Centre for Future Work, July 2026
Excerpt: "The Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program (CWELCC) began rolling out across Canada in 2022. The program is already having significant and positive economic impacts, including dramatic reductions in the average cost of child care services, significant increases in employment and earnings in the ELCC sector, and improvements in labour force participation and employment for women in the core parenting years. A recent report from the Centre for Future Work (Stanford, 2024) compiled and measured these impacts. It estimated that the expansion of ELCC services since 2019 (including through CWELCC) had increased Canadian GDP by $32 billion by 2024 (over what would have prevailed without an expanded ELCC sector). This expansion of ELCC services has been an important source of growth as Canada grappled with near-zero economic growth and macroeconomic uncertainty in the wake of Donald Trump’s trade war and other geopolitical shocks.
This report considers the economic, labour market, and fiscal benefits being experienced in Ontario as a result of that province’s participation in the CWELCC program. It reviews provincial-level data for the same national indicators reported in the earlier report, and extrapolates likely GDP and fiscal benefits based on Ontario’s share of national economic activity. Data from various sources confirms that CWELCC has achieved a substantial expansion of ELCC availability in the province."
