to play and learn,
develop friendships, and form meaningful relationships with their peers and the educators who care
for them.
All families have access to aordable, high-quality, convenient early learning and child care that
supports them in their parenting roles, and enables them to work, study, or otherwise engage in
and contribute to their communities. Parents and guardians have opportunities for meaningful
involvement in their children’s early learning and care.
Early learning and child care programs are staed by well-educated, fairly-compensated
educators who enjoy good working conditions, have opportunities for ongoing learning and career
advancement, and are respected for their contribution to the well-being, learning and development of
children.
Regulated early learning and child care programs and services are located in well-designed
and situated buildings, receive adequate, stable public funding, are informed by best practice and
contribute to our understanding of the importance of quality provision to a just and equitable society.
While universal in approach, regulated early learning and child care services receive additional
resources and supports to ensure that all children, including those with exceptional needs, are
welcomed into all child care settings and able to participate fully with their age peers; and that
newcomer families, low-income families, Indigenous families, Francophone families and families living
in conditions of risk can attend the regulated programs and services they choose.
Proposed guiding principles
Early learning and child care services are:
• focused on the best interests of children and the inherent value of childhood;
• equitably available to all Alberta families, regardless of income, family status or
characteristics or where they live, with particular attention given to families living in
conditions of risk or vulnerability, and to families who have a child with a developmental delay
or exceptional needs;
• evidenced-based, reecting current knowledge and research on quality provision, and
regularly adapt to and incorporate new learnings;
• supported by public policy that is guided by research and informed by national and
international benchmarks and standards;
• comprehensive and integrated across dierent levels of government, and across provincial
ministries that support or deliver complementary services;
8
• publicly planned, developed and managed through collaboration and engagement with
public and community partners and parents to advance the goals of a comprehensive child
care system;
• sustainable through stable and sucient public funding, capital investments and
appropriate human resources to deliver quality services; and
• accountable, through ongoing planning, data collection and analysis, monitoring, ongoing
public participation and engagement, and public reporting.
Indigenous early learning and child care
Consistent with the vision and principles set out in the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care
Framework and the commitments made under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous governments will design and develop early learning and child care
systems and services that are distinctions-based and self-governed.
Non-Indigenous early learning and care stakeholders will listen to and engage with Indigenous
governments and leaders to understand the value of Indigenous ways of knowing and knowledge.
They will further commit through their work with young children and their families to address systemic
racism and the impacts of colonialism, respond to the calls to action identied by the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and honour and address the calls for justice set out in
The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
2. Amend Alberta’s child care legislation to reect the proposed new vision
and principles
The Government of Alberta should, following consultations with early learning and child care
stakeholders, amend the Early Learning and Child Care Act, and where appropriate the supporting
regulation, to reect a new vision and guiding principles for a comprehensive, publicly funded and
managed early learning and child care system.
The proposed amendments to the legislation will include reference to the right of all young children
to access regulated, inclusive and culturally safe early learning and child care and will set out the
foundations for the move toward a publicly planned and managed system.
9
Section 2. PUBLIC POLICY, PLANNING
AND MANAGEMENT
Across Canada, developing child care provision has most often been treated as a private
responsibility, with government playing a regulatory, supporting and occasionally
facilitating role for the creators and managers of most Canadian child care services—
large and small non-prot “third sector” groups and large or small entrepreneurs—
rather than by ensuring through ongoing public processes that child care services are
available where, when and for whom they are needed like schools, roads, electricity or
sewers — part of the infrastructure.
Friendly et al (2020:10)
Moving from private to public processes to create child care in Canada
In countries with comprehensive early learning and care systems governments actively plan and
manage services. Children and their families have an entitlement to regulated early learning and
child care, just as they do public education, and both central and local governments support the
organization, nancing and delivery of services. Governments work together to provide all families
and their children, regardless of circumstance or geography, with equitable access to high-quality,
aordable early learning and child care.
1
They further align child care services with other supports for
children and families, including parental leave and income supports.
Local governments often deliver child care services themselves, with the nancial help and policy
support from the senior level of government. This allows them to ensure that child care services
remain responsive to community needs and are available in all communities, even those that are
harder to serve because of their geography or socio-economic prole. While private service providers
deliver services in comprehensive early learning and child care systems, families’ access to child care
is not shaped by market forces and communities do not rely solely on parent groups, non-prot
organizations and businesses to set-up and operate child care services.
The public planning and management of services further provides parents and other community
stakeholders with opportunities to inform how services are organized and delivered. Early learning
and child care services have a public prole, similar to that of schools, and form part of the local
community. They are public services in which families and communities have an interest, rather than
the private property of service providers.
The active roles governments play in planning, managing and delivering services in well-developed
early learning and child care systems contrasts with the more limited roles they play in child care
markets, such as those in Canada. In child care markets, private organizations assume the primary
responsibility for developing services, with the expectation that the demand for child care will shape
the provision of services and meet parents' and children's needs. The main roles for government
centre on the regulation of services and the provision of limited public funding for specic market
For example, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Sweden where ELCC is an entitlement for children from at least one
year of age; and Belgium and France where ELCC is an entitlement and free, for children from 2.5 and 3 years respectively.
10
'interventions,' such as subsidies for low-income families. The common examples of ‘market failure’
in Canada and beyond, including the presence of child care deserts, high parent fees and the modest
quality of services, highlight the limitations of governments’ primary reliance on markets to provide
children and families with equitable access to high-quality, aordable child care.
The Alberta context
The early learning and child care sector in Alberta has much in common with parallel sectors in most
other provinces. It has grown over time as a ‘mixed’ market, made up of for-prot and not-for-prot
service providers supported by various government spending initiatives and policies. Over the last
decade, provincial governments have sought to encourage the creation of child care spaces through
grant funding, developed initiatives to improve their quality and most recently, under the previous
NDP government, piloted $25 per day child care in select program sites.
In March 2020, prior to the onset of the pandemic, there were 138,367 licensed and approved child care
spaces in the province,
2
the majority of which were centre-based. There were just under 3,000 centre-
based child care programs, including full-time child care centres (1,106), part-day preschool programs
(671) and out-of-school cares (1,079).
3
The majority of centre-based child care programs are operated
by for-prot businesses (around 60 percent) and Alberta is one of three provinces in which large
corporate child care providers also deliver child care. In March 2019, there were 66 contracted family
day home agencies, with around 1,900 approved family child care providers, and 11,922 family child
care spaces. The majority of family child care spaces (60.5 percent) are supported by for-prot family
day home agencies.
