Funding for Canadian Childcare Declining: Report

New Study Shows Major Benefits From Investing in Child Care

Policy leaves many low-income families unable to access quality childcare. “Despite a rapidly growing population, long waiting lists and far too many low-income families struggling to find quality childcare, it is shocking to see the provincial government is under-spending its budget in such a vital service for families,” says Bill Moore-Kilgannon, Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta.

The Alberta government is allocating $12.6 million from the child care budget to expand the child care accreditation program to licensed out-of-school care programs. Accreditation gives parents with children needing care before and after school an additional tool to help them identify programs with standards of excellence over and above Alberta's regulated requirements.

Alberta’s Creating Child Care Choices space creation plan resulted in 9,449 new child care spaces and more than 1,100 new staff choosing to work in Alberta’s licensed or approved child care programs during the first year of the initiative. The Alberta government’s commitment to child care has helped ease the challenges some parents have had when looking for affordable, quality child care.

The Stelmach government has helped to create more than 1,500 childcare spaces in Calgary and area during the first year of a plan to deal with an ongoing space crunch, but some operators say it could go even further.

According to Statistics Canada, 54 percent of Canadian kids age six months to five years received some care from someone other than their parents in 2002-2003. That’s up from 42 percent in eight years.