Bill C-35: An Act Respecting Early Learning and Child Care in Canada has received Royal Assent. The Act marks an important milestone in our collective commitment to families to affordable, inclusive, and high-quality early learning and child care. It is a recognition of how critical our Canada-wide system is, and this law helps ensure the continued support to children and families for generations to come.
The Act enshrines the principles of a Canada-wide early learning and child care system into law, establishes a commitment to long-term funding, ongoing collaboration, and federal reporting. It also enshrines in law the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care, which provides expert advice the on issues and challenges facing the early learning and child care stakeholders.
The Act is a bi-partisan collaborative process, passed unanimously. It represents the Canada-wide appreciation of how vital early learning and child care is to our collective well-being.
We now move into the challenges of implementation. Challenges are not unusual for a new social initiative of this scale. The hope is that every jurisdiction will use the opportunity before us to do early learning and child care very well, becoming models to envy, and emulate world-wide.
~ Hon. Margaret Norrie McCain, Chair Emerita