The majority of Alberta parents with preschool-age children rely on some form of non-parental care
to balance the demands of work and raising a family, with over 60 percent of these parents accessing
regulated child care.
4
Despite increased public spending over the last decade to expand services and
improve their quality, high-quality, regulated child care remains in short supply across much of the
province, and particularly in rural and northern communities where ‘child care deserts’ are common.
Overall, Alberta families have lower levels of access to regulated child care than families in some other
provinces, while they pay amongst the highest parent fees.
Historically, municipal governments played an important role in the development and support for early
learning and child care in Alberta. Between the 1970s and 1990s, a number of municipal governments
delivered or supported child care, although changes to federal cost sharing programs, and provincial
cut-backs to municipal grants resulted in the end of most municipal support for child care. Today,
two municipally supported centres established in the 1980s remain in operation, and two additional
municipal governments opened centres in 2008 and 2009.
5
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the downturn in the provincial economy placed signicant pressures
on regulated early learning and child care services. The pandemic compounded these pressures,
leaving much of the sector nancially and operationally vulnerable. Enrolments remain depressed and
service providers are forced to manage additional health and safety protocols and their associated
Ministry of Children’s Services Annual Report, 2020-21.
Based on 2019 data from Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada, 2019. Childcare Resource and Research Unit.
Statistics Canada. 2020. Survey of Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements, 2019.
The municipalities of Jasper and Beaumont have operated child care since the 1980s; Drayton Valley and the MD of
Opportunity opened child care centres in 2008 and 2009 respectively. See Municipal Child Care in Alberta: An Alternative
Approach to the Funding and Delivery of Early Learning and Care for Children and their Families for details.
11
costs. In 2020 and 2021 federal funding, including the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, the Canada
Emergency Response Benet, and dedicated child care monies under the Safe Restart initiative have
provided the sector with some nancial relief. Additional supports and new investments are required,
however, both to allow the early learning and child care sector to stabilize and to begin to recover as
the economy rebounds.
The $3.8 billion in new federal investments available through the Canada-Alberta system building
agreement provide the opportunity to transform Alberta’s early learning and child care sector. The
commitments to reduce parents fees, expand licensed not-for-prot, public and family child care
services, and support high-quality child care will require signicant changes in how the Government
of Alberta supports and funds child care. Based on consultations with Alberta stakeholders and taking
into account the ndings from international and Canadian research, the roadmap partners recommend
the following policy actions to support the public governance, planning and management of early
learning and child care central to system building.
Policy actions to advance governance and policy development
3. Review and implement changes in how the Ministry of Children’s Services
governs, plans, manages and supports early learning and
child care
To support system building, the Government of Alberta will need to invest in and support fundamental
changes in how the Ministry of Children’s Services governs, plans, manages and supports the delivery
of early learning and child care. These changes will require the Ministry to take on expanded and active
roles in the following areas:
• the purposeful public planning of services, including through partnerships with dierent
levels of government, to ensure that the supply of services matches the demand, particularly
in harder to serve communities;
• the development and support for the public infrastructure required to ensure services are
developed where needed, with options for public delivery developed where necessary;
• the development of comprehensive policies that integrate early learning and child care
services with other supports and services for children and their families;
• a hands-on role in ensuring that policy objectives, service targets and timetables are met,
and the allocation and disbursement of appropriate public nancing to meet objectives;
• the meaningful and ongoing engagement of a broad range of stakeholders during all
phases of the system-building process and as part of system monitoring and evaluation;
• regular data collection, monitoring and evaluation to support ongoing improvements in
system development and operation and to assess progress towards policy goals; and
• the development of strong accountability measures for both government and the ELCC
sector.
The above expanded roles for the Ministry of Children’s Services will require signicant new public
investments in stang, resources and technical supports, including data collection and reporting
systems. They will also require the Ministry to develop new partnerships with other government
ministries and other levels of government.
12
4. Take a whole of government approach to the design and implementation
of an early learning and child care system
The design and implementation of a comprehensive system will be complex. It will require attention
to the many related elements of system building including the governance, nancing and organization
of services, workforce education and development, regional planning and service delivery and the
alignment and integration of early learning and child care services with complementary services and
supports provided through other government ministries, including Early Childhood Services which is
the responsibility of the Ministry of Education.
The following provincial government ministries have potential roles to play in building an early
learning and child care system, working in partnership with sector stakeholders and other levels of
government:
• Advanced Education, responsible for post-secondary education for the early learning and care
workforce and other forms of adult learning;
• Community and Social Services, responsible for administering the current child care fee
subsidy program and other family income supports;
• Education, responsible for Early Childhood Services;
• Infrastructure, responsible for planning, building and managing government-owned
infrastructure;
• Municipal Aairs, responsible for the Municipal Government Act, assisting municipalities to
provide well-managed, and accountable local government and providing funding support;
• Seniors and Housing, responsible for aordable housing; and
• Culture and Status of Women, responsible for increased gender equality and grants to support
and enhance capacity in the non-prot sector.
The engagement of multiple government ministries in early learning and child care system building
dictates the need for a ‘whole of government approach’ supported through one of several possible
vehicles including a dedicated early learning and child care secretariat that includes senior sta from
dierent ministries, a formal cross-ministerial partnership or a cabinet committee.
Policy actions to address expansion
5. The stabilization of existing regulated child care services
Alberta's child care sector has drawn considerable and necessary support from the various pandemic-
related federal supports provided in 2020-21. The phasing out or restructuring of these supports
nationally, however, is taking place before the Alberta early learning and child care sector has
recovered nancially and operationally from low enrolments and disruptions in service delivery.
To address the current instability within the sector, the Ministry of Children’s Services should
immediately assess the level and nature of sector instability and identify those services most in
need of additional nancial and other resource support, both by type of service and populations or
communities served. Based on the results of this assessment, the Ministry should reallocate unspent
provincial monies budgeted for child care in 2021-22 to sector stabilization, including investments in
the workforce. Where necessary, the Ministry should further seek additional provincial resources from
within government to support the stabilization of the early learning and child care sector.
