Across Canada, every province and territory agrees: outdoor and land-based play belongs at the heart of children’s early learning.

Curriculum frameworks affirm in varied ways that outdoor environments are rich, intentional learning contexts, not supplements to the real program.

British Columbia’s framework embeds the First Peoples Principles of Learning. The Northwest Territories grounds its vision in Indigenous world views and learning from and with the land (land-based pedagogy). Alberta calls for healthy risk-taking. New Brunswick requires outdoor play in all weather.

However, as we learned in a study about regulating outdoor and land-based early learning programs across Canada, commissioned by the Lawson Foundation, words supporting outdoor play and land-based learning are unambiguous, but the policy infrastructure tells a different story.

We examined cross-Canada licensing regulations, curriculum frameworks, standards of practice and post-secondary preparation, and found a four-way structural disconnect.

The four components are each developed independently, with no accountability mechanism requiring any of them to align. This is a structural gap that runs through every jurisdiction in Canada.

The compliance checkbox problem

All provinces and territories require outdoor play, but each one frames it the same way: daily time minimums, fenced spaces, standardized and approved surfacing for play areas and mandatory line-of-sight supervision.

What’s absent is equally striking: no envisioning of outdoor environments as learning contexts, no risk-benefit guidance and no outdoor-specific competency expectations.

Read more: Why kids need risk, fear and excitement in play

No jurisdiction treats........

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