Finance Minister Declares $10-a-Day Child Care “Women’s Liberation”

The federal government’s $30-billion universal child-care plan is expected to create 146,000 new child-care spots nationwide by 2026, according to estimates by the Canadian Child Care Federation. That means tens of thousands of new jobs for child-care workers.

But at the same time, early-childhood educators have been leaving the industry in droves across the country. Low wages and long hours are driving factors, but so is the emotional toll of working in institutional child care. In some provinces, parents face waiting lists that are more than two years long, which has many families wondering whether they will be able to access subsidized care while their kids are young enough to be eligible for it.