The Bellevue Child Care Centre in the Kensington Market area of Toronto.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Excluding kindergarten, a third of Canadian preschool children with employed mothers attend regulated childcare. The data comes from a report called New Evidence of Childcare in Canada, written in 2008 for the Institute for Research on Public Policy.
In all provinces, there has been a move to regulated childcare and away from informal family arrangements. In Quebec, which subsidizes daycare heavily, 72 per cent of children attend regulated centres. In the rest of Canada, the rate is 40 per cent.
In 2004, a survey by the Vanier Institute of the Family asked 2,000 respondents to imagine they had a family in which both parents worked and there were preschool aged children. The results: "In an ideal world, the number one choice is one's partner, followed by one's parent, then another relative. Rounding out the top five? Home-based childcare, followed by a childcare centre."
Accounting for inflation, costs have increased sharply in the last 20 years. Nationally, average spending is $4,500 a year from $2,600 two decades ago. In 2005, the year the data was compiled, 7.8 per cent of a family's budget was directed to childcare.
About 165,000 regulated spots are needed to meet the demand for spaces.
Sources: Institute for Research on Public Policy, Childcare Canada