In advance of tomorrow’s meeting among Canada’s federal-provincial-territorial ministers who are responsible for child care in this country, it’s clear most of the provinces need to be held to task for falling behind on their own investments in $10-a-day child care expansion.
The most recent data shows eight of ten provinces will miss the federal goal of having 5.9 child care spaces per 10 children. Only two provinces have that level of access: Quebec and P.E.I. As the chart below shows, they’re also the two provinces who have been pulling their weight the most by paying more for child care out of their own provincial budgets. The rest of the provinces weren’t even paying half the cost of their child care programs—they coasted on federal investments.
This data snapshot comes from 2022-23, when there were two major federal initiatives under way: the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program—that is, the main federal $10 per day child care program—had kicked in, but there were also pre-existing funding from the Multilateral Framework Agreement on Early Learning and Child Care (MFA) that was signed in 2017. That year’s data is relatively early in the CWELCC program, and the federal funding was set to double from just under $5 billion in 2022-23 to just over $8 billion in 2025-26. As such, this picture is out of date, even if it’s the best we’ve got right now.
Child care spending in P.E.I. and Quebec pulled up the provincial contribution average in 2022-23. Those investments are putting them ahead of the pack today, as they are the only two provinces meeting the target of 5.9 child care spaces per 10 children.
Prior to CWELCC, different provinces had wildly different child care systems. At that point, only four provinces had set fees, although they were set higher than $10 a day—except Quebec. B.C., for its part, did have a nascent $10-a-day program for some of its centres and was actively reducing fees in all other centres. Those provinces started with greater spending on child care prior to the major federal expansion. The four provinces with the highest provincial contributions to child care either had set fees (Quebec, P.E.I. and Manitoba) or were actively reducing fees (British Columbia).
Outside of P.E.I., many of the smaller provinces contribute relatively little to their own provincial child care budgets. Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador—and even the larger province of Alberta—seemed happy to have the federal government cover two thirds or more of their child care budgets in 2022-23.
In fact, many of the provinces who have been loudly complaining that the CWELCC program is “too expensive” are also the ones who are paying the least for it. Since CWELCC funding roughly doubled after 2022-23, these ratios may swing further into federal contribution territory.
The push is on to build more spaces so more families can benefit from affordable child care. It’s time for laggard provinces to do their part and at least match federal dollars so the system can be expanded more rapidly.
