The federal government announced the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program in its 2021 budget. It was intended to prioritize the creation of spaces in non-profit daycares.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The national child-care program that promised to reduce fees to about $10 a day by this spring is expected to be approximately 90,000 spaces short of its target, and most of the licensed spots that have opened are in the for-profit sector, according to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report.
The federal government announced the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program in the 2021 budget. By March, 2022, the provinces and territories had all agreed to create more than 284,000 spaces by March 31, 2026.
The program was intended to prioritize the creation of spaces in non-profit daycares for children up to six years old to keep costs down and ensure quality. However, each of the provincial agreements was unique with different requirements on the number of non-profit and for-profit spaces that could access the government funding under the program.
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As of Sept. 30, 2025, only 194,000 new spaces were created, and many of them are not even part of the CWELCC system, according to the report from the CCPA, an Ottawa-based research institute. That report, released on Tuesday, measured the total number of new licensed spaces created since 2022 and included spots not in the CWELCC program.
For example, in Ontario, a third of new spaces are not part of the CWELCC system and are charging market rates, according to the report.
While a handful of provinces are on track to meet their space-creation goals, several others are not, and many of them will fall short by a wide margin, the report said.
Perhaps most troubling for supporters of a public, non-profit child-care system, the report found 57 per cent of all new spaces have been created in for-profit centres.
“This has been an overwhelmingly for-profit expansion,” said David Macdonald, the CCPA senior economist who authored the report.
For example, in Alberta, the for-profit sector has created 29,000 new child-care spaces since 2022, while only 3,700 new spaces have opened in public, non-profit centres, Mr. Macdonald said.
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With provincial and territorial ministers responsible for child care across the country set to gather in Ottawa later this week, the report highlights the struggles of the national program.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador will miss their space creation goals, many by a large margin, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Quebec, British Columbia, New Brunswick and maybe Ontario (which was close as of September when the study was done) will hit their space creation goals.
But 33 per cent of new spaces in Ontario are not part of CWELCC, and therefore are not at reduced fees, while B.C. is meeting its space creation targets mostly through for-profit spaces, the report found.
“There is certainly incentive to be in the system because you offer much lower rates to parents. That’s very attractive. There’s also an incentive to not be in the system, because it’s going to limit the margins you can charge, and it’s going to limit how much you can increase your fees year to year,” Mr. Macdonald said.
Advocates of public and non-profit child care say governments must do more to help the sector create new spaces.
“The not-for-profit sector depends much more on capital funding from governments, and there just has been insufficient public money for capital expansion. That’s a big problem,” said Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now, a national advocacy organization.
Without more help from governments, the number of for-profit spaces outside of CWELCC agreements with no caps on the fees parents are charged will continue to grow, she said.
That would leave wealthier families better able to access care, while less economically advantaged parents struggle to find licensed, affordable child care.
“We really risk (creating) a two-tier system,” Ms. Ballantyne said.
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Krystal Churcher, chair of the Association of Canadian Early Learning Programs, which represents both non-profit and private child-care providers, said limits on for-profit operators from expanding under CWELCC should be removed in order to help meet the programs goals.
Licensed, for-profit operators provide the same quality of care as public and non-profit centres, she said.
“We need to stop letting that kind of ideology drive this program and actually start to look at what’s going to make it actually work for families. Because it’s not working right now,” she said.
But a 2023 to 2024 report from Quebec’s auditor general found that for-profit, child-care centres in the province had lower quality and were less likely to have qualified staff compared to non-profit, child-care centres.
The expansion of for-profit child care also means the likelihood of creating “huge inefficiencies,” said Gordon Cleveland, an associate professor, emeritus, of economics at University of Toronto Scarborough, and a member of National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care.
“You end up with too many spaces in places where you don’t need them, and you end up with too few spaces in places where you do need them, and you have oversupply and businesses failing,” he said.
The national program has helped make child care much more affordable for families, but many families are still waiting for a spot for their children, Mr. Macdonald said.
“The real challenge is going to be finding a space. And we’ve made some improvements there, but there’s a lot more room to go.”