The past year has been a time of great expectations for Canadian child care advocates and for parents of young children. Preceded by two decades of political promises to improve child care, in 2004 Paul Martin’s Liberals promised that if elected they would put a national early learning and child care (ELCC) system in place. This program – called “Foundations” – was to be built in collaboration with the provinces/territories over time. The election platform said that it would be based upon four principles – Quality, Universality, Accessibility and Developmental (programming) or “QUAD” (Liberal Party of Canada, 2004:29). After the election, early learning and child care remained a high priority.