Alberta says all daycares will get funding eventually, operators still waiting on details

The Alberta government says subsidies will be extended to all private, for-profit daycares once the details of a new funding arrangement with the federal government are worked out — but that may not happen for months.

"We are working hard on a framework that includes the equitable inclusion of private child-care operators, which represent the majority of our child-care spaces in Alberta's mixed-market system," Chinenye Anokwuru, press secretary to Alberta Children's Services Minister Mickey Amery, said in an email.

"Once Alberta's cost control framework is established, it will apply to all private and not-for-profit operators."

That framework will attach strings to the funding, limiting the ways in which private daycare operators can use the public money.

In Alberta, unlike other provinces, the majority of daycares operate as for-profit businesses.

Alberta agreed to create a cost control framework for these businesses when it signed the broader childcare funding agreement in November 2021 with the federal government.

The aim of the federal initiative is to steadily reduce the cost of daycare for parents over a period of several years, eventually reaching a maximum of $10 per day.

So far, the funding has already cut daycare fees roughly in half for many Alberta parents, whose children are enrolled in facilities that qualify for the subsidies. This includes non-profit daycares and private, for-profit daycares that existed before the agreement was signed.

The funding was also extended to an additional 2,500 private daycare spaces that were created after the agreement was signed.

But beyond that, new or expanded private daycare spaces don't currently qualify for the funding — which has come as a shock to many operators and parents, alike.

Under the terms of the agreement, a proposed framework was supposed to have been done by Dec. 31, but negotiations between the province and Ottawa are ongoing on the details of that document.

Both levels of government must sign off on the framework by April 1 in order for a new round of federal funding — nearly $45 million, in total — to be released.

Uncertainty surrounding the funding has prompted some Alberta daycare operators to postpone or cancel their expansion plans.

Others have been stuck in a sort of limbo, hoping the funding will eventually be extended to them, too, but unsure of exactly when and under what conditions.