Canada has made strides in improving affordability in the child-care sector in recent years, a new report finds, but the expansion faces major challenges.
It’s been two years since the final province signed onto the federal government’s $10-a-day child-care initiative. Since then, many of the plan’s targets have been surpassed, the report from the Atkinson Centre at the University of Toronto says.
The reduced cost has been a benefit to many — at least, for those lucky enough to find a spot.
“We’ve definitely seen a lot of improvements across the country in affordability,” report co-author Emis Akbari says.
“But of course, when child care becomes more affordable, the amount of people that want it is going to increase. And so wait-lists have gone up in most areas across the country.”
For the report, researchers looked at developments in enrolment, affordability, funding, workforce compensation and quality in each province and territory. It then rated them against what they classified as a 15-point scale of best practices in child-care delivery.
Akbari says research shows a lot of progress has been made across the country since the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care agreements were reached with the 13 provinces and territories.
That could stall without the infrastructure in place to support that growth, Akbari says. Staff shortages remain a major roadblock.
“Some jurisdictions have not made the investments that they need to make to improve working conditions and improve wages and compensation of educators in the sector,” Akbari said.
When the creation of the national child-care system was announced in 2021, Ottawa also set a goal of creating 250,000 new spaces by March 2026. As of last month, 100,000 had been created, according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Search for a space 'so emotionally demanding'
In Ontario, which is expected to have the average $10-a-day child care provincewide by September 2025, finding a child-care space can be difficult for parents, including Amy Talbot in Bowmanville.
Talbot, whose daughter was born eight months ago, has been looking for daycare since she was pregnant and is on four wait-lists. The most promising one — she is 19th on the list — is a space opening in September 2025, despite her plan to return to work this fall.
What compounds the difficulty, though, is she was one of 70 people laid off from her job while she was on maternity leave.
“Now I can’t even look for a job until I know I have care for her,” she told Global News.
Talbot said she’s also dealt with staff shortages at some of the daycares she’s spoken with, making it harder to find a space and in one case she was taken off a wait-list accidentally because the staff member handling it had left the centre.
“It’s so emotionally demanding and physically demanding and … I feel like they’re not getting enough money,” she said, noting she’s heard similar issues from friends working in child care.
The report notes regions introducing wage grids for early childhood educators (ECEs) have seen a boost to salaries and are considered to be closing the wage gap between ECEs and teachers in the kindergarten-to-Grade 12 system.
However, Akbari says some regions still don’t have a policy in place to ensure staff have proper pay, among other issues.
“So unless there’s proper attention to educator compensation, working conditions, benefits, pensions, we might see a derailment Canada-wide, especially in some provinces,” she said.
She said a mixture of people deciding not to go into the profession and those leaving it is causing staffing shortages. Much of it comes down to adequate compensation.
“To have a profession where you have gone to college, you are registered as a professional and you are barely making minimum wage is an insult and they are leaving,” she said.
Akbari said she wants governments to ensure child care in the country has better funding, including ensuring children with special needs are able to access services, stringent qualifications for those who look after the children and accountability.
“When you have a high-quality system, children do better, working parents do better, the economy does better,” Akbari said.
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