Saskatchewan’s implementation of its Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement with the federal government has proven to be very difficult in its first year, according to a Cardus research brief.

Child Care Funding Update: Saskatchewan – Year One examines how Saskatchewan fared in the first year of the five-year agreement it signed with the federal government in August 2021. The province received more than $114 million in the first year of the agreement but spent less than half that amount in Year One.

“It’s one thing for the federal government to make these announcements to the provinces, but it is quite another to put them into action,” Peter Jon Mitchell, Family Program Director at Cardus, told Global News. He also noted that with 87,000 children under the age of six in the province, “most families are not benefitting from this agreement.”

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