In June, the Government of Canada committed to investing up to $5.4 billion over two years in Canada’s early learning and childcare ecosystem, building on more than $58 billion invested through provincial and territorial childcare agreements since 2021.
The investment recognizes a simple truth: affordable childcare—and the early childhood educators who deliver it—are essential infrastructure for Canada’s future prosperity.
But demand for qualified early childhood educators continues to outpace supply, and the profession also faces high rates of turnover, fragmented labour market information, and barriers to career mobility.
The result is a workforce under strain at precisely the moment Canadians are counting on it most.
If nation-building starts with affordable, accessible childcare, investing in early childhood education (ECE) is how we make that happen.
Delivering ECE Training at Scale
Canada’s public colleges, institutes, polytechnics, CEGEPs, and Indigenous Institutes of Education are already playing a critical role in meeting this challenge at scale.
Across Canada, over 80 colleges and institutes offer more than 150 early childhood education programs helping develop the workforce that underpins Canada’s childcare system—and demonstrating the sector’s capacity to mobilize at scale in support of a national mission.
Flexible, Experiential, Specialized, and Stackable
A recent scan of CICan members revealed:
- Institutions offer traditional ECE diplomas alongside online, hybrid, accelerated, part-time, workplace-based, apprenticeship, and recognition-of-prior-learning pathways, helping attract career changers, newcomers, and working professionals.
- Most ECE programs include mandatory field placements, practicums, internships, workplace learning, or apprenticeship models. The scan consistently highlighted work-integrated learning as a core feature of ECE education across jurisdictions.
- Beyond foundational ECE credentials, colleges also offer specializations in infant and toddler care, special needs and inclusive education, Indigenous early learning, leadership and administration, and resource consulting to name a few.
- Finally, colleges allow ECE learners to move from certificate to diploma to degree programs, while experienced educators can access leadership and management credentials that help them grow within the profession.
As Canada aims to Build Big, a strong ECE workforce in our communities from coast to coast to coast has never more important.
Accessible childcare enables parents to participate in the workforce, supports children during their most formative years, and strengthens thriving communities. In many ways, the future workforce Canada is trying to build begins in today’s childcare centres.
Mobilizing for Greater Impact
No single institution can solve Canada’s ECE workforce challenges alone. But together, colleges and institutes can help create conditions for a more resilient, accessible, and sustainable childcare system.
That’s why CICan convenes, mobilizes, and champions its members through initiatives where national coordination, convening power, and system-level impact are essential. In the ECE sector, that includes:
Building a Strong, Mobile, and Sustainable Early Childhood Education Workforce
Partnering with the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne (ACUFC) and the Canadian Child Care Federation (CCCF) to strengthen recruitment, retention, labour mobility, and long-term workforce sustainability in Canada’s early learning and childcare sector.
Building a Strong, Mobile, and Sustainable Early Childhood Education Workforce is a new national initiative funded by Employment and Social Development Canada.
Outdoor and Land-Based Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education
Launching a pan-Canadian initiative funded by the Lawson Foundation and Waltons Trust to strengthen early childhood education through outdoor and land-based teaching and learning.
The new Outdoor & Land-Based ECE initiative is supported by a combined $5-million investment from the Lawson Foundation and Waltons Trust.
Nation-building is ultimately about investing in people. The homes we build, the healthcare services we deliver, the roads, ports and power grids we expand and, ultimately, the economy we grow all depend on a skilled workforce. And that workforce depends on families having access to quality and affordable childcare in the communities they work in.
If Canada wants to strengthen its care economy for the future, we must recognize a simple truth: nation-building starts early.
The question is not whether we can afford to invest in early childhood education. It’s whether we can afford not to.