50 Essential Early Childhood Thought Leaders Canada

Introduction

The first five years of a child's life are the most consequential period of human development. Research in developmental neuroscience has established that the brain forms more than one million new neural connections every second during early childhood, laying foundations for language, emotional regulation, executive function, and social competence long before a child steps through a kindergarten door. Canada has built one of the most ambitious early childhood education and care systems in the world in response to this science. By January 2026, nearly 155,000 new Canada-wide regulated child care spaces had been created under the landmark Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) agreements, and approximately 900,000 children and their families across Canada were already benefiting from affordable, high-quality child care.

By April 2026, parent fees were capped at an average of $10 per day across the country outside Quebec, representing one of the most significant social policy shifts in Canadian history.

Behind that policy achievement is a field rich with thinkers, researchers, advocates, and practitioners who have spent their careers making the case for early childhood as a national priority. The 50 people on this list are the leaders who have genuinely shaped how Canada thinks about, delivers, researches, funds, and advocates for its youngest citizens. They are researchers producing work that informs policy, advocates who have spent decades pushing for systemic change, practitioners building models that others replicate, and theorists reframing what it means to educate and care for young children in a diverse, historically complex country. Rather than recycling the same handful of names that appear on every list, this directory brings together the people who genuinely deserve to be far better known, and whose work every leader and professional in Canadian early childhood education should know.

This list spans all of Canada's regions, from BC to the Atlantic provinces, from Ontario to the Northwest Territories. It includes voices from francophone Quebec, from Indigenous communities, from university research centres, from government advisory bodies, and from the child care centres and advocacy organisations working at the front lines of practice. It represents the full breadth of what Canadian early childhood education and care actually looks like in 2026: urgent, contested, increasingly funded, and shaped by some of the most committed professionals in the country.

If you are an early childhood educator, a director, a policymaker, a researcher, or a leader of an organisation that serves young children and their families, this list is for you. Follow these voices, read their work, and share what you learn. The field advances when the people shaping it are widely known and when their ideas reach the leaders who can act on them.

If you are an early childhood organisation leader who wants support building the kind of leadership team culture that can implement the ideas these thinkers champion, email jonno@consultclarity.org. Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out who works with school and early childhood organisation leadership teams to build the trust, communication, and clarity that sustainable change requires.

Why Early Childhood in Canada Matters

Canada's investment in early childhood education and care represents a generational bet on the long-term wellbeing of its children, its economy, and its society. The research base supporting that investment is overwhelming. High-quality early childhood education produces measurable improvements in children's educational outcomes, social development, and long-term health. It increases labour force participation, particularly for mothers.

It reduces costs associated with remediation, social services, and criminal justice across the full arc of a person's life. And it is among the most powerful levers available for breaking cycles of intergenerational poverty and disadvantage.

Canada's shift to a $10-a-day child care system is already demonstrating these effects at scale. Provinces and territories that implemented fee reductions earliest have seen measurable increases in both child care enrolment and maternal labour force participation. But access remains deeply uneven. Indigenous communities, families in rural and remote areas, children with complex needs, and newcomer families continue to face barriers that affordable fees alone cannot resolve.

The work of making early childhood education truly universal and genuinely equitable is far from complete, and the people on this list are doing the hard, sustained work of getting it there.

The early childhood sector also faces a serious workforce challenge. Canada's Job Bank estimates a strong risk of labour shortage in the ECE sector through 2033. Wages remain significantly below those of comparable educational roles in K-12 settings. Recruitment and retention have become as urgent as access and quality.

The people on this list are addressing all of these dimensions at once, from the classroom to the legislature, and from the research laboratory to the community organisation.

For early childhood leadership teams seeking to build the organisational culture and communication capacity that allows them to act on these ideas, Jonno White works with education organisations across Australia, Canada, the UK, USA, Singapore, New Zealand, and beyond. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria. First, documented and substantive contribution to the field of early childhood education and care in Canada, through published research, policy leadership, advocacy, practitioner innovation, or curriculum development. Second, active engagement with the professional community, whether through published work, public commentary, conference presentations, advisory roles, or ongoing practice. Third, genuine current contribution to the field, with a focus on people who are actively shaping the conversation in 2025 and 2026 rather than those whose influence has been primarily historical.

The list spans every major region of Canada and draws on voices from policy research, developmental neuroscience, child development, pedagogy, Indigenous scholarship, advocacy, and practice. Rather than recycling the same handful of names that appear on every list, this directory brings together the people who genuinely deserve to be widely known across this space in Canada and internationally.

Category 1: Policy Architects and System Builders

Canada's early childhood policy landscape has been shaped by a small group of researchers and advocates whose decades of sustained effort built the evidence base and political will for the current CWELCC system. The people in this category have been working at the intersection of research, policy, and advocacy for the better part of their careers, producing the data, reports, frameworks, and public arguments that moved governments to act.

1. Martha Friendly

The Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU), which Friendly founded in 1982 and continues to lead as Executive Director, has served as Canada's most rigorous independent source of comparative ECEC data for over three decades. The ECEC in Canada report series, co-authored through its 15th edition in February 2026, is the country's sole source of consistently and reliably collected data on early learning and child care across all provinces and territories.

Her co-authored works, her public commentary, her policy writing for governments and labour organisations, and her leadership of CRRU have made her the most comprehensive single source of understanding for anyone trying to grasp how Canadian ECEC policy has evolved and where it still falls short. For nearly five decades, Friendly has been the most persistent and credible advocate for a universal, publicly funded early childhood system in Canada.

2. Kerry McCuaig

As Senior Fellow in Early Childhood Policy at the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development at OISE, University of Toronto, McCuaig has spent her career producing the policy analysis that connects research to government decision-making on child care. She co-developed the Early Childhood Education Report, which tracks provincial and territorial progress in early years programme development, and co-authored Early Years Study 3: Making Decisions, Taking Action with Margaret McCain and the late Fraser Mustard.

Her publications span commissions from the Senate of Canada, the Toronto Board of Trade, and the governments of Manitoba, New Brunswick, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Ontario, and the City of Toronto. McCuaig's ability to translate complex ECEC data into actionable policy analysis, and her willingness to write frankly about where systems are failing, makes her essential reading for anyone working in or around Canadian child care policy.

