Understanding the funding is important as it establishes the foundation for how the system will be built. Stated from the federal budget: “Budget 2021 proposes new investments totalling up to $30 billion over the next 5 years, and $8.3 billion thereafter, for Early Learning and Child Care and Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care. Combined with previous investments announced since 2015, a minimum of $9.2 billion per year ongoing will be invested in child care, including Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care, starting in 2025-26.” In 2017 (see the next question for more details), the federal government signed funding agreements with each of the provinces and territories specifically for ELCC. In other words, ELCC funding has been transferring from the federal government to the provinces/territories since 2017 to the present. Already promised—prior to Budget 2021—for fiscal 2021/2022 was funding of approximately $550M (includes funding for Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care (IELCC) and other ELCC expenditures like innovation funding) plus an additional $420M specifically for the ELCC workforce (see the question about the ELCC workforce below for more information). Starting in this fiscal year, as a result of the Budget 2021, this funding amount will increase to $4.1B. While the exact formula for how the new federal funding transfers will work has yet to be announced, we can tell you that in fiscal 2020/2021, the following amounts were transferred (not including the Safe Restart funds of $625M, which were one-time and specific to COVID support and ELCC) to Canada’s provinces and territories: It is too early to provide an estimate of what the new funding transfers will be. However, it is safe to say that they will be increased very significantly in this fiscal year as there is an additional $3.1B that has been added to budget, which includes additional funding for IELCC and other ELCC initiatives, so the $3.1B is not all transferring to the provinces and territories. Further, as the graph above shows, each and every fiscal year up until 2025/2026 increases ELCC funding as follows: