Excerpts from the question and answer fact sheet: 1. Why undertake the Building a Community Architecture for Early Childhood Learning and Care study? The study responded to a number of factors. The Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation had just completed a review of Canada's early childhood services describing them as a fragile, under resourced patchwork. This coincided with the beginning of discussions with federal/provincial/territorial governments to expand child care funding. YWCA Canada seized the opportunity to start a dialogue about moving beyond a dysfunctional status quo to plan a comprehensive early childhood system meeting the principles of quality, universally accessible, affordable, developmental care. 2. What did you hope the study would accomplish? The federal/provincial/territorial discussions took place against a debate around whether it was possible to have a national child care program given Canada's geographical vastness and the presumption that each family's needs differed depending on where they lived. We hoped to demonstrate that very different communities, in very different regions, could develop early childhood services that responded to their own unique needs while still meeting national standards.