3. Morna Ballantyne

As Executive Director of Child Care Now, Canada's national child care advocacy association, Ballantyne has spent four decades coordinating campaigns, building coalitions, and advancing evidence-based policy options to address systemic barriers to child care access. She played a central role in convening ChildCare2020, the 2014 national child care policy conference that helped build momentum for the eventual CWELCC agreements.

Ballantyne's work combines legal, labour, and social policy expertise with a deep personal understanding of the stakes involved. She has served on the Government of Canada's Task Force on Women in the Economy and on the Expert Panel on ELCC Data and Research, and she continues to provide strategic planning and facilitation expertise to the sector. Her voice in public debate on child care remains one of the most consistent and credible in the country.

4. Gordon Cleveland

As Associate Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Cleveland has spent more than 25 years producing the economic analysis that underpins the case for public investment in early childhood education and care. His 2018 report Affordable for All: Making Licensed Child Care Affordable in Ontario, published for the Ontario Ministry of Education, recommended free preschool-age child care as the next step in improving affordability, and its main recommendations were subsequently adopted as government policy.

Cleveland's research covers the costs and benefits of universal good-quality child care, the financing of ECEC systems across OECD countries, the determinants of quality in child care services, and ways of measuring child care affordability. His econometric work modelling child care demand relationships for the City of Toronto has directly shaped how that city plans and projects child care supply.

5. Paul Kershaw

At the UBC School of Population and Public Health and the Human Early Learning Partnership, Kershaw has combined rigorous academic research with sustained public advocacy through Generation Squeeze, the university-community think tank he founded. His work has directly contributed to the $10-a-day child care system, the first-ever federal reporting of age trends in public finance, and changes to housing and environmental policy, all framing early childhood investment as a matter of intergenerational fairness.

Kershaw receives a biweekly column in The Globe and Mail and received the UBC President's Award for Public Education through the Media in 2023. His central argument, that Canada has historically over-invested in the retirement years and under-invested in the early years, is one of the most important reframings in Canadian social policy in the past decade.

6. Christopher Smith

As Associate Executive Director of the Muttart Foundation, a private charitable foundation based in Edmonton, Smith leads the Foundation's work in advancing public policy in the best interests of young children and their families. He brings a doctorate from Simon Fraser University and has served on the Steering Committee of the Community University Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families at the University of Alberta.

Smith has played a significant advisory role across multiple provincial and federal ECEC bodies, including the Expert Panel on ELCC Data and Research and the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care. The Muttart Foundation's consistent investment in evidence-based ECEC policy in Alberta and nationally has made it one of the most important philanthropic contributors to the field in Canada.

Category 2: Developmental Scientists and Neuroscience-Informed Practitioners

Understanding how young children develop, regulate themselves, form attachments, and learn is foundational to everything else in early childhood education. The leaders in this category are doing the science and translating it into practice, changing how educators, parents, and policymakers understand what children actually need in their earliest years.

7. Jean Clinton

As Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University, staff psychiatrist at McMaster Children's Hospital, and Senior Scientist at the INCH Lab, Clinton has spent more than three decades translating brain science into accessible language for parents, educators, and policymakers. She was appointed as an education advisor to the Premier of Ontario and the Minister of Education from 2014 to 2018, and her advocacy for play-based learning and relationship-centred early childhood practice has shaped Ontario education policy.

Clinton's published writing in journals including Paediatrics and Child Health and her keynote presentations across Canada have made her one of the most sought-after voices on how brain development science should inform what happens in classrooms and child care centres every day. Her core message, that the most powerful force in a child's early development is a relationship, has influenced how practitioners across Canada understand their work.

8. Stuart Shanker

As Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Psychology at York University and Founder of The MEHRIT Centre, Shanker created the Self-Reg framework, a five-step model for understanding and managing stress in children, youth, and adults that has been widely adopted in schools across Canada. His book Calm, Alert and Learning (2012) became one of Canada's top-selling educational publications, and his subsequent books and the second edition of Reframed: A Self-Reg Revolution (2025) have extended this influence globally.

Shanker's framework repositions what educators and parents often interpret as misbehaviour as stress behaviour, inviting a fundamentally different kind of response grounded in co-regulation and understanding. The MEHRIT Centre has reached thousands of educators, families, and early childhood professionals through online courses, workshops, and publications including the co-authored Applied Self-Reg for Educational Assistants (2026).

9. Nicole Letourneau

As University of Calgary Research Excellence Chair in Parent and Child Mental Health, Letourneau is one of Canada's leading researchers on the intersection of early adversity, parent-child relationships, and child development outcomes. She also serves as Scientific Director of the Alliance against Violence and Adversity Health Research Training Platform, focusing on how trauma and adversity in early life shape developmental trajectories.

Her published research on infant mental health, the importance of sensitive parenting in the first years of life, and the neurological effects of early stress has contributed to a growing evidence base for trauma-informed approaches in early childhood settings. Her work bridges the gap between the laboratory and the child care centre, translating findings from developmental psychology into guidance that early childhood educators and family support workers can use.

10. Elizabeth Dhuey

As Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto Scarborough, with graduate appointments at OISE and the Rotman School of Management, Dhuey brings an economist's lens to the study of early childhood development, special education financing, and education and the future of work. Her research has been published in leading economics and education journals and has attracted national attention, including coverage on the CBS programme 60 Minutes.

Dhuey's work on relative age effects in early schooling, which documents how children born later in the academic year are systematically disadvantaged compared to their older classmates, has had direct implications for kindergarten readiness policy and the question of school entry age across Canadian provinces. Her findings are among the most practically influential in shaping when and how children enter formal schooling.

11. Michal Perlman

As Professor and Director of the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development at OISE, University of Toronto, Perlman leads a major research programme examining the quality of early childhood education settings and their effects on child outcomes. The Childcare Matters Project, which he led in partnership with Children's Services in the City of Toronto, studied the impact of access to high-quality child care on children from low-income families, providing some of the most directly policy-relevant evidence on quality effects in the Canadian context.

Perlman's work applies photovoice and participatory methodologies to understand early childhood environments from the perspectives of both children and families, making his research distinctive in its commitment to centring lived experience alongside quantitative outcome data. His leadership of the Atkinson Centre makes him one of the most important research leaders in Canadian ECEC.

