Lower daycare fees are a game-changer. But federal plan to expand spaces still faces roadblocks, say experts

For Canadian families who've seen their child care fees halved or plummet to $10 a day in the past few years, Canada's affordable child care plan has undoubtedly been a game-changer.

After committing to build a Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system in its 2021 budget, the federal government followed up by signing agreements with each province and territory over the next year.

It pledged to invest up to $30 billion over five years and $9.2 billion annually thereafter, with the goal of bringing fees down to an average of $10 a day by 2026 and expanding the number of child-care spaces — 250,000  new spots across the country by March 2026.

Yet the journey to build an affordable, high-quality, inclusive and flexible child-care system hasn't been without speed bumps. New parents eager for a spot are still meeting long wait lists, and beleaguered operators are struggling to turn expectations into reality.

Now, with pressure on to make it to 250,000 new spots in the next year and a half, daycare experts share what's standing in the way.

Since the CWELCC agreements emerged in 2021 and 2022, Canada has improved daycare affordability by shouldering some of the burden of child-care costs. Families with kids under age six paid lower fees for registered daycare programs and provinces largely used the federal funds to cover the lost revenue for operators, according to Carolyn Ferns, public policy coordinator for the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care. 

Despite perennial staff shortages, the need to retain and recruit more daycare workers hasn't received the same attention. 

"Overall, there's still a lack of decent working pay for many early childhood educators (ECEs) and childcare workers," Ferns said in Toronto.

To meet the federal goal of 250,000 new daycare spaces by March 2026, Ferns says provinces and territories must tackle the sector's workforce crisis with systemic change: to retain those in the system and recruit a fresh wave to join them. She's advocating for higher wages and a wage grid — a stepped-salary range recognizing qualifications and experience — for daycare workers, plus strong benefit and pension plans to make the sector a more sustainable career choice. Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, for instance, have made moves in this direction.

Spurring the construction of new child care centres has been another challenge across regions, particularly for non-profit and public daycare providers who can struggle with planning and financing major capital projects alone. 

"Most child-care programs are run by voluntary organizations and particularly in those small and remote communities, they're parent boards," explained Kerry McCuaig, a fellow in early child care policy for the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development at the University of Toronto. 

The work it takes to build a new centre is out of reach for those organizations, said McCuaig.

"You're asking parent boards to go out and buy land and get a contractor and get an architect and meet all the requirements of a [daycare]... and then fill it with kids and run it," she said from Oxford, England. "What the sector is telling governments is 'This is untenable.'" 

McCuaig noted some success in regions when schools and municipalities join in to collaborate on child-care expansion.