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News & Stories: Policy Monitor

June 28, 2023

Excerpt: "The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced the establishment of the Early Learning and Child Care Infrastructure Fund to help public and not-for-profit child care providers deliver affordable child care for families by funding the cost of physical infrastructure needed to create more spaces like real estate and building materials. This new Fund will provide an additional $625 million to provinces and territories to create spaces in communities that currently do not have enough of them. The Fund will support child care spaces for underserved communities, including in rural and remote regions, high-cost and low-income urban neighbourhoods, and communities that face barriers to access, such as racialized groups, Indigenous Peoples, official language minority communities, newcomers, as well as parents, caregivers, and children with disabilities."
June 28, 2023

Excerpt: "Today in Ottawa, the Honourable Mona Fortier, President of the Treasury Board of Canada, on behalf of the Honourable Karina Gould, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, joined the Honourable Stephen Lecce, Ontario’s Minister of Education, to announce the creation of just over 2,900 new affordable child care spaces in Ottawa. As part of the Canada–Ontario Canada-wide ELCC Agreement, the Government of Canada is providing more than $10.2 billion toward early learning and child care in Ontario. Under this agreement, Ontario is on track to create 86,000 new spaces by the end of 2026, including up to 42,000 by the end of 2023. The agreement with Ontario is part of the larger Canada-wide plan to create 250,000 new child care spaces across the country. These new licensed spaces will be predominantly among not-for-profit, public and family-based child care providers."
October 30, 2014

PM announces tax cuts, increased benefits for families

Excerpt: "The proposed new measures include: The Family Tax Cut, a federal tax credit that will allow a higher-income spouse to transfer up to $50,000 of taxable income to a spouse in a lower tax bracket; Increasing the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) for children under age six; Expanding the UCCB to children aged six through 17; Increasing the Child Care Expense Deduction dollar limits by $1,000, effective for the 2015 tax year."
May 14, 2014

Excerpt: "On May 2, 2014, the Federal Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the findings of the Federal Court concerning an employer's obligation to provide workplace accommodation for an employee's childcare needs in Canada (Attorney General) v. Johnstone, a case that has garnered significant media attention. As the first decision from an appellate-level court on this issue in more than a decade, this ruling serves as the most authoritative statement to date on a difficult issue that has generated a lot of uncertainty for workplace participants."
April 30, 2014

Excerpt: "This statement by the Infant Feeding Joint Working Group provides health professionals with evidence-informed principles and recommendations. Provinces, territories, and health organizations can use it as a basis for developing practical feeding guidelines for parents and caregivers in Canada."
February 28, 2015

Budget Address 2015 - 2016

Budget 2015-16 provides $4.9 million in funding for actions in support of improving health and well-being, including: $1.12 million to support the Early Childhood Development Action Plan and enhance community-based early intervention service delivery to improve the care of youngsters.
June 3, 2014

Junior Kindergarten - Fact Package

Minister Lafferty tabled a Junior Kindergarten Information Kit that provides background on Junior Kindergarten, the Government of the Northwest Territories’ (GNWT) financial investment in the education system, dedicated funding for Inclusive Schooling and the NWT’s Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR). The information kit also looked at the projected impact of implementing Junior Kindergarten on the two Yellowknife school boards, Yellowknife Catholic Schools (YCS) and Yellowknife Education District No. 1.
September 17, 2014

Investments in early childhood guided by new early development data

Excerpt: "New data released today by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) confirms that actions the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) is undertaking to support the healthy development of children in the NWT are focused on areas of greatest need. The information was collected over three years using the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a standardized method of measuring readiness to learn that is used across Canada and in several other countries."
June 4, 2015

Excerpt: "Motion 2617(4) called for the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) to provide a feasibility study on the concept of universal and affordable child care delivered by people trained in early childhood development and education, similar to the systems in Québec and Scandinavia."
February 1, 2017

Excerpt: "$1.5 million to help offset the costs of the junior kindergarten program as it is rolled out in all NWT communities for four-year old children and a commitment to spend an additional $2.7 million for schools before the end of the 18th Legislative Assembly to ensure that this critical program can be implemented in all communities."
June 5, 2017

Early Childhood Development Action Plan 2017-2020

Excerpt: "The Department of ECE is also continuing work to increase the number of qualified ECD professionals in licensed programs and developing a dual-credit ECD program for senior secondary students. A focus on improving the quality of licensed early childhood education and care programs is evidenced by the Department of ECE’s efforts to implement the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale in licensed early childhood programs."