12. Angela Pyle

As Associate Professor at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study at OISE, University of Toronto, Pyle specialises in play-based learning in kindergarten and the tension between child-directed play and academic instruction in early education settings. Her research directly addresses one of the most contested debates in contemporary early childhood education: how to honour the developmental importance of play while responding to curricular expectations.

Pyle's work provides kindergarten teachers and early childhood educators with research-grounded frameworks for integrating play into formal learning environments without sacrificing its intrinsic value. Her published studies and her role in the MA in Child Study and Education programme at OISE position her at the intersection of research and practitioner preparation in Ontario.

Category 3: Play, Outdoor Learning, and Risky Play Advocates

Canada has produced some of the world's most important research and advocacy on the right of children to engage in outdoor, risky, and nature-based play. The leaders in this category are challenging the culture of risk aversion that has steadily constrained children's play environments, and building an evidence base showing what happens when children are given the freedom to explore, challenge themselves, and make decisions in the natural world.

13. Mariana Brussoni

As Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the School of Population and Public Health at UBC, Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership, and researcher at BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, Brussoni is Canada's foremost expert on outdoor risky play and child injury prevention. Her Outside Play Lab research programme has produced some of the most widely cited evidence on how risky play environments promote physical health, social skills, and cognitive development.

In January 2026, Brussoni co-authored with Megan Zeni the book Embracing Risky Play at School: Getting Kids Outdoors to Explore, Learn and Grow, providing K-8 educators with practical, research-based guidance for implementing and advocating for risky outdoor play in school settings. Her 2024 receipt of the UBC Faculty of Medicine Distinguished Achievement Award for service to the university and community reflects the breadth of impact she has achieved both inside and outside the academy.

14. Megan Zeni

As a researcher in UBC's Outside Play Lab and co-author with Mariana Brussoni of Embracing Risky Play at School (published January 23, 2026), Zeni brings together decades of experience as an outdoor educator and the rigour of doctoral research to the question of how schools can support children's outdoor learning. Her practical tool for helping teachers take classes outside, developed through her PhD work at UBC and supported by BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, has helped bridge the gap between play research and teacher practice.

Zeni's focus on practical implementation makes her a particularly valuable voice for early childhood educators who understand the importance of outdoor play in principle but struggle with the institutional realities of making it happen. Her book with Brussoni is already influencing how early childhood centres and primary schools think about outdoor environments and educator responsibility.

15. Eva Oberle

As a researcher and Associate Professor at the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at UBC, Oberle specialises in children's social and emotional health and wellbeing during middle childhood and the transition into school. Her work using the Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI) and the Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (CHEQ) has generated some of BC's most comprehensive data on how children experience their out-of-school time.

The 2026 CHEQ Provincial Summary, which provides a window into the lived experiences of young children and their caregivers as they begin kindergarten, reflects Oberle's commitment to translating data into forms that practitioners, communities, and policymakers can use. Her findings contribute directly to the argument that creating conditions for outdoor, unstructured, and relationship-rich time is a public health priority.

Category 4: Indigenous Early Childhood and Reconciliation

Canada's reckoning with the intergenerational harm of residential schools and with the persistent inequities facing Indigenous children and families has reshaped early childhood education in profound ways. The leaders in this category are doing the essential work of imagining and building early childhood systems that honour Indigenous knowledges, languages, and ways of being, and of holding governments accountable for their obligations to Indigenous children and families.

16. Margo Greenwood

As a Cree Indigenous scholar, Professor in First Nations Studies and Education at the University of Northern British Columbia, Academic Leader of the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health, and a Senator of Canada since 2022, Greenwood has brought more than 25 years of focus on the health and wellbeing of Indigenous children and families to the highest levels of Canadian policy. Her research examines the historic and contemporary systemic impacts of colonisation on Indigenous early childhood programmes, the social determinants of health for Indigenous children, and cultural identity formation in early childhood.

Greenwood's appointment to the Senate has given her work additional reach and influence at the federal level precisely when the Canada-Wide ELCC system is negotiating its obligations to Indigenous early learning and child care. Her work with United Nations bodies on children's rights and social determinants of health extends her influence well beyond Canada's borders.

17. Patsy McKinney

As Executive Director of Under One Sky Head Start in Fredericton, New Brunswick, McKinney brings over 40 years of experience in urban Indigenous organisations at the provincial and national level to the daily work of delivering early childhood programmes for Indigenous families. Her leadership of the National Aboriginal Head Start Council with the Public Health Agency of Canada for eight years, including four as Chair, has shaped national policy on Indigenous early learning.

McKinney's deep knowledge of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis perspectives on early learning and child care, combined with her practical leadership of a front-line programme, gives her a dual credibility in both policy and practice that is rare in the field. Her work developing the Aboriginal Support Document for New Brunswick's early childhood education curriculum framework demonstrates the kind of sustained, collaborative engagement that changes systems from within.

18. Amanda Pont-Shanks

As a proud citizen of the Metis Nation of Ontario and Manager of Early Learning and Child Care, Programs and Services for the Metis Nation of Ontario since 2019, Pont-Shanks has built programmes that have supported thousands of Metis children across Ontario, including the Child Care Subsidy Programme, Extra-Curricular Support, and Camps and Virtual Socials. Her 12-year record of advocating for Metis inclusion in the early years and K-12 sector is grounded in a commitment to culturally safe spaces for all children.

Pont-Shanks's presence on the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care ensures that the voices of Metis families and communities are represented in federal ELCC policy conversations at a critical moment of system-building. Her work represents a model of practitioner-leadership that combines identity, cultural knowledge, and programme design expertise.

19. Fikile Nxumalo

As Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE, University of Toronto, Nxumalo has built an internationally recognised body of scholarship at the intersection of early childhood education, place-based learning, anti-racist pedagogy, and Indigenous and Black feminist thought. Her 2019 book Decolonizing Place in Early Childhood Education draws on Indigenous knowledges and Black feminist geographies to reimagine how early childhood educators engage with land, place, and environment.

In 2026, Nxumalo received the Scholars of Color Mid-Career Contribution Award from the American Educational Research Association's Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies Special Interest Group. Her collaborative work on Black and Indigenous futures in education, published in March 2026, continues to expand the geographic and theoretical reach of her influence.

