Early years and child care
We’re committed to providing families with child care that’s high quality, accessible, inclusive, and affordable.
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The Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system is improving affordability for Peel families. Peel Region continues to work closely with the provincial government to ensure that our unique challenges and local needs are considered.
Actions we’re taking
Ensuring that Peel families have access to affordable, quality child care will require sufficient, qualified staff.
Under the current child care expansion plan, Peel will add 10,768 new child care spaces to the system between 2024 and 2026. Almost 5,000 of these spaces will be non-profit and up to nearly 5,800 for-profit spaces.
In order to operate these spaces, Peel requires more than 1,200 additional program staff, and we’re advocating to the provincial government to:
- Ensure child care staff are adequately compensated in order to attract and retain qualified workers.
- Provide funding aimed at addressing local recruitment challenges to attract and retain the Early Years and Child Care workforce.
- Support child care workers looking to advance their careers in early childhood education (ECE) by developing and funding opportunities.
- Incentivize newcomers, interested in an ECE career path, to come to and remain in Ontario.