BRIEFing NOTES

Research and expert perspectives agree that one of the key elements that determines the quality of an early childhood education and care program is the number of adults to children - the ratio. However, it is also clear that the adult: child ratio is not the sole quality-determining element. Other important elements, especially training and qualifications, interact with ratio to form the structural and pedagogical base for quality in an ECEC program.

This BRIEFing NOTE presents a vision for what an universal early childhood education and care system in Canada might look like from the program to the policy level. It explores the potential for Canada to move from a patchwork of disjointed programs - many of them of mediocre quality -to a comprehensive high quality system and suggests changes that would put such a system in place.

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Many economists argue that government spending on people should not be contracting when the economy needs stimulation . Failing to invest in people - especially through investments like good quality early childhood education and child care - is bad economics. The evidence shows that universal community-based systems of high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) are part of the backbone of strong economies: ECEC has short-term, medium-term and long-term economic and social impacts on children, their parents, the labourforce, local economies and the larger economy.

International comparisons using data from Starting Strong II (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006)

This factsheet includes: Total public spending for ECEC, Total public spending for ECEC as a percent of GDP and Public spending on regulated child care and kindergarten by province/territory in the 2005/2006 fiscal year.

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This BRIEFing NOTE provides an update of the current state of the national child care program in Canada. It features a short introduction to recent developments in ELCC, from the 2004 election campaign to March 2006. It includes a table summarizing selected features of provincial/territorial contexts, including: