Summary
Every year, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) collaborates with experts across Canada to publish the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB). The AFB is an exercise in what’s possible—a comprehensive guide to how a federal budget can achieve a vision where everyone in Canada can access the best public services, can get the income support they need to move out of poverty, and can tackle the greatest challenges of our time—such as income inequality, climate change, the cost of living, racism and truth and reconciliation. We also show how the federal government could pay for this transformative change through a suite of progressive taxes.
This year’s AFB is produced in anticipation of a federal election in 2025. As such, it’s written with political party platforms in mind—we hope this serves as inspiration and guidance to all political parties as we move into election mode.
Child care chapter introduction
For the first time in Canada’s history, meaningful and measurable progress is resulting in families, and the broader economy, benefitting from the federal government’s commitment to high-quality, inclusive $10-a-day child care. The implementation of the distinctions-based approach detailed in the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework is also progressing, backed by federal funds.
However, child care spaces are not being created quickly enough to meet demand.
In an effort to create new spaces more rapidly, some are calling for more public funding and support of for-profit child care centres. That would be going backwards. The reason all current federal child care agreements emphasize public and not-for-profit expansion is because decades of research in Canada and internationally highlights the relative instability, lower quality, and higher cost of for-profit child care.
The solution to improving access to $10-a-day child care is faster public and not-for-profit expansion, with additional focus on publicly owned facilities. The 2025 federal budget must include new funding and clear mechanisms to incentivize provinces and territories to (a) compensate the child care workforce fairly so that it can grow, and (b) expand child care in publicly owned facilities alongside ongoing efforts to expand child care in non-profit and Indigenous-owned facilities.