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In respect to the new federal investments for system building, the Ministry of Children’s Services
should work with the federal government and early learning and child care partners to ensure that the
new federal monies are used both to stabilize the sector and provide the basis for longer-term system
building. New investments in operating funding for licensed child care providers, including support for
improved wages and working conditions for early childhood educators and reductions in parent fees,
have the potential to stabilize organization revenues and provide the basis for medium to longer-term
system building. The need to carefully plan expansion, given the current instability within the sector, is
addressed below.
6. The development of a multi-year expansion plan for regulated early
learning and child care
The federal and provincial government announcements in support of the Canada-Alberta system
building agreement include the commitment to create 42,500 new regulated child care spaces in not-
for-prot and public centres and family child care. The Government of Alberta indicates that $240.64
million in federal spending will be allocated to expand the number of child care spaces over the next
ve years. The timing and scale of this expansion will depend initially on the provincial government’s
eorts to stabilize the sector. Pending this stabilization, the planned and supported expansion of
regulated child care will require new strategies, including the engagement of local government
partners.
Planned service expansion must ensure that new regulated child care spaces have the following
characteristics:
• are aordable – to all parents, regardless of nancial circumstances;
• suitable – of high-quality, inclusive, culturally safe and welcoming of all children, responsive
to the needs of parents and conveniently located;
• sustainable – with stable system-level funding and infrastructure; and
• staed with well-educated and fairly compensated educators.
To ensure that regulated child care services are developed where they are needed and that they
provide high-quality, aordable care, the Ministry of Children’s Services will need to work with a wide
range of government and community partners in developing the proposed multi-year expansion plan.
The expansion plan will need to include:
• targets and timetables for service expansion;
• a capital funding program – with a focus on using public resources to support the
development of new publicly owned child care centres and the renovation of existing public
buildings or facilities to accommodate non-prot or publicly delivered child care services;
• targets and timetables for increasing the supply of qualied early childhood educators;
• a data collection and monitoring process;
• benchmarks to monitor progress;
• a process for evaluating the impact and eectiveness of policy actions;
• accountability measures for public nancing; and
• mechanisms to modify policies and amend regulations and standards as needed.
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7. The development of new provincial-municipal early learning and child care
partnerships to support the regional planning and expansion of regulated
child care
Public delivery will be an essential part of system-building, especially in communities where there
are no appropriate non-prot organizations to expand service delivery. Municipal governments can
play important roles in identifying service needs, developing service plans, making public facilities
and lands available for child care and ensuring that local planning and development guidelines and
processes are supportive of regulated early learning and child care. Where appropriate municipal
governments can also either play direct roles in service delivery or support service delivery through
agreements with non-prot community partners.
The Ministry of Children’s Services should engage with the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association
(AUMA) and Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) to examine and reach agreement on the
opportunities available for municipal governments to partner with the Ministry of Children’s Services in
early learning and child care system building. The Ministry should explore the options for developing
formal partnership agreements with municipal governments that provide them with the nancial
resources and capacity to plan, develop, and either deliver or support the delivery of regulated early
learning and child care.
8. The development of a ‘child care in schools’ policy framework
Many schools across the province house regulated child care centres, preschools and out-of-school
care programs. These regulated services have dierent agreements in place for the leasing and use of
school space, many of which are negotiated at either the school or school board level.
The proposed expansion of early learning and child care could be supported through the development
of a ‘child care in schools’ policy framework that would provide guidance and resources to support the
location of regulated child care programs in school buildings or on school sites. The proposed policy
framework could include provisions for dedicated space for regulated child care in all new school
construction and major school renovation projects, the development of resources and supports to
help child care centres operate in school settings, and public funding for nominal or no-cost lease
agreements between school boards and eligible child care providers.
The Ministry of Children’s Services should work with the Ministry of Education and the Alberta School
Boards Association to develop and support the implementation of the proposed ‘child care in schools’
policy framework.
9. The development of an inventory of public buildings and facilities that
could house regulated child care services and public lands on which new
publicly owned child care centres could be developed
There are numerous public buildings and facilities which might house regulated child care services.
These public buildings and facilities, which are owned or operated by one of the three levels of
government, include federal, provincial and municipal buildings, hospitals, libraries, recreation centres
and public post-secondary institutions. There are also publicly owned lands that might be developed
to accommodate purpose-built child care centres.
15
The Ministry of Children’s Services should work with other government partners, including Alberta
Infrastructure, to develop inventories of the above public buildings and lands and, pending their
review, develop policies, including new public investment strategies, to support the development of
regulated child care centres in public buildings and facilities and on publicly-owned lands.
The Ministry of Children’s Services should further work with early learning and child care stakeholders
to identify eligible community-based, non-prot organizations to deliver regulated child care services
in these publicly owned buildings or facilities or on publicly owned lands.
10. Funding to build the capacity of the non-prot sector to support ELCC
system building
The Government of Alberta currently provides grant funding to build the capacity of non-prot
organizations through the Enhanced Capacity Advancement Program (ECAP) and the Community
Initiatives Program (CIP).
To help build the capacity of non-prot early learning and child care organizations to support the
delivery of high-quality child care, and the expansion of regulated child care, the Ministry of Children’s
Services should work with other government ministries to develop a grant program for eligible non-
prot organizations looking to improve their governance, planning and management of operations.
As one component of the proposed grant program, the Ministry of Children’s Services should work
with other government ministries and early learning and child care stakeholders to explore the
feasibility and benets of providing grant support for current child care providers incorporated as for-
prot businesses that agree to transition to non-prot incorporation under the provincial Societies Act.
11. The short-term stabilization of out-of-school care and the medium- to
longer-term expansion of services
Child care for school-age children six and older is not included the Canada-wide system building
commitments announced in Budget 2021. Regulated school-age child care is an important service
for children and their families and currently is in short supply across much of the province. There are
regulated centre-based before and after school care spaces for less than one in ten children aged six to
12 years.
The increased public funding and expansion of regulated child care for children 0 to 6 years of age
included in the Canada-wide system building commitments, as well as the proposed improvement
in wages and working conditions for certied early childhood educators, will likely put school-
age programs in competition with child care providers for well-qualied sta. To address these
challenges in the short-term, the Ministry of Children’s Services will need to increase its own provincial
investments in out-of-school age care both to lower parent fees and to improve the wages and
working conditions of sta.
