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The history of childcare in Canada is largely a story of bad timing. Childcare had the misfortune of coming to the policy table late in the post-war period, well after the main features of social service provision in Canada had been laid down. Called ‘daycare’,‘nurseries’ or ‘creches’ in its day, the service grew out of charitable philanthropy, and this history of residualism meant that childcare entered public policy as a welfare matter, rather than as a rights-based service like education. Worse, it became featured on the national agenda during an era of major retrenchment and restructuring. Despite this timing, all has not been hopeless. Even though national childcare policy progressed little throughout the 1980s and early 1990s–one observer called the period ‘a lost two decades for childcare in Canada’(Lauziere 2004: 3)–movement stepped up rapidly after 2000. In 2003, federal, provincial and territorial governments …