20. Marianne Cormier

As Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the Universite de Moncton, Cormier has spent two decades promoting research on early childhood education for minority language communities in Canada. Her doctoral and published research focuses on the education of young children in francophone minority contexts, the francisation of young children in French-language settings, and the challenges faced by parents who do not speak the language of their children's school or day care.

Cormier's work addresses an often-overlooked dimension of Canadian early childhood education: the rights and realities of French-speaking families outside Quebec, in provinces where access to high-quality French-language early childhood education remains uneven. Her published work in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and her leadership as dean position her as the most important voice for francophone minority early childhood education in Atlantic Canada.

Category 5: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Reconceptualist Approaches

Some of the most influential work in Canadian early childhood education happens at the level of how we think about what children are learning and why. The researchers and educators in this category are challenging dominant narratives of early childhood pedagogy, bringing postcolonial, posthumanist, environmental, and reconceptualist frameworks to bear on what it means to educate young children in a country as complex as Canada.

21. Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw

As Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Faculty of Education and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research in Curriculum at Western University, Pacini-Ketchabaw is one of Canada's most internationally cited early childhood scholars. Her work within the Common Worlds Research Collective traces the relations of children with places, materials, and other species, drawing on posthumanist and Indigenous frameworks to fundamentally reconsider the child as the sole centre of early childhood education.

Pacini-Ketchabaw co-directs the BC Early Childhood Pedagogies Network and the Pedagogist Network of Ontario, both of which work to support pedagogical leadership and transformation in early childhood settings. Her sustained empirical work in early childhood centres across Canada and Australia has established her as a leading figure in the global reconceptualist early childhood education movement.

22. Nicole Land

As Associate Professor in the School of Early Childhood Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, Land works at the intersection of feminist, posthumanist, and anticolonial approaches to early childhood curriculum and pedagogy. Her role as co-editor of the Journal of Childhood Studies (2026 volume) reflects her standing as a significant scholarly voice in Canadian and international early childhood research.

Land's focus on how power operates in early childhood education settings, and on the kinds of pedagogical responses that honour the complexity and agency of young children, contributes to a growing body of work that challenges deficit framings of children and families. Her scholarship at Toronto Metropolitan University grounds her work in the practical realities of urban early childhood education.

23. Laurie Kocher

As Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at Capilano University and co-editor of the Journal of Childhood Studies, Kocher has built a body of work centred on Reggio-inspired approaches to early childhood curriculum, pedagogical documentation, and professional learning in early childhood settings. Her research and teaching focus on how educators develop and sustain a reflective, inquiry-based practice that genuinely centres the child's experience of learning.

Kocher's location at Capilano University, a teaching-focused institution serving a diverse student population in BC, grounds her scholarly work in the practical preparation of early childhood educators. Her contribution to the Journal of Childhood Studies and her sustained focus on pedagogical documentation make her an important voice for practitioner-scholars in the field.

24. Randa Khattar

As Associate Professor at Western University and co-editor of the Journal of Childhood Studies, Khattar works on curriculum theory, critical pedagogy, and the professional learning of early childhood educators. Her research explores how educators develop professional identity and how the conditions of early childhood work either support or constrain practitioners' ability to engage in reflective, relationship-centred practice.

Khattar's collaboration with Pacini-Ketchabaw and others at Western University has created a distinctive research cluster in critical and reconceptualist early childhood education that has shaped graduate training across Canada. Her published work addresses questions of how early childhood educators are positioned in relation to children, families, and institutions.

25. Cassie Brownell

As Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE, University of Toronto, Brownell brings a focus on literacy, play, and multimodality in the early years to her research and teaching. Her work examines how young children make meaning through diverse modes and materials, challenging assumptions that literacy in early childhood is primarily about alphabetic print.

Brownell's co-editorship of the Journal of Childhood Studies (2026 volume) reflects her growing stature as a researcher at the forefront of reconceptualising what counts as literacy and learning in early childhood. Her commitment to expansive definitions of meaning-making has direct implications for how early childhood educators understand and support children's diverse ways of knowing and communicating.

Category 6: Child Care Workforce, Quality, and System Equity

The quality of early childhood education and care is only as strong as the workforce delivering it. Canada faces a significant shortage of trained ECE professionals, and wages in the sector remain deeply inequitable relative to the qualifications, skill, and responsibility the work requires. The leaders in this category are doing the research, advocacy, and policy work needed to make the ECE workforce sustainable, well-compensated, and professionally recognised.

26. Emis Akbari

As Professor in the School of Early Childhood at George Brown College, Senior Policy Fellow at the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development, and Adjunct Professor at OISE, University of Toronto, Akbari bridges the worlds of practitioner education and policy research in a way that few others do. Her co-authored 2022 report Canada's Children Need a Professional Early Childhood Education Workforce laid out the case for systemic investment in ECE professional qualifications and compensation.

Akbari's research on the determinants of children's early social, emotional, and cognitive development and the buffering effects of early enriching environments informs both her teaching at George Brown and her policy advocacy. She was among the 155 university-appointed academics who signed the open letter coordinated by the Atkinson Centre, calling on Canadian policymakers to invest in early childhood education based on the evidence.

27. Don Giesbrecht

As Chairperson of the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care, and following more than 32 years in Canada's ECEC sector including his tenure as CEO of the Canadian Child Care Federation, Giesbrecht brings institutional depth and national perspective to the governance of Canada's CWELCC system. He started his career as an Early Childhood Educator in Winnipeg, giving him a practitioner's foundation that informs everything he does at the policy level.

Giesbrecht has chaired the Canadian Child Care Federation, the Manitoba Child Care Association, and the Alberta Resource Centre for Quality Enhancement, and served on advisory bodies at every level of government. His leadership of the National Advisory Council during the expansion and extension of the CWELCC system makes him one of the most influential institutional voices in Canadian early childhood today.

28. Monica Lysack

As an award-winning professor at Sheridan College, former Special Advisor on Child Care to Ontario's Minister of Education (2017 to 2018), and former official with the Government of Saskatchewan who chaired that province's participation in the OECD's international review of ECEC, Lysack has worked across the academic, government, and advocacy dimensions of early childhood policy throughout her career. Her delivery of an innovative Indigenous programme at the Regina Friendship Centre gives her a particular sensitivity to the intersection of Indigenous community needs and ECEC access.

Lysack's international presentations on early childhood policy and her ongoing role on the National Advisory Council ensure that her expertise continues to shape federal ELCC policy at the system level.