In the medium- to longer-terms, the Ministry of Children’s Services should seek to work with the
federal government to advance a cost-shared, federal-provincial strategy that supports the public
expansion of regulated school-age child care. The Ministry of Children’s Services, the Ministry of
Education, school-age care providers and the Alberta School Boards Association should be partners in
this proposed work.
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12. The closer integration of Early Childhood Services and community-based
child care
Alberta Education is responsible for Early Childhood Services (ECS), which includes kindergarten for
children ve years of age and pre-kindergarten for younger children with mild, moderate or severe
disabilities, learning English as a second language or requiring a Francophone program. Publicly
funded kindergarten and pre-kindergarten are delivered through public, separate, Francophone and
accredited independent schools, as well by private ECS operators.
The majority of kindergarten and pre-kindergarten programs are part-day, although some school
boards support the delivery of full-day early learning. A portion of pre-school age children in
kindergarten and pre-kindergarten programs transition to licensed child care during the regular school
or work day. Many of these child care services are not located on the same site as the ECS program
resulting in transition challenges for young children, their families and service providers.
The Ministry of Education revised its funding for ECS for the 2020-21 school year. The changes in
funding have resulted in school boards signicantly reducing ECS programs for children below
kindergarten age, especially those children with mild or moderate disabilities or delays. Some of these
children now access licensed child care.
The Government of Alberta should support the building of a comprehensive, publicly funded early
learning and child care system through the closer integration of ECS and regulated child care services.
The majority of provinces and territories now fund full-day kindergarten, and some require school
boards to provide out-of-school care where there is demand.
The Ministry of Children’s Services, Ministry of Education and the Alberta School Boards Association
should work together to support the phased introduction of full-day kindergarten for all ve-year-
olds, the expansion of pre-kindergarten for all children with exceptional needs, and the funding and
delivery of regulated out-of-school care for all children in ECS programs who require extended hours
service. Where possible, regulated out-of-school care should be located in schools or on school sites to
support young children’s transition between services. To support this option, the Ministry of Children’s
Services, Ministry of Education and the Alberta School Boards Association should develop strategies
and guidelines for the use of existing kindergarten classrooms for regulated out-of-school care for
children attending ECS programs.
Policy actions to support public input and engagement in system
building and future system operation
13. Develop and support the infrastructure necessary to ensure public input
into early learning and child care system building and ongoing system
operations
The design and implementation of a publicly funded and managed early learning and child care
system will benet from signicant stakeholder input and engagement. The Government of
Alberta’s commitment to seek input from content experts, sector representatives, post-secondary
institutions, advocacy organizations, labour, anti-poverty groups, newcomer organizations, Indigenous
organizations and parents will strengthen the policy and planning process and make it more
17
transparent. It will also help build a broad base of support for the proposed early learning and child
care system.
As part of the system building process, the Government of Alberta should develop and support the
necessary infrastructure (such as provincial and regional councils or working groups) that will enable a
diverse range of stakeholders to provide input into the system building process.
The Government of Alberta will also need to work with other stakeholders, including municipal
governments and school boards, early learning and child care organizations and associations and
parents and families to develop and implement the formal structures that will enable ongoing public
input into service delivery. The current structures and processes in place in public education and
schools, such as boards of trustees and parent councils, may provide possible models for consideration.
The ongoing and meaningful engagement of stakeholders at both the system and service levels will
support accountability and transparency and help conrm and maintain the public character of the
anticipated early learning and child care system.
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Section 3. FINANCING
Financing is one of the most important policy tools governments have to support early learning and
child care. The level and nature of public funding impact the quality, accessibility, and aordability
of services and can determine which children and families have access to them and which do not.
Inevitably, government investments in early learning and child care reect the priority they attach to
this policy area, the goals and purposes they set out for services, and their political preferences for how
public monies are disbursed to advance policy goals.
A number of international bodies have set targets or benchmarks for how much governments should
invest in early learning and child care and recommended that it be a minimum of one percent of GDP.
6
Previous international reviews of Canadian investments have found that the country falls well short
of these targets, and spends less, on average, than its peer nations. The Early Childhood Education
and Care Policy Canada: Country Note further drew attention to dierences in public expenditures for
kindergarten compared to child care, noting that the former was close to twice that of the latter.
Broadly, the nature of government funding for early learning and child care takes two main forms:
demand-side and supply-side funding. Demand-side funding in the form of tax credits or deductions,
and fee subsidies for individual parents is intended to make child care more aordable for families,
while also supporting their ‘choice’ to purchase the child care that works best for them. Supply-side
funding, the funding model in early learning and care systems, provides funding directly to services to
cover all or some of the costs of program delivery. If supply-side funding is sucient and sustained, it
can provide services with nancial stability and parents with aordable child care.
International research on early learning and child care funding, by the OECD and others, nds that
supply-side funding approaches are associated with a higher quality of service, better training
for educators and higher levels of equity, access and participation than parent subsidy models.
Supply-side funding further provides governments with a greater capacity to manage services, in
support of policy goals, than demand-side funding, even though the latter is sometimes viewed as
more ‘politically attractive.’ The OECD, following its review of Canada’s early childhood provision,
recommended a ‘move away from personal subsidy mechanisms toward operational funding and an
entitlement for children, as in the traditional education model.’
Recognizing the barrier that parent fees present for many families, numerous OECD countries
either provide funding to programs to enable them to oer some free provision or seek to limit the
percentage of household income spent on parent fees. New Zealand provides up to 20 hours week
of free child care for all children 3 to 5 years of age. In England, all 3- and 4-year-olds are entitled to
See Quality Targets in Services for Young Children; Starting Strong II; UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 8
Signicant public funding is necessary to support sustainable and equitable early
childhood education…without this… a shortage of good quality programmes, unequal
access and segregation of children according to income follows. When the main burden
of costs falls on parents, children from disadvantaged backgrounds become less
represented in ECEC provision, or the quality of provision is inadequate
OECD (2006:112) Starting Strong II
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15 hours per week of free child care, and 30 hours if the parent is working or attending school. In
Norway families pay no more than 6% of their household income for child care, up to a maximum of
about $400 per month, and lower-income families with children 2 to 5 years of age are entitled to a
number of free hours of care per week. Gordon Cleveland, in his analysis and economic modeling on
aordability for the Government of Ontario, AFFORDABLE FOR ALL, recommended that child care be
free for preschool age children, with increased subsidies and sliding fee scales for younger children.
