Stats Can: Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services
Photo by Stephen Andrews
Childcarecanada.org has posted the Statistics Canada Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services 2024, released in March 2025.
The Statistics Canada survey collected information about the provision of child care services in Canada for children aged 12 and younger in the spring of 2024.
The survey notes: The survey sample was selected from Statistics Canada's Business Register and from publicly available provincial and territorial lists of child care providers. Child care services located within schools that provide before school and after school care, which may not be classified as separate child care businesses in Statistics Canada's Business Register or publicly available lists, may not be included. As such, child care centres that serve school-aged children may be underrepresented. The degree of this gap may vary across provinces and territories, depending on how school-based child care services are regulated and managed.
In interpreting survey results, it is also noted that, for the purposes of the survey, child care businesses were defined by three broad categories:
Child care centres: These, typically located in a non-residential building, are generally larger in terms of both the number of children served and the number of employees.
Licensed home-based child care: These adhere to established regulations determined by provincial or territorial standards, are smaller than centres in terms of the number of children attending, and generally have no additional employees.
Unlicensed home-based child care: These are also small in terms of the number of children attending and generally have no employees, but they choose to provide a service outside the regulated system, with the only requirement being a maximum number of children at one time.
The 2024 survey records that there were 46, 986 businesses across Canada providing child care services to nearly 1.1 million children aged 12 years and younger:
14, 523 centre-based child care providers, providing care to 909,158 children (670.730 full-time and 238,427 part time)
7,800 licensed home-based child care providers, providing care to 115,506 children
4, 664 unlicensed home-based child care providers, providing care to 68,674 children.
Survey highlights include:
Unlicensed home-based providers are more likely to offer child care during non-standard hours (e.g. overnight, evenings and weekends) than centre-based or home-based licensed providers. Unlicensed home-based providers were also more likely to offer flexible care.
The majority of child care providers reported operating at maximum capacity: 81.2% of licensed providers and 75.9% of unlicensed providers. The majority of both licensed and unlicensed providers (over 80%) reported their maximum capacity as having remained the same as the previous year.
Most child care centres (86%) reported experiencing difficulties filling vacant staff positions. The most common difficulties were:
applicants’ lack of skills required for the job (66.7%)
having few or no applicants to choose from (62.3%)
applicants’ lack of related work experience (53.3%)
While the majority of child care centres employed supervisory staff who provide direct care to children (90.6% full time; 78.3% part time), less than half (42%) employed full-time support staff (e.g. cooks, cleaners, accountants).
In 2024, two-fifths (40.1%) of providers of licensed home-based child care and over one-fifth of (21.3) of providers of unlicensed home-based child care reported holding an ECE certificate or diploma after having completed a program of one to four years. Of those without certificate or diploma accreditation, 15.3% of licensed home-based child care and 7.2% of providers of unlicensed home-based child care reported a formal having completed an ECE course or workshop lasting less than one year.
Significantly, more than 40% (42.6%) of unlicensed home-based child care providers, and 16.4% of licensed home-based child care providers, reported that they did not intend to continue providing child care services in their home in three years. The most frequently cited reasons were: (1) they planned to retire; (2) their own children, grandchildren or relatives would no longer need them to be at home; or (3) they were ready for a career change.