June 27, 2022 Winnipeg, Manitoba Employment and Social Development Canada
The early learning and child care sector is evolving in increasingly complex and challenging environments. Identifying innovative practices and solutions that better meet the needs of children and families will improve early learning and child care for the benefit of families in Canada.
Today, the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, Karina Gould, announced funding to the University of Winnipeg Foundation for their project with the University of Winnipeg Students' Association Day Care. The funding is being provided through the Early Learning and Child Care Innovation Program.
The project is receiving a total of $331,287 in federal funding over 24 months, starting in April 2022. The project will focus on exploring, testing and developing a safe outdoor play area for optimal Indigenous culturally appropriate learning and programming for children and their families, while delivering Indigenous professional development training for staff.
The Government of Canada is aiming to support the improvement of early learning and child care service delivery for all Canadian families and their children. This project will help develop a better understanding of the changing nature of the early learning and child care sector. The results achieved will contribute to a pool of knowledge and expertise, such as best practices, tools, models and approaches that will have the potential to be replicated, scaled and adapted in other communities and regions across Canada.
Since 2015, the Government of Canada has delivered real improvements to make life more affordable coast to coast to coast, including making a historic investment of up to $30 billion over five years to build a Canada-wide early learning and child care system in collaboration with provincial, territorial and Indigenous partners. This investment allows governments to work together toward achieving an average parent fee of $10 a day by March 2026 for all licensed child care spaces, starting with a 50% reduction in average fees for regulated early learning and child care spaces by the end of 2022.