The Alberta context
Over much of the last decade, successive provincial governments have increased public spending on
regulated child care. Between 2009-10 and 2018-19 The Ministry of Children’s Services increased its
direct investments from around $190 million to $351 million. This increase included $45.6 million in
federal funding received through the Canada-Alberta Early Learning and Child Care Agreement signed in
2017. Provincial child care expenditures (direct and indirect) reached $408 million in 2019-20, before
falling to $379 million in 2020-21. The provincial government forecast expenditures of $393 million for
2021-22 in its most recent provincial budget.
The Government of Alberta provides funding for for-prot, non-prot and publicly supported licensed
child care centres and family day home agencies. This funding includes both supply-side and demand-
side funding. The supply-side funding includes wage enhancements for certied early childhood
educators and support for their education and professional learning, infant incentive grants to oset
some of the additional costs in providing care for very young children and administrative grants for
family day home agencies. The Ministry also provides capacity building grants for inclusive child
care and has periodically made capital grants available for space creation. The demand-side funding
consists of fee subsidies for eligible lower-income parents to reduce the cost of regulated child care.
Approximately half of the direct provincial funding in 2018-19 ($154 million) was allocated for parent
fee subsidies and half ($151.5 million) for operational funding, including $119.5 million for Accreditation
funding, the majority of which supported wage enhancements for certied early childhood educators.
Beginning in 2017, the previous NDP provincial government supported an initial phase of 22 $25 per
day child care centre demonstration sites, through a grant-funding (supply-side funding) model. The
estimated cost of these 22 sites was around $10 million per year. From 2017 to 2020, the provincial
government allocated its federal investments under the Canada-Alberta Early Learning and Child Care
Agreement to support an additional 100 $25 per day demonstration sites.
In 2020, the UCP government discontinued a number of long-time funding supports such as the
Kin Care child care subsidy, the Northern Allowance payment for early childhood educators and
the Benet Contribution Grant for service providers. The Ministry of Children’s Services further
discontinued funding for the $25 per day demonstration sites at the end of the demonstration periods.
A small number of the $25 per day sites received transitional funding to help them reintroduce market-
rate parent fees.
The four-year bi-lateral extension agreement the provincial government signed with the federal
government in 2021 allocated federal monies to parent fee subsidies, which the provincial government
made available for more families through increases in the income thresholds for eligibility.
Government of Canada. 2017. Canada-Alberta Early Learning and Child Care Agreement, 2017-2020; Government of
Canada. 2021. Canada-Alberta Early Learning and Child Care Agreement, 2020-21
20
One of the outcomes of Alberta’s primary reliance on a market-based approach to regulated child care
is high parent fees. Service providers set parent fees according to ‘market rates’, taking into account
their program costs. Recent national research shows that high child care fees make regulated child care
potentially unaordable for many Alberta families.
8
The median monthly fees for full-time infant care
in Calgary and Edmonton were $1,300 and $1,050 respectively in 2020, while the median monthly fees
for preschool-age children were $1,145 and $925.
Following the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, the Ministry of Children’s Services provided some
relief funding to licensed child care services to compensate them both for the fall in enrolments and
the increase in health and safety costs. In the 2020-21 scal year the Ministry invested $130 million in
COVID related relief, much of which was federal funding including monies received under the Safe
Restart initiative and the critical worker benet program. The Ministry further re-allocated funding
previously budgeted for parent subsidies to the Working Parents Benet, a one-time payment for eligible
households who had used any form of child care (licensed or unlicensed) for three months in 2020.
In addition to Ministry of Children’s Services investments in regulated child care, the Ministry of
Education invested $450.9 million in ECS programs in 2019-20 (including part-day kindergarten) for
pre-school age children in the public education system and an additional $126.1 million for children
attending ECS programs provided through private ECS operators.
9
There were no direct parent fees for
children to participate in ECS programs.
The system building agreement Alberta signed on November 15th will see the province receive $3.8
billion in new federal investments for regulated child care over the next ve years. These federal
investments will more than double the current provincial funding for child care during the rst year
of the agreement and make the federal government the senior funding partner for early learning and
child care in the province. The Government of Alberta announcement in support of the agreement
indicates that it will allocate the new federal spending to the following priority areas over the next
ve years: $2.865 billion to lower child care fees for parents; $240.64 million to increase the number
of child care spaces; $202.6 million to develop and fund child care options for vulnerable and diverse
populations, as well as children with exceptional needs; and $306.16 million to support licensed
programs and certied educators in providing high-quality early learning and child care.
Based on consultations with Alberta stakeholders and taking into account the ndings from
international and Canadian research, the roadmap partners recommend the following policy actions to
nance early learning and child care system building.
Policy actions related to financing
14. Fully and directly fund licensed child care centres and family day home
agencies
Consistent with nancing models in place in other early learning and child care systems, the Ministry
of Children’s Services should develop and implement a supply-side funding model for licensed child
care that provides services with stable operational funding, reduces parent fees and provides early
childhood educators with fair wages and improved working conditions.
MacDonald, D. and Friendly, M. 2021. Sounding the Alarm. COVID-19’s Impact on Canada’s Precarious Child Care
Sector. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Government of Alberta. 2020. Ministry of Education Annual Report 2019-20.
21
The Ministry of Children’s Services should support the transition to this new funding model by
sustaining and reallocating its own provincial child care investments and seeking the federal
government’s approval to redirect investments received under the Canada-Alberta Early Learning and
Child Care Agreement to system building. A number of the provinces that previously signed Canada-
wide system building agreements have consolidated their federal funding in this manner.
15. Develop a funding formula for licensed child care centres, preschools and
out-of-school care programs
To support the implementation of an equitable and sustainable supply-side funding model, the
Ministry of Children’s Services should work with licensed centre-based services and early learning
and child care researchers and content experts to develop funding formulas for the dierent types of
licensed centre-based child care. The funding formulas will need to reect the true operating or service
costs for the delivery of high-quality early learning and child care.
The proposed formulas might include a base component that takes into account the following actual
service delivery costs:
• wages for educators that reect their education, experience and role descriptions;
• an allocation for substitute sta, other professional sta or resources, as well as for non-
program and support sta;
• professional learning for sta;
• program hours of operation;
• average enrolment;
• administrative and program costs;
• occupancy costs, including utilities and regular maintenance; and
• any revenue collected from parents including parent fees.