29. Linda Cottes

As Senior Vice President for Child and Family Development at the YMCA of Greater Toronto, with more than 43 years dedicated to the early childhood profession, Cottes brings an unmatched depth of institutional experience to the question of what high-quality, inclusive, accessible child care actually looks like in practice. She has chaired and participated in advisory committees and councils with government and community groups across her career, including committees on ECE regulations, standards of practice for ECEs, and the opening of emergency child care during COVID-19.

Cottes represents the kind of practitioner-leadership that the ECEC field often undervalues in comparison to academic voices. Her 43 years of sustained commitment to the profession and her ongoing advocacy for the professional recognition of ECEs reflect a depth of knowledge about how systems work that can only come from decades on the front line.

30. Sophie Mathieu

As Assistant Professor in the School of Applied Politics at the Universite de Sherbrooke, Mathieu brings a sociological lens to the study of Quebec's child care system, gender inequality, and the politics of care. Her research has documented the transformation of Quebec's family policy with particular attention to the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) and the successes and challenges of the province's landmark CPE model.

Mathieu is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media on child care issues in Quebec, a role that extends her academic work into public debate. Her published work in journals including the Canadian Journal of Sociology and Social Politics has shaped scholarly understanding of how Canada's most ambitious experiment in universal early childhood education actually functions in practice.

31. Susan Prentice

As Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba, where she specialises in historical and contemporary child care policy, Prentice has spent her career at the intersection of feminist scholarship and child care advocacy. Her research examines privatisation and marketisation in child care, the ECE labour force, the relationship between child care and family policy, and the political strategies that have shaped child care as a social movement in Canada.

Prentice serves as a member of the Steering Committee of the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba, connecting her scholarly work directly to organised provincial advocacy. Her historical perspective on how Canada's child care system has been shaped by political choices, market forces, and feminist organising gives her analysis a critical depth that distinguishes it from purely technical policy approaches.

Category 7: Family, Community, and Inclusion

Early childhood does not happen only in regulated care settings. It happens in families, in communities, through the experiences that children have in their first years of life and through the relationships that surround them. The leaders in this category are working to ensure that early childhood education and care systems are genuinely responsive to the full range of families they serve, including those facing poverty, disability, language barriers, and isolation.

32. Christine McLean

As Associate Professor of Child and Youth Study at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax and Vice President of the Canadian Association for Research in Early Childhood, McLean has spent more than 30 years working in the field of early childhood education in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. Her role on the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care represents the kind of Atlantic Canadian voice that is often missing from national ECEC conversations dominated by Ontario and BC perspectives.

McLean is an Executive Member of the Canadian Association for Young Children and has travelled across the country presenting at ECE conferences and professional development events. Her deep regional expertise, combined with her national advisory role and her research on ECE quality and professional practice, makes her one of the most important connective figures between Atlantic Canada's early childhood community and the national policy conversation.

33. Brenda Lenahan

As founder of BC Complex Kids, a grassroots advocacy group for families of children with health complexities, and a member of the leadership team for Disability Without Poverty, Lenahan brings a parent's lived experience and a national disability advocate's understanding to the question of what inclusive early childhood education actually requires. Her work highlights the systemic exclusion of children with complex needs from the child care expansion that the CWELCC has delivered.

Lenahan's perspective as a solo mother living in a remote BC community, advocating nationally for children who are systematically left out of mainstream early childhood systems, represents a dimension of early childhood leadership that rarely gets the recognition it deserves. Her voice in national policy conversations is a corrective to the tendency to measure progress by spaces created rather than by the experiences of the families most at risk of being left behind.

34. Abiodun Odueke

As an educator and community liaison for an immigrant-serving agency in Calgary, with experience coordinating early learning programmes for immigrant parents and children and personal experience as the parent of a child with high support needs, Odueke brings a perspective to the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care that spans immigration, disability, and access. Her focus on inclusive child care for children with diverse needs reflects both her professional work and her personal navigation of a system that often struggles to serve the families with the greatest needs.

Odueke's work as a community liaison, connecting families with programmes and resources, gives her a front-line understanding of where the system's access gaps actually lie. Her presence on the National Advisory Council ensures that the experiences of newcomer families and children with complex developmental needs are represented in federal ELCC policy deliberations.

35. Hawa Dumbuya-Sesay

As a social worker with extensive experience in child and youth services in the Northwest Territories, including her role as Director of Child and Youth Services, Dumbuya-Sesay brings a northern and territorial perspective to Canadian early childhood education that is essential but frequently overlooked in national discussions centred on southern, urban, and provincial realities. Her international background includes community development work in Sierra Leone and extensive work with people experiencing homelessness, poverty, and mental illness.

As a mother of four who has experienced first-hand the barriers to accessing child care services in a northern territory, Dumbuya-Sesay provides the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care with perspectives on northern realities, small populations, and geographic remoteness that simply cannot come from any other region of Canada.

36. Nora Spinks

As Chief Executive Officer of the Vanier Institute of the Family, a national organisation that studies and supports Canadian families, Spinks has spent decades mobilising knowledge about how social policy, work arrangements, and community conditions shape the experience of families raising young children. Her work consistently uses a family lens, situating early childhood education within the broader context of how Canadian families actually live, work, and care for each other.

Spinks is a sought-after speaker, researcher, and commentator on television and radio, and has served on numerous government panels, advisory councils, and roundtables. Her background in developing and evaluating child care programmes and services, teaching ECE, and facilitating professional development in the sector gives her both the policy knowledge and the practitioner understanding to navigate national conversations about early childhood with credibility across multiple audiences.

Category 8: Quebec Leadership and Francophone Perspectives

Quebec's centres de la petite enfance (CPE) system, which has offered low-cost subsidised child care since 1997, is the most fully realised model of universal publicly funded early childhood education in North America. The researchers and leaders in this category are documenting, critiquing, and extending the understanding of what Quebec has achieved, and what it still needs to improve.

37. Nathalie Bigras

As a professor at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM) and lead researcher in early childhood education, Bigras heads a research team studying the quality and effects of Quebec's CPE system. Her collaboration with researchers at Laval University and partners at the University of Toronto Scarborough has produced some of the most rigorous comparative research on what high-quality early childhood education looks like in the Quebec context and how it relates to child outcomes.

