The federal government is not close to meeting its goal of creating 250,000 new affordable child-care spaces by March 2026, a new auditor general’s report says.
The report says about 112,000 new child-care spaces had been created by March 2024, despite Ottawa spending $12 billion of the $15 billion allocated towards the subsidized child-care program between 2021-2022 and 2023-2024.
In 2021, Ottawa committed to spend $35 billion over five years to create 250,000 new child-care spaces and bring parents’ costs down to $10-a-day for those spaces.
The subsidized program has reduced average parental fees for parents in the program to $16.50 a day, the report says. And five provinces and all three territories had met the $10-a-day target by March 2024.
“With less than two years left, there is a risk that the goal of creating 250,000 new spaces will not be met,” auditor general Karen Hogan told the parliamentary committee on public accounts Tuesday morning.
The report warns the government also risks not meeting other program goals, including making child care more inclusive and flexible.
“Not only are fewer spaces being created than anticipated, but those spaces may also not be equitably accessible to diverse or vulnerable families,” the report says.
Hogan noted a lack of data makes it difficult to track progress.
“There’s a real gap of information,” Hogan told the parliamentary committee on public accounts.
For example, the federal government did not collect sufficient information to analyze whether the provinces’ child-care programs would provide equitable access, despite this being an objective set out in their funding agreements, the report says.
Flawed program design?
Some experts say they are not surprised by the report’s findings, saying it reflects fundamental flaws in the program’s design.
“You measure what matters, and the report showed that the departmental plan simply lists lowering the cost of parent fees as the measure that it was most interested in,” said Peter Jon Mitchell, a researcher at the think tank Cardus who studies how the national child care program has been implemented across Canada.
Child-care operators have told Canadian Affairs the program is inadequately funded, leading them to lay off staff, reduce the quality of their care or close.
Others have said the program does little to help parents who work shift work because most subsidized programs are for children whose parents work traditional hours of 9 to 5.
“One of the big pillars of this program was to provide flexible child care to meet the needs of all families, and varying [work] shifts and needs. And actually, what it’s created is a one-size-fits-all child care,” said Krystal Churcher, chair of the Canadian Coalition of Childcare Operators.
Churcher, who runs a child-care business herself, says the national program should be scrapped and funding given directly to parents to use in a way that is best for their families.
The auditor general’s report cites Statistics Canada data showing a 32 per cent increase in the number of parents who reported difficulty finding child care between 2020 and 2023. One reason was that child care was not available to meet their work schedules.
Andrea Hannen, executive director of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, notes that provinces already had child-care systems in place before the federal program began. These were often better suited for each jurisdiction’s needs, she says.
Administering the new program is time-consuming and costly for operators, she says, estimating Ontario child-care operators spend an average of $10,000 a year per child-care location administering the program.
Hannen says she would like a “fundamental reform” that would give provinces more flexibility in administering the program.
A ‘foundation’ for future work
But others say the report should motivate the government to continually improve the program.
“It takes time to create new spaces,” said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of the advocacy group Child Care Now. She says she is “skeptical” that the government will meet its goal of 250,000 new child care spaces by March 2026, but expects more spaces to be created.
She says she hopes the report motivates Ottawa to commit more funds toward the program.
Increased funding could help solve some of the program’s problems, she says, including the lack of child-care spaces for children whose parents do not work 9 to 5.
Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hajdu told reporters Tuesday that the report shows families are benefiting from the program.
The government has taken “very important and meaningful steps towards strengthening the foundation of early learning and child care here in Canada,” she said.
Data gaps
The report recommends Ottawa work with provinces to get accurate and comparable data to determine if the program is meeting its goals.
In particular, the department is instructed to obtain data about unmet child-care needs, to clarify which families qualify as vulnerable and diverse.
Increased data could help determine whether it is financially sustainable to continue the program beyond 2026. Several provinces have raised concerns that inflation may make the program unsustainable and that the goal of 250,000 spaces by 2026 is unattainable, the report says.
Hannen, of the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario, is not convinced more data collection will address the problem.
“I think we have to be awfully careful about just slapping another layer of bureaucracy on top of the system that’s really fundamentally flawed,” she said.
Ballantyne at Child Care Now says is “very concerned” about the lack of data. “There needs to be more public reporting on how the money is being spent and what progress is being made,” she said.
But others say the lack of consistent data is just part of creating a new program.
“This is part of building an accountable, responsible system,” said Marni Flaherty, the interim CEO of the Canadian Child Care Federation.
“We’re trying to morph into more of a publicly managed, stronger, accountable child-care system. [The report is] showing that we’re making progress.”
