Providing and using child care in Canada

The family dynamic was completely upended by COVID-19. Families were much more likely to spend time together given record job losses and lockdowns in the spring of 2020. Parents became teachers with the closure of schools. For many frontline workers with children at home during the lockdowns, child care became an essential service.

Physical distancing measures have eased since the end of the third wave, and more Canadians are returning to the office or workplace. This has raised the question: who will mind the children as we transition into a post-pandemic world?

We recently released six studies in Economic and Social Reports that look at child care before and during the pandemic. Here’s just some of what we found.

Child care is big business. Including the public sector contribution in the form of subsidies and junior kindergarten and kindergarten, child care contributed $15.1 billion to gross domestic product in 2016. This amount was comparable to that of the fabricated metal product manufacturing industry. Nevertheless, individual child care providers are overwhelmingly small, with 99% of the approximately 100,000 child care businesses making less than $10,000 in a given year from 2009 to 2016. Most of these firms were run by women, and two-thirds exited the market within three years.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a notable impact on early learning and child care. For example, just over half (52%) of Canadian children younger than 6 were in regulated or unregulated child care from November 2020 to January 2021, down from 60% in 2019. More than one-quarter (28%) of parents who were not using child care during this period reported feeling that using child care was unsafe during the pandemic.

Affordability and availability are also factors. Low-income families were about 20% less likely than families with higher incomes to use non-parental child care prior to the pandemic in 2019. Among low-income families using child care, more than one-third reported having difficulties finding child care, most often because of affordability or availability in their community. Because of these difficulties, low-income parents were more likely than higher-income parents to postpone their return to work (37% vs. 25%) and to postpone or discontinue their schooling or training (20% vs. 8%).

Before- and after-school programs meet an important child care need for working parents. In 2019, for example, more than one-third (35%) of Canadian children aged 4 to 11 regularly participated in before- and after-school child care. Younger children (45%), those living with a single parent (46%) or in urban areas (36%), and children whose primary caregiver was employed (42%) were more likely to participate in these programs. Children belonging to groups designated as visible minorities (30%), Indigenous children (31%), children from immigrant backgrounds (30%) and those whose family income was below $40,000 per year (29%) were less likely to participate.

We also looked at child care through an Indigenous lens. Indigenous children can benefit from educators who are part of their own communities and reflect their cultural heritage, languages and traditions. In 2016, nearly 5% of early learning and child care workers in Canada were Indigenous. First Nations workers comprised 2.7% of early learning and child care workers, followed by Métis (1.6%) and Inuit (0.3%). In 2016, First Nations, Métis and Inuit early learning and child care workers were more likely to be younger and less likely to have a postsecondary education, compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts. Indigenous early learning and child care workers were more likely to be employed in the social assistance sector and less likely to be employed in private households or educational services, compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts.

For further reading

The early learning and child care industry in Canada: Business characteristics and industry gross domestic product 

Survey on Early Learning and Child Care Arrangements, 2020

Use of child care for children younger than six during COVID-19

Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services

Patterns of participation in early learning and child care among families with potential socioeconomic disadvantages in Canada

Use of child care before and after school in Canada

Indigenous and non-Indigenous early learning and child care workers in Canada