Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2021

Current edition of ECEC in Canada available for download in PDF format

ECEC in Canada 2021 full publication (Individual chapters available for download below)
See the ECEC in Canada archive for previous editions.

Companion documents

Summary and analysis of key findings: ECEC 2021 and beyond
Résumé et analyse des principaux résultats: Éducation à la petite enfance et services de garde au Canada en 2021 et au-delà

A summary of the Canada-wide early learning and child care agreements and action plans

Executive summary

Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada 2021 is the Childcare Resource and Research Unit’s 13th compilation of cross-Canada, longitudinal data and information about regulated early learning and child care (ELCC), kindergarten and parental leave. The report integrates administrative data provided by provincial/territorial officials (its primary source of information), data from Statistics Canada, from other research and information from public sources. The ECEC in Canada reports have been published about every two years since 1992, reliably serving as Canada's sole source of consistently collected and mostly comparable data on ELCC over time and across the country. See the ECEC in Canada backgrounder for details. See the ECEC in Canada archive for previous editions.

This 13th edition is especially important as it provides both a snapshot of ELCC in Canada as it began to move out of the COVID-19 pandemic, and benchmarks on key indicators at the very beginning of implementing the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) agreements and action plans. As CWELCC will continue to substantially impact ELCC provision, the child care workforce, parents, women's labour force participation and policy going forward, this report will provide indispensable data for identifying and analyzing these combined effects.

The report provides detailed provincial/territorial descriptive information on kindergarten and regulated child care programs (e.g. educator/teacher qualifications, wages, ratios, group/class size, curriculum, governance, affordability, and availability of spaces) as well as ELCC funding and pertinent demographic data such as the number of children, mothers' employment rates and more. It also offers a Canada-wide overview of ELCC governance, First Nations, Métis and Inuit ELCC, and parental leave.

ECEC in Canada 2021 is published in the hope of playing a key role in contributing insights valuable to new public policy development as all levels of governments continue to implement their parts of the CWELCC plan in the years ahead.

Table of Contents

NOTE: A linked table of contents is in the full publication.

Acknowledgements, Table of Contents, About & Data Source

State of Canadian early childhood education and care in 2022

How early learning and child care is organized in Canada: Roles and responsibilities

Parental leaves and benefits

Federal early learning and child care programs

First Nation, Métis and Inuit early learning and child care

Provinces and territories

    Newfoundland and Labrador 

    Prince Edward Island

    Nova Scotia

    New Brunswick

    Quebec

    Ontario

    Manitoba

    Saskatchewan

    Alberta

    British Columbia

    Yukon

    Northwest Territories

    Nunavut

Comparative tables

    The big picture

    The long view

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