Bigras's work is particularly important at a time when the Quebec model is being scrutinised both as a template for the rest of Canada and as a system facing its own quality, workforce, and access challenges. Her research provides the empirical grounding for informed debate about what Canada can genuinely learn from Quebec's long experiment with universal child care.

38. Lucie Champagne

As Strategic Advisor at the Association quebecoise des centres de la petite enfance (AQCPE), and a former teacher of child development at the college and university levels, Champagne has spent more than a decade building support and coaching programmes for Quebec's CPE sector. Her contribution to the educational programme Dis-moi (50 videos on early child development) as content specialist and scriptwriter represents the kind of knowledge translation work that moves research into practitioner hands.

Champagne's involvement in ministerial committees on Quebec's ELCC, including the committee for enrichment of the educational programme Meeting Early Childhood Needs and the committee for a guide to children's social and emotional development, positions her as a practitioner leader with genuine policy influence within Quebec's distinctively organised child care system.

Category 9: Research Infrastructure, Data, and Knowledge Translation

Some of the most important work in early childhood education happens not in the classroom but in the systems that gather data, build research networks, and translate findings into policy-ready form. The leaders in this category are the people who make it possible for the entire field to see itself clearly and to act on what it sees.

39. Jane Beach

As Senior Researcher at the Childcare Resource and Research Unit and co-author of the ECEC in Canada series through its 15th edition in February 2026, Beach has been one of the most important contributors to Canada's longitudinal child care data project for more than two decades. Her work provides the comparative provincial and territorial data on which virtually all serious ECEC policy analysis in Canada depends.

The ECEC in Canada reports, which she has co-authored through multiple editions with Martha Friendly and her CRRU colleagues, have served as Canada's sole source of consistently and reliably collected ECEC data since 1992. This makes her contribution to the CRRU's data infrastructure foundational to the entire Canadian child care advocacy and policy ecosystem.

40. Barry Forer

As Research Methodologist and Statistician at the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at UBC, with more than 32 years of experience in early childhood development, learning, and child care research, Forer provides the statistical rigour that underpins much of HELP's influential work. His research programme spans child care quality assessment, affordability studies, workforce research, and the validation of the Early Development Instrument (EDI), one of Canada's most widely used tools for tracking kindergarten readiness at the community level.

The EDI is used by communities, school districts, and governments across Canada to identify areas of developmental vulnerability in young children and to target early intervention. Forer's statistical contribution to this work represents a kind of influence that is largely invisible in public discourse but deeply consequential for the children whose life chances depend on decisions made with data he helps produce.

41. Eva Oberle

As a researcher and Associate Professor at the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at UBC, Oberle's work using the Middle Years Development Instrument and the Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (CHEQ) represents a pillar of Canada's infrastructure for tracking child and youth wellbeing. The CHEQ Provincial Summary released in 2026, completed by parents and caregivers of children at the start of their kindergarten year, provides a window into the lived experiences of young children and their families that complements the EDI's developmental assessment data.

Her regular webinars translating HELP's data findings for practitioners and policymakers demonstrate the knowledge translation commitment that distinguishes HELP's approach from pure academic research. For early childhood professionals in BC and beyond, Oberle's summaries of what the data shows about children's wellbeing are among the most practically useful resources available.

42. Linda White

As Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, White specialises in comparative child care and family policy, studying how different countries have structured their ECEC systems and what factors explain variation in policy outcomes. Her political science lens brings a distinctive analytical framework to the study of Canadian child care, examining how institutional structures, party politics, and policy legacies shape what governments do and do not do for young children and their families.

White's comparative research situates Canadian ECEC policy in international context, providing policymakers and advocates with a clearer sense of where Canada stands relative to peer countries and what policy choices have produced what outcomes elsewhere. Her contributions to the academic literature on child care policy and gender equality make her one of the most important political scientists working on early childhood in Canada.

43. Zachary Hawes

As Associate Professor and Program Chair of the MA in Child Study and Education at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study at OISE, University of Toronto, Hawes focuses on how children develop mathematical thinking and numeracy in the early years. His research examines the cognitive and educational foundations of early mathematics learning, including the role of spatial thinking and number sense in supporting children's emerging mathematical reasoning.

Hawes's programme leadership at JICS positions him to shape the training of a new generation of early childhood educators and researchers at Canada's leading early childhood education graduate programme. His work challenges the assumption that mathematics instruction in early childhood should wait until children are ready for formal school, arguing instead for early, playful, and deliberately mathematical experiences.

44. Julie Comay

As Associate Professor and co-Chair of the MA in Child Study and Education at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study at OISE, University of Toronto, Comay works on early childhood curriculum, play, and the professional development of early childhood educators. Her programme leadership alongside Zachary Hawes reflects a shared commitment to preparing early childhood educators who are research-informed and capable of reflective, relationship-centred practice.

Comay's focus on the intersection of curriculum, play, and educator identity at Canada's most research-intensive early childhood education training programme makes her an important figure for understanding how the next generation of early childhood teachers and researchers in Canada is being prepared.

45. Patricia Ganea

As Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at OISE, University of Toronto, Ganea's research focuses on cognitive development in early childhood, including how young children learn from books, screens, and other symbolic media. Her work on how children transfer learning from picture books to real-world objects, and how different features of educational media support or constrain that transfer, has significant implications for early literacy practice and decisions about media use in early childhood settings.

Ganea's scholarly profile at OISE and her role in the MA in Child Study and Education programme position her at the forefront of developmental cognitive science as it applies to early childhood education in Canada. Her research provides practitioners with a principled basis for decisions about books, screens, and learning materials in early childhood settings.

Category 10: Systemic Voices and Cross-Cutting Leaders

Some of the most important thought leaders in Canadian early childhood education do not fit neatly into a single disciplinary category. The people in this final grouping bring perspectives that cut across the policy, practice, pedagogy, and research dimensions of the field, and whose influence is felt across multiple categories simultaneously.

46. Susan Hopkins

As Executive Director of The MEHRIT Centre and co-author with Stuart Shanker and others of the Self-Reg educational framework's core publications, Hopkins has reached thousands of early childhood educators, parents, and leaders through her presentations, online courses, and published work. Her co-authored books include Restoring Resilience (2025), Self-Reg Schools (2019), and Applied Self-Reg for Educational Assistants (2026), each translating the neuroscience of stress and self-regulation into practical guidance for people in education and early childhood settings.

