Early Learning and Child Care in Manitoba – A Plan for Action

Manitoba continues with efforts to modernize early learning and child care (ELCC), building a stronger and more responsive system to ensure high-quality, affordable and accessible services for all families and to advance Manitoba’s economic growth by supporting parents to participate in the workforce.

Overview

Investing in Early Learning and Child Care – AUGUST 2023 UPDATE

Canada-Manitoba, Canada –Wide ELCC Agreement

On August 9, 2021, the Governments of Canada and Manitoba signed the new Canada-Manitoba, Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement. The agreement will provide $1.2 billion in federal funding over the next five years to reduce licensed child care costs for families to an average out-of-pocket cost for parents of $10/day and to expand access to more quality, inclusive child care spaces for children zero to six years of age.

Manitoba’s Canada-Wide Action Plan: Throughout fall 2021, Manitoba and Canada worked towards finalizing Manitoba’s Action Plan, released on December 21, 2021. The action plan initiatives focus on the unique needs of Manitoba families, communities and child care providers and provide the building blocks to inform further development of these and other initiatives through consultation and engagement with parents and the early learning and child care sector. The Canada-Manitoba, Canada-Wide ELCC Agreement, is one of three federal allocations under the two Agreements intended to promote growth and stability of the regulated child care sector.

Canada-Manitoba ELCC Agreement

On February 22 2022, Manitoba and Canada signed a close to $98 million 2021-2022 to 2024-2025 Canada-Manitoba ELCC Agreement to strengthen Manitoba’s regulated child care services and offer support for the recruitment and retention of the child care workforce. The agreement builds on previous ELCC bilateral agreements of 2017-2018 to 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.

Under this agreement, Manitoba also developed an action plan for 2021/22 that invests $15.5 million for ongoing commitments made under previous agreements and a further $19.2 million in one-time Early Childhood Workforce Funding (dedicated initiatives to recruitment, retention and early learning and child care workforce growth); and an action plan for 2022/23 that provided $22.6M to continue with investments.

The funding under this agreement enables Manitoba to further build its early learning and child care system by addressing local, regional and system priorities that have an impact on families more in need by increasing the quality, accessibility, affordability, flexibility and inclusivity in early learning and child care.

Areas of focus include building on existing investments in Manitoba early learning and child care to enhance and expand early learning and child care services and programs that support the needs of children, parents, families, and communities in Manitoba.

The initiatives under Manitoba’s two ELCC Agreements with Canada, the Canada - Manitoba, Canada Wide ELCC Agreement, the Canada-Manitoba ELCC Agreement, including the one-time Early Child Workforce Funding are interconnected and will inform Manitoba’s roadmap for transformation of the current ELCC system.

Key Priorities

The agreements between Canada and Manitoba establish a partnership to continue working towards implementing an accessible system capable of growing to meet the needs of all families looking for a licensed child care space, prioritizing those that are higher in need. This systemic transformation is based on a common set of interrelated principles:

Accessibility - Improved responsiveness of the early learning and child care system through greater flexibility in operational hours, expansion of child care spaces and choice.
Affordability - Balanced affordability of child care fees based on income levels with financial assistance for providers through a modernized, equitable funding approach
Quality - Improved child care services through attraction and retention of quality child care educators including training, curriculum redevelopment for child care programming, a certification process that supports career laddering and enhanced wages.
Inclusivity - Enhanced adaptable curriculum framework to integrate Indigenous, cultural and community perspectives ensuring vulnerable communities – including children with disabilities and children needing enhanced or individual supports, racialized children, children of newcomers, and official language minorities – have equitable access to regulated child care spaces.
Reporting - Enhanced and/or new IT business solutions to demonstrate sound potential for favourable returns on investment through on-going cost- benefit analyses of child care investments producing solid results towards a sustainable long-term funding and capacity building approach.

The principles for building an improved and modernized system will be anchored by a new legislation and policy framework promoting a foundation that will allow the flexibility to support continuous improvements to funding and targeted supports for regulated child care providers and families.