In addition to the base component, the formulas might also include supplemental elements that
provide funding for centres that serve populations or communities with additional needs. Examples of
these communities or service populations might include:
• rural, northern and isolated communities;
• English language learners and minority language children;
• vulnerable children who experience barriers to full participation; and
• children with developmental delays or exceptional needs who require additional support.
16. Develop a funding formula for licensed family day home agencies and
family child care educators
Similar to the funding formula for licensed centre-based child care, the Ministry of Children’s Services
will also need to work with licensed family day home agencies and early learning and care researchers
and content experts to develop a funding formula for family child care. This formula will need to reect
family child care operating costs linked to:
• the education and certication levels of the agency sta and day home educators;
• the ages of children served and average enrolment;
22
• program delivery costs;
• professional learning costs;
• the cost of community engagement activities; and
• any revenue collected from parents including parent fees.
17. The development of conditions for licensed centres and family day home
agencies to be eligible for supply-side funding
To ensure that public monies are used to support high-quality, licensed early learning and child
care, the Ministry of Children’s Services should establish conditions licensed service providers must
meet to be eligible for supply-side funding. These conditions will ensure equity for parents and sta,
accountability for the use of public funds, and may also support data collection to enable the Ministry
to assess the eectiveness of its funding approaches.
All current licensed child centres and family day home agencies who meet the conditions would be
eligible for supply-side funding. Supply-side funding for new child care services should be directed to
non-prot and public providers, in keeping with the Canada-wide system building agreements signed
to date.
The conditions for receipt of supply-side funding might include:
• be in compliance with requirements under Alberta’s Early Learning and Child Care Act and
Regulation;
• pay sta according to an established provincial wage scale and benet package;
• charge no more than any established provincial or regional parent fee, and apply any fee
reduction established for lower income families;
• provide detailed nancial reporting with respect to revenues and expenditures;
• welcome all children into the program, including children with developmental delays or
exceptional needs, regardless of family circumstance or employment;
• have an inclusion plan which outlines the measures in place to ensure that children with
exceptional needs are able to fully participate in the program alongside their peers;
• have an equity plan to indicate how barriers to a child’s participation or additional needs will
be met, and how children from diverse backgrounds and identities, including Indigenous
children, racialized children, LGBTQ2+ families and newcomers to Canada and Francophone
children are welcomed, supported and provided with culturally safe early learning and child
care;
• develop an annual quality plan in collaboration with educators and parents, including how
opportunities for continuous learning will be provided;
• have an induction or mentoring plan for all educators and sta;
• accept and appropriately supervise practicum students to support the expansion of the early
childhood educator workforce; and
• provide data and participate in any evaluation activities required by the provincial
government.
To enable the Ministry of Children’s Services to eectively allocate public monies while controlling
public costs, the Ministry should work with early learning and child care stakeholders and early
23
learning and child care content experts and researchers to develop provincial parent fee guidelines
for licensed centre-based and family child care. These fee guidelines will set out the maximum parent
fees licensed child care can charge parents and will help support the move towards the 50 percent
reduction in parent fees by the end of 2022 and average parent fees of $10 per day by the end of 2026
anticipated under the Canada-Alberta system building agreement.
18. Develop a denition of child care aordability to guide system nancing
Making child care more aordable for families is a central priority for both the federal and provincial
governments under the Canada-Alberta system-building agreement. The Government of Alberta
advises that, under the agreement, parents will see fee reductions starting in early 2022 and for the
next two years. The signicant parent fee reductions proposed as part of Canada-Alberta system
building will relieve the nancial burden for many families, but some families will still nd parent fees
unaordable and a barrier to their children’s participation in licensed child care.
To ensure that all Alberta families have equitable access to high-quality, licensed child care that is
aordable, as parent fees are reduced over time, the Ministry of Children’s Services should work with
early learning and child care content experts and researchers to develop a provincial denition of
child care aordability. Possible options for dening child care aordability include reference to the
maximum proportion of after tax and transfer household income families should be required to spend
on child care with ceilings in place for families at dierent income thresholds. The proposed denition
will inform provincial policies aimed at making regulated child care aordable for all families.
19. Replacement of child care fee subsidies with a ‘geared to income’ parent fee
Consistent with the development of a provincial denition of child care aordability, the Ministry
should replace the child care fee subsidy program with a ‘geared to income’ parent fee which ensures
that families pay no more than an agreed maximum proportion of their after tax and transfers
household income on licensed child care.
A ‘geared to income’ parent fee will take into account the number of children families have in licensed
child care and provide lower-income families with equitable access to regulated child care as parent
fees are lowered over the next ve years of federal funding. The percentage of income that families are
required to pay should dier by household income, with families on very low incomes required to pay
no parent fee for licensed child care.
The Ministry of Children’s Services should further remove the requirement that only parents who work
or attend education or training programs are eligible for fee support. This requirement discriminates
against those children whose parents are either not working or attending an education program.
24
Section 4. WORKFORCE
DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT
There are signicant challenges for the childcare workforce in Canada. However, many
of the solutions are quite clear. All the available data and research indicates that if wages
and working conditions improve, there are real opportunities to improve and sustain the
quality of the childcare workforce and, therefore, the quality of childcare programs. The
evidence has clearly indicated that with enhanced resources and on-going training and
support, the childcare workforce is fundamental to delivering high quality childcare.
Halfon, S. (2014:16) Canada’s child care workforce
A large body of research conrms that children benet from participation in high-quality early learning
and child care programs, while they receive little or no benet from attending poor quality ones. There
is further agreement that the specialized nature of the eld requires a well-prepared and appropriately
supported professional workforce and that the educational preparation of early childhood educators
matters. Early childhood educators with higher levels of formal education are more likely to engage
in the ‘stimulating, warm and supportive interactions’ with young children that support their learning
and development than are educators with little or no formal pre-service education.
The You Bet I Care! study of quality in child care centres in seven jurisdictions across Canada identied
both direct and indirect predictors of quality. Researchers found that key predictors of quality included
the observed sta member’s level of ECE specic education and their wages.
The 2008 UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 8 proposed 10 internationally applicable benchmarks for
early learning and child care as a set of minimum standards to protect the interests of young children.
Benchmark 6 proposed that a minimum of 50 percent of sta in early childhood centres should have at
least three years of tertiary education with a specialization in early childhood studies or a related eld.