Hopkins's 25-plus years of experience across Canada and internationally, including leadership in school administration, inclusion, and the early years, has given her a practitioner's understanding of the self-regulation challenges that early childhood educators face both personally and professionally. Her ability to make brain-body science accessible and applicable to everyday early childhood practice has extended the reach of the Self-Reg framework well beyond academic circles.

47. Melanie Janzen

As Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and co-editor of the Journal of Childhood Studies (2026 volume), Janzen works in early childhood education and curriculum theory, with a particular focus on how educators in Manitoba's diverse communities navigate questions of inclusion, identity, and professional practice. Her location at the University of Manitoba and her focus on prairie province early childhood education contexts gives her work a regional grounding that is valuable in a field that can be heavily centralised around Toronto and Vancouver perspectives.

Janzen's role in the Journal of Childhood Studies connects her to the broader Canadian and international network of early childhood curriculum researchers, ensuring that Manitoba's perspectives are represented in the scholarly conversations that shape the field.

48. Emily Ashton

As Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick and co-editor of the Journal of Childhood Studies (2026 volume), Ashton works in early childhood education with a focus on feminist and critical approaches to curriculum, pedagogy, and professional learning. Her location in Atlantic Canada and her focus on the particular contexts of early childhood education in New Brunswick, including the province's bilingual character and its significant First Nations and Metis populations, give her research a specificity that enriches national conversations.

Ashton's co-editorial work on the Journal of Childhood Studies and her sustained scholarly production represent a significant contribution to early childhood research infrastructure in Atlantic Canada, a region where research capacity in this field continues to grow.

49. Alex Berry

As a faculty member in early childhood education at the University of Calgary and co-editor of the Journal of Childhood Studies (2026 volume), Berry contributes to the growing cluster of early childhood education research in Alberta, a province whose ECEC system has undergone significant political contestation in the context of the CWELCC agreements. Her scholarly work and her co-editorial role in the Journal of Childhood Studies contribute to building the research and critical analysis capacity of the field in western Canada.

Berry's location in Calgary and her engagement with the Journal of Childhood Studies positions her to contribute to both the local Alberta conversation about ECEC policy and the national and international scholarly conversation about what early childhood education should be and do.

50. Laurel Rothman

As a research associate at the Childcare Resource and Research Unit and a contributor to the ECEC in Canada report series including the 2021 edition, Rothman has worked at the intersection of child poverty research and early childhood education policy for many years. Her connection to the Child Poverty Action Group and her CRRU work connect the case for early childhood investment to the broader evidence on child poverty in Canada, making the argument that early childhood education and care is not only a question of child development but of distributive justice and economic equity.

Rothman's contribution to the CRRU's research infrastructure, and to the ongoing Canadian conversation about the relationship between child poverty, family economics, and access to early childhood education, gives her work a grounding in structural analysis that complements the developmental and pedagogical perspectives that dominate much of the field.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Reaching 50 voices required making difficult choices about some names who contribute significantly to Canadian and international conversations touching on early childhood education. Authors like Brene Brown, Adam Grant, and Simon Sinek appear on many leadership and education lists, and their work has genuine value for the leaders of early childhood organisations. We chose to dedicate all 50 slots to people whose work is specifically focused on early childhood education and care in Canada, because we believed readers in this field would benefit more from a list that reflected the depth of Canada-specific expertise than one that repeated names they have already encountered many times.

We also considered a number of Canadian researchers whose work touches on early childhood but whose primary focus sits more squarely in related fields such as K-12 education, public health, or social policy. Several were very close to inclusion, including researchers whose work on school readiness, poverty, and family policy intersects directly with early childhood education but who have not focused primarily on the ECEC sector throughout their careers. Every person on the final list passed the test of having made early childhood education and care in Canada their central professional commitment.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Early Childhood Leadership

The leaders on this list would identify several recurring mistakes that organisations make in how they think about and respond to the evidence in early childhood education. The first and most common is treating the research as a to-do list rather than as a way of understanding children. When leaders read about the importance of play-based learning, they sometimes try to implement play as a programme element rather than genuinely shifting their understanding of what learning looks like in the early years. The result is play that is still structured, adult-directed, and outcome-focused in ways that undermine its developmental purpose.

A second common mistake is treating the workforce crisis as primarily a recruitment problem rather than a compensation and professional recognition problem. Organisations spend significant energy on recruiting ECE graduates into roles that pay wages that would not sustain a comfortable life in any major Canadian city. Until compensation reflects the qualifications, skill, and responsibility of the work, no amount of recruitment effort will produce a sustainable workforce. This is one of the clearest messages from researchers including Emis Akbari, Kerry McCuaig, and Martha Friendly.

A third mistake is assuming that policy success at the system level translates automatically to improved experience at the centre level. The CWELCC has created more affordable spaces and improved access for many families, but the leaders on this list are consistently clear that quality requires workforce investment, pedagogical leadership, and organisational culture that financial subsidies alone cannot buy. Directors and leaders of early childhood organisations carry significant responsibility for the cultural and pedagogical environment of their settings, and no federal agreement substitutes for that leadership.

A fourth mistake is failing to engage with Indigenous perspectives and contexts except as a compliance exercise. The work of Margo Greenwood, Patsy McKinney, Amanda Pont-Shanks, and Fikile Nxumalo makes clear that genuine integration of Indigenous perspectives into early childhood education requires sustained learning, relationship building, and willingness to fundamentally reconsider assumptions about what early childhood is for and how it should work.

A fifth mistake is underestimating the power of the outdoor environment. The research of Mariana Brussoni, Megan Zeni, and Eva Oberle consistently shows that risky outdoor play and unstructured time in nature produce outcomes that no indoor curriculum can replicate. Early childhood organisations that minimise outdoor time for risk management reasons or logistical convenience are making a choice that the evidence does not support.

Implementation Guide: Taking Action on This List

The most valuable thing you can do with this list is not save it. It is to act on it. Start by following five of the 50 people on LinkedIn or on their institutional pages and reading one piece of their recent work. Choose people whose disciplinary perspective is different from your own.

