Given the number of Canadian children under the age of 12 and the number of licensed child care spaces available, Canada may need more than 200,000 early childhood educators to meet current potential child care needs. The number of community colleges in the country providing early childhood education training is insufficient to meet this need. An ideal national early childhood education training system would provide high quality, comprehensive, transferable, mobile, up-to-date, specialized, accredited, affordable, and futuristic training. The current system includes one- and two-year programs at 111 community colleges, two- and four-year programs at 23 universities, several federally sponsored short-term programs, and private entrepreneurs offering early childhood training programs of various lengths through correspondence and career training schools. Four provinces have professional certification programs in place, and, in four others, certification is pending. This system has severe limitations, including insufficient licensed care, insufficient certified early childhood educators, insufficient training programs, little training opportunities outside of large urban areas, and no recognized standard of high quality training. Present training is often narrow and limited, and resources are outdated and overused. Improving the situation will require wide-scale support of the national child care council and heightened awareness nationwide of the importance of the issue. (WJT)