About us

Welcome to the Council for Early Child Development

The needs of our youngest citizens are pressing and urgent. When it comes to how we serve children in their earliest years Canada is falling behind other wealthy nations on standard international benchmarks. according to recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and UNICEF reports, Canada compares poorly to other developed countries, both in terms of its investment in children but also their health and well-being.

There are urgent reasons for us to act now. There are imperatives at many different levels that all point towards the importance of establishing a system of early child development accessible to all Canadians.

  • Morally, Canada has a responsibility to meet its obligations to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet currently, more than a quarter of Canadian children start kindergarten without the skills they need to succeed in school.
  • Developmentally, we know that the first six years of human life are critical to the lifelong health and socio-economic well-being of each Canadian.
  • Socially, our communities are changing. In the last 20 years, The percentage of mothers in the workforce with children under six has risen from 20% to over 70%, but investments to support early human development have not kept pace.
  • Economically, research tells us that such investments can play an important role in leveling the socio-economic playing field in Canada, especially when programs reach both children and their parents or caregivers. The return on investment in early child development exceeds investment in any other stage of human development. The evidence clearly indicates that the performance of our economy is closely tied to the quality of our early child development.

It is clear that we need to act.