If you primarily work in pedagogy, follow a policy researcher. If you primarily work in advocacy, follow a developmental scientist. If you primarily work in Ontario, follow a voice from Atlantic Canada or the Northwest Territories.

Second, bring this list into a conversation with your team. Ask each team member to choose one person from the list who they do not know and to spend 30 minutes reading their work. Then meet to discuss what you found. The breadth of perspectives on this list means that a diverse team will make very different choices, and those different choices are the beginning of a richer organisational conversation about what early childhood education is for and how your organisation is living up to its possibilities.

Third, take the research seriously rather than treating it as ammunition for decisions you have already made. The leaders on this list have collectively produced hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, policy reports, and books. Their conclusions do not always point in the same direction. Sit with the complexity, including the tension between play-based approaches and literacy outcome pressures, between workforce advocacy and budget realities, and between universal access and the particular needs of Indigenous and marginalised communities.

Fourth, consider how your organisation's internal culture, team dynamics, and communication practices are affecting your capacity to implement anything you learn. The best research in the world does not change children's experiences if the team responsible for acting on it cannot communicate clearly, hold each other accountable, or resolve the conflicts that inevitably arise when change is underway. Book Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, to facilitate. Email jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org.

International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect.

Fifth, share what you learn. The early childhood field advances when practitioners, researchers, advocates, and policymakers are in genuine conversation with each other. Tag the people on this list when you share their work. Participate in the communities they are building.

Show the educators in your team that the ideas of these thought leaders are being taken seriously at the leadership level.

For more on leadership in education settings, see my post on Canadian public schooling thought leaders: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/canadian-public-schooling-thought-leaders

And for a global perspective on early childhood thought leadership: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-early-childhood

For early childhood thought leaders in the USA: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-early-childhood-usa

Frequently Asked Questions

How was this list compiled?

Every person on this list was selected on the basis of three criteria: documented and substantive contribution to the field of early childhood education and care in Canada; active engagement with the professional community through published work, public commentary, advisory roles, or ongoing practice; and genuine current contribution to the field in 2025 and 2026. The list spans all major regions of Canada from British Columbia to the Atlantic provinces, and from Ontario to the Northwest Territories, including voices from policy research, developmental science, Indigenous scholarship, pedagogy, advocacy, and practice.

What is the CWELCC and why does it matter?

The Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system is the network of bilateral agreements between the federal government and Canada's provinces and territories that has funded the creation of affordable child care spaces and the reduction of parent fees to an average of $10 per day. By January 2026, nearly 155,000 new regulated spaces had been created and approximately 900,000 children and families were benefiting from the system. The CWELCC represents the most significant federal investment in early childhood education in Canadian history.

Why is play-based learning so important in early childhood?

Play is not a break from learning. It is the primary vehicle through which young children learn. Research from developmental scientists including Jean Clinton, Angela Pyle, and Stuart Shanker consistently shows that play supports language development, emotional regulation, executive function, problem-solving, creativity, and social competence. Outdoor and risky play, as documented by Mariana Brussoni and Megan Zeni, adds physical development, risk assessment skills, and resilience to this list.

What is Canada's greatest challenge in early childhood education right now?

Most of the researchers on this list would point to the workforce as Canada's most pressing early childhood challenge. Canada's Job Bank forecasts a strong risk of labour shortage in the ECE sector through 2033. Wages remain significantly below those of K-12 teachers despite comparable qualifications and responsibilities. Recruitment and retention are in crisis in many provinces.

No amount of new child care spaces matters if there are not enough qualified, fairly compensated educators to staff them. Emis Akbari and Kerry McCuaig have been among the most persistent advocates for treating ECE workforce compensation and professional recognition as a matter of policy urgency.

Can I hire someone to facilitate workshops for my early childhood leadership team?

Yes. Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out who works with school and early childhood organisation leadership teams across Australia, Canada, the UK, USA, Singapore, New Zealand, and beyond. He delivers keynotes, Working Genius facilitation sessions, DISC workshops, and executive team offsites focused on building the team culture, communication capacity, and leadership clarity that allows early childhood organisations to implement change effectively. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect.

Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss how Jonno might support your team.

What are the best resources to follow Canadian early childhood research?

Start with childcarecanada.org, maintained by the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, which serves as Canada's most comprehensive archive of ECEC research and policy documents. The Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development at OISE publishes regular research updates and hosts the annual Summer Institute on Early Childhood Development. The Human Early Learning Partnership at UBC (earlylearning.ubc.ca) produces regular reports, webinars, and data resources. The Journal of Childhood Studies is Canada's leading academic journal in the field.

Final Thoughts

Canada is in the middle of one of the most consequential periods in the history of its early childhood education and care system. The CWELCC has created the architecture for universal affordable care. The research base, represented by the 50 people on this list, is more robust than it has ever been. And the urgency, from workforce shortages to access inequities for Indigenous and marginalised families, is more visible than ever.

The leaders on this list are not waiting for perfect conditions. They are doing the work now, in universities and child care centres, in government advisory councils and community organisations, in lecture halls and outdoor play yards, in French and English, in cities and in remote northern communities. They deserve to be widely known by every parent, educator, leader, policymaker, and philanthropist who cares about what happens to Canadian children in their first five years of life.

If your organisation is ready to do the internal leadership and team development work that makes it possible to implement what the best thinkers in this field are recommending, book Jonno White to facilitate. Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out. Email jonno@consultclarity.org, or visit consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect, and many organisations find that bringing Jonno in to facilitate a team offsite or Working Genius workshop is the most cost-effective investment they can make in the leadership that makes everything else possible.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements.

Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read

If you found this list valuable, you may also enjoy exploring the broader landscape of Canadian education leadership. Canada's public school system faces many of the same leadership, workforce, and equity challenges that the early childhood sector is navigating, and the thought leaders shaping K-12 education in Canada often work in close collaboration with early childhood researchers and advocates. Understanding both levels of the education system gives any leader a much richer picture of the full arc of children's learning from birth through adolescence.

The individuals leading public schooling in Canada span classroom teachers who have built national platforms, university researchers who study school leadership and improvement, principals who have built extraordinary school cultures, and association leaders who advocate at the provincial and federal levels. Many of them have deep connections to early childhood education through their work on transitions, kindergarten policy, and the continuity of children's experiences across the early learning and school system.

Keep reading: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/canadian-public-schooling-thought-leaders