Among OECD countries, a degree in early childhood education, for at least a percentage of educators,
has become the standard for centre-based programs. By comparison, family child care providers
generally do not require formal early childhood qualications, although they often have the support of
pedagogues and opportunities for regular peer interaction.
Despite agreement on the importance of well-prepared early childhood educators, the eorts
of governments to increase the capacity of their early learning and care workforces have proved
challenging. The low wages and poor working conditions of early childhood educators, common in
market-based child care sectors which depend on parent fees to nance services, have led to stubborn
problems around sta recruitment and retention. They have further contributed to an undervaluing of
the eld compared to related professions such as teaching.
Research by the Child Care Human Resources Sector Council (CCHRSC) completed from the early
2000s up to 2013 previously highlighted the challenges facing early learning and care workforces in
Canada, including the lower wages for child care work compared to work in related elds; the public’s
perceived lack of recognition for the eld and the value of the work; and the educational barriers some
older workers face if they decide to change careers and move into child care. The majority of these
challenges remain present today in early learning and child care sectors across the country.
25
The Alberta context
The Alberta early learning and child care workforce is almost all female, includes a signicant
proportion of women from racialized backgrounds, is modestly educated, relatively poorly paid and
supported and continues to experience high levels of sta turnover.
The modest educational preparation of the workforce reects the sta certication requirements
developed by the Ministry of Children’s Services and the stang guidelines set out in regulation. Both
fall below international benchmarks. In March 2020, just over 40 percent of certied early childhood
educators held a level 1 certication, which requires completion of an orientation course or completion
of an equivalent post-secondary course related to early childhood or a family child care training
program; 16 percent a level 2 certication, which requires completion of a one-year ECE certicate, or
equivalent post-secondary education; and 44 percent a level 3 certication, which requires completion
of a two-year ECE diploma, or equivalent post-secondary education. There are no ongoing professional
learning requirements for certied educators.
The level of certication sta require to work in licensed child care varies by program type. A program
supervisor in a child care centre or in out-of-school care must be certied as a Level 3 early childhood
educator. One in three sta in a child care centre, and one in four sta in an out-of-school care centre
and preschool must be certied as a Level 2 early childhood educator. All other centre-based sta
must be certied as a Level 1 early childhood educator within six months of employment. Program
consultants in family day home agencies are required to be certied as Level 2 early childhood
educators. There are no certication requirements for family child care providers.
The compensation for certied early childhood educators in centre-based child care also remains
modest. In September 2020, the mean employer paid hourly wage for full-time early childhood
educators ranged from $16.19 for sta certied at level 1 to $18.95 for sta with a level 3 certication.
10
With the addition of provincially funded wage enhancements, the average hourly wage for certied
educators ranged from $18.33 for level 1 sta to $25.57 for level 3 sta.
The last 18 months have brought particular challenges for certied early childhood educators across
the province. The disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have increased their workplace
pressures, while declining enrolments, particularly in centre-based care, have resulted in a fall in the
number of certied sta working in the eld. Between March 2020 and March 2021, the number of
certied sta working in the eld fell from around 18,800 to under 15,000, as programs were forced to
lay-o sta.
11
It is not known how many of these sta will be in a position to return to the eld when
the economy stabilizes and enrolments increase.
The Government of Alberta made some new workforce investments in 2020-21 to support early
childhood educators. It provided the majority of early childhood educators with the Critical Worker
Benet, a one-time payment of $1,200 under a cost-shared (75 percent:25 percent) federal-provincial
government program in February 2021; and in fall 2021 used a portion of one-time federal monies for
sta recruitment and retention to extend provincial wage enhancements to certied early childhood
educators in licensed preschools and provide additional professional learning funding for certied
early childhood educators as well as a provision for paid relief time.
10
Government of Alberta. Ministry of Children’s Services data. Alberta Child Care Grant Funding Program |
Alberta.ca
11
Government of Alberta. 2020. Ministry of Children’s Services Annual Report 2019-20. Government of Alberta.
2021. Ministry of Children’s Services Annual Report 2020-21
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The longstanding and deeply rooted challenges facing the early learning and child care workforce,
which were compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, require signicant new policies and investments
both to stabilize the workforce and then begin building its capacity as part of system building. The
overarching need is for a comprehensive early learning and child care workforce strategy, developed
through a partnership between the Government of Alberta, public postsecondary institutions, the
Association of Early Childhood Educators of Alberta and other early learning and care stakeholders.
The workforce strategy will need to address the supply of early childhood educators; their educational
preparation, certication and ongoing professional learning; their compensation and working
conditions; and data collection, monitoring and evaluation of the child care workforce.
The Government of Alberta proposes under the Canada-Alberta system building agreement to allocate
$306.16 million to support licensed programs and certied educators in oering high-quality early
learning and child care. This new investment, while welcome, does not appear sucient to address the
critical needs facing the workforce, including support for improved wages and working conditions.
Based on consultations with Alberta stakeholders and taking into account the ndings from
international and Canadian research, the roadmap partners recommend the following policy actions to
support the early learning and child care workforce.
Policy actions to advance the qualifications, certification and
ongoing professional learning of early childhood educators
The Ministry of Children’s Services should work with other government ministries, early learning and
child care stakeholders, public post-secondary institutions and researchers and content experts to
develop and implement both short-term and long-term strategies to build the capacity of the early
learning and child care workforce.
20. Review and immediately strengthen stang requirements to support
quality provision
In the short-term, the Ministry of Children’s Services should consider the following measures to
enhance the quality of centre-based child care within the existing sta certication levels:
• Require at least one sta per group of children in centre-based care to be certied as a Level 2
early childhood educator, and within two years require at least one sta per group of children
in centre-based care to be certied as a Level 3 early childhood educator;
• Require any sta supervising a practicum placement for a student completing an early
learning and child care credential to be certied as a Level 3 early childhood educator;
• Require all certied early childhood educators to participate in a specied number of hours of
professional learning per year; and
• Increase the use of pedagogical leaders to support the ongoing development of educators
and include mandatory coaching and mentoring in the implementation of the Flight
framework.
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21. Review and remove ECE equivalencies for qualications unrelated to early
childhood education
The Ministry of Children’s Services should work with post-secondary early learning and care faculty
and other content experts to review the current equivalencies for sta certication to ensure that all
equivalent qualications include an appropriate level and amount of course work in early childhood
education.
