“We’ve already invested $58 billion to affordable child care across the country. This additional $5.4 billion is to reflect the additional cost pressures that provinces have been indicating, and that money that will be injected is flexible, so they can use it in the ways that will address their own specific pressures.”
While many provinces and territories have lowered the child-care fees parents pay to an average of $10 a day, five have not, and Ontario alone, where fees are at an average of $19 a day, has said it would need an additional $2 billion per year to get to $10.
Universal child-care advocates were disappointed earlier this year when the government’s spring economic update did not show any new investments, saying that without more funding the program would be at risk.
“It is well-established that when families can’t find affordable and reliable child care, mothers are forced out of the paid labour force or significantly reduce their work hours,” Child Care Now executive director Morna Ballantyne said in a statement at the time.
“This puts a brake on the economy, and undermines income security.”
Hajdu said the government recognizes affordable child care as a driver of the economy, and the new money is about ensuring progress that has already been made, such as on lowered fees, and access to new spaces is not lost.
“It is definitely about the protection of what we’ve gained, and what we’ve gained is very significant,” she said. “On average, families are saving about $11,000 per year, per child. That’s a giant savings across the country.”
The lowered fees have been driving up demand and therefore wait lists in many regions. The initial set of agreements aimed to create 250,000 new spaces by this past March and the current number of new spaces is about 173,500, the government said.
Many provinces signed on to five-year extensions to the child-care agreements ahead of last year’s federal election, but some including Alberta and Ontario agreed to one-year extensions, and the new funding may help bolster those negotiations.
The new money will come with some terms of additional data sharing, Hajdu said, to help better understand where the gaps remain.
“I think that data is critical in terms of understanding what those specific barriers are, what the fee structures look like, what the access looks like, what the operational realities are all across the country,” she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2026.
Allison Jones and Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press