Federal government rules undermined provincial child care ecosystem

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 29, 2024

Nova Scotia managed to create just 845 net new child care spaces in the first two years of its Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) Agreement with the federal government, according to a new report by Cardus, a non-partisan think tank. That’s well short of the 4,000 new spaces the federal funding was supposed to help create within that time. While the province reported creating 1,691 spaces in two years, a loss of child care providers during that period resulted in a net gain of only about half that number. This was due to the closure of childcare centres in the first two years of the agreement – going from 334 centres at the beginning of year one to just 312 centres at the end of year two.

“Despite grand promises and millions of dollars in funding, the first two years of Nova Scotia’s daycare deal with the federal government have utterly failed to make it easier for parents to find the child care their families need,” said Peter Jon Mitchell, family program director at Cardus.

The federal government’s CWELCC Agreement with Nova Scotia also undermined the child care ecosystem in the province, where 60% of providers were for-profit businesses. With the federal government heavily favouring non-profit care, the province initially tried to encourage business owners to convert their centres into non-profits and become employees of a central government organisation. When business owners balked, the province backed off plans to take over child care businesses.

“The failed attempt to satisfy the federal government’s preference for non-profit child care centres shows the folly of trying to create a one-size-fits-all system across the country,” said Mitchell. “It caused serious disruption in Nova Scotia’s child care ecosystem.”

Among its positive findings, the Cardus report noted that Nova Scotia successfully reduced parent fees by 50% of the 2019 average by the end of 2022. Even so, the province was unable to spend most of its federal funding in the first year of the CWELCC Agreement. It had to carry over 74% of year-one funds to year two and increase its year-two to year-three carryover from 30% to 63%.

The report on Nova Scotia’s CWELCC Agreement with the federal government is freely available on the Cardus website.

MEDIA INQUIRIES
Daniel Proussalidis
Cardus – Director of Communications
613-899-5174
media@cardus.ca

Cardus – Imagination toward a thriving society
Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.