Equivalent qualications that don’t meet the agreed criteria should be removed from the list of eligible
equivalencies.
22. Increase the educational and certication requirements for all early
childhood educators in licensed child care
The Ministry of Children’s Services should work with the Ministry of Advanced Education, faculty from
public post-secondary institutions, the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Alberta and other
early learning and care stakeholders to develop a strategy and timeline for phasing out the current ECE
Level 1 certication and introducing new post-diploma and degree level ECE programs of study, with
new levels of early childhood educator certication that reect these credentials.
In conjunction with increases in the educational and certication requirements for early childhood
educators in licensed centre-based child care, the Ministry of Children’s Services should also work with
the Alberta Family Child Care Association, licensed family day home agencies and family child care
educators to review the timelines and process for implementing certication requirements for family
child care providers. The level of educational preparation for family child care educators should be
increased and come more in line with that for certied early childhood educators in licensed centre-
based child care.
23. The regular renewal of certication and ongoing professional learning
requirements
The Ministry of Children’s Services should work with the Association of Early Childhood Educators of
Alberta, post-secondary early learning and care faculty and other early learning and care stakeholders
to develop a mandatory certication renewal process for early childhood educators. An early
childhood educator’s renewal of certication, perhaps every 3 to 5 years, would require the completion
of a minimum number of hours of professional learning provided through a public post-secondary
institution or an equivalent approved or accredited body.
Certied early childhood educators whose certication lapses would be required to re-apply for
certication.
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Policy actions to address staff compensation and
working conditions
24. Develop a competitive provincial wage scale for all early learning and child
care sta that reects education, experience and role description, and
includes a common benet package and pension plan
To support the recruitment and retention of a qualied early learning and child care workforce, the
Ministry of Children’s Services should work with other government ministries, the Association of Early
Childhood Educators of Alberta and other sector stakeholders to develop and implement a provincial
salary scale that covers all sta who work in centre-based child care programs.
The provincial salary scale should ensure that the wages and benets for child care sta are competitive
with those of related professions, and reect sta qualications, experience and role responsibilities.
As a parallel to its development of a provincial wage scale for sta in licensed centre-based child care,
the Ministry of Children’s Services should also work with the Alberta Family Child Care Association,
family day home agencies and family child care providers to determine appropriate compensation
levels for family child care educators.
25. Review and implement changes in the working conditions for certied
early childhood educators
To encourage certied early childhood educators to remain in the eld the Ministry of Children’s
Services should support the following improvements in sta’s working conditions:
• The design and implementation of peer mentoring and induction programs for all new early
childhood educators working in centre-based child care programs;
• The provision of paid non-contact time during the workday to enable certied early childhood
educators to participate in program planning and ongoing professional learning;
• Support for the design and or reconguration of child care spaces to include dedicated
and separate space for sta program planning, sta meetings and sta-parent/guardian
conferences; and
• The development of guidelines for child care centres to support the participation of certied
early childhood educators in program planning and evaluation.
As a parallel to the above work, the Ministry of Children’s Services should work with the Alberta Family
Child Care Association, licensed family day home agencies, researchers and family child care providers
to identify ways of improving the working conditions and supports available for family child care
educators.
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26. Develop early learning and child care professional proles and role
descriptions
The current absence of well-dened professional roles and responsibilities for certied early childhood
educators can diminish the value of pre-service education and act as a disincentive for educators
looking to increase their formal qualications and advance their careers in the eld. It can further
discourage qualied students from pursuing a career in community-based child care.
The Ministry of Children’s Services should work with the Association of Early Childhood Educators of
Alberta, the Canadian Child Care Federation and post-secondary early learning and care faculty to
develop professional proles and role descriptions for early childhood educators with dierent levels
of education and certication.
Policy actions to address data collection, monitoring and
evaluation
Regular data collection, analysis and reporting will form a central component of a comprehensive
workforce strategy. It will provide the basis for identifying workforce trends, informing planning and
assessing the impact of policy initiatives.
27. The annual collection of human resources information from centre
directors
The Ministry of Children’s Services should work with early learning and care researchers and sector
stakeholders to develop a centre survey that collects annual information on stang complements
in licensed child care centres, the level of sta certication and their educational qualications, the
professional learning opportunities made available to sta, human resource practices, sta wages and
benets and sta turnover.
The survey should be completed by the senior sta person within a licensed centre. The Ministry may
determine that completion of the annual survey be a condition of receiving supply-side funding.
28. Annual surveys of centre sta and family day home educators
As a complement to the above centre survey, the Ministry should further work with researchers and
sector stakeholders to develop parallel annual sta and family child care educator surveys, distributed
at the centre and family day home agency level.
These sta and educator surveys should collect information on job/work satisfaction, participation in
professional learning, compensation and anticipated work and career plans.
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NEXT STEPS
The historic system building agreement signed by the Alberta and federal governments on November
15th, 2021 provides the opportunity to transform how early learning and child care services are
organized, nanced and delivered in the province. The $3.8 billion of new federal spending included
in the agreement provides the basis for the move away from a child care market towards a more
publicly funded, planned and managed system that provides all children and their families with
equitable access to high-quality early learning and child care delivered by professional early childhood
educators.
The transition to an early learning and child care system in Alberta will require new public policy,
new models of service governance, planning and management and new nancing models. Based
on consultations with early learning and child care stakeholders and the review of international and
Canadian research, the current roadmap outlines the key policy actions required to begin the process
of system building.
The roadmap partners see the policy roadmap as a vehicle to support discussions of how best to build
an Alberta early learning and child care system. System building will require much discussion between
the provincial government and other governments and between the provincial government and
early learning and child care stakeholders. Early learning and child care stakeholders themselves must
further have opportunities to discuss system building with their peers. They need to hear, consider
and respond to the dierent ideas and perspectives of their sector colleagues as well as those of the
parents and families they serve before reaching consensus on the priorities and issues that system
building must attend to and address.
Over the coming months, the roadmap partners propose to share and discuss the ideas and policy
actions presented in the roadmap with early learning and child care stakeholders across the province.
They will also share the roadmap with governments and seek opportunities to engage elected ocials
and government sta in discussions around early learning and child care system building. Where
appropriate, the roadmap partners may work together to draft more detailed policy briefs on key
elements of system building that either stakeholders or governments see as requiring more dedicated
discussion or attention.
