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Opinion: B.C.’s $10-a-day daycare is unfair and unaffordable

It's currently reaching just 10 per cent of children. Expanding it to everyone isn't feasible for an already heavily indebted province

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British Columbia’s $10-a-day ChildCareBC program is in trouble. The provincial budget delivered Feb. 17 introduced a three-year pause on the program’s expansion. Although advocates argue the freeze will allow for adjustments, the program is simply unsustainable. The provincial government should admit that and change course.

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The $10-a-day program faces two challenges. First, it just can’t do what the government wants it to. Expansion has been dreadfully slow since its introduction in 2018. The program reached only about 15,300 spaces in 2024-25, accounting for about 10 per cent of all licensed spaces. As there are far fewer licensed spaces of any kind than there are children in the province, that means there were only enough $10-a-day spaces for about six of every 100 B.C. children under the age of six.

Opinion: B.C.’s $10-a-day daycare is unfair and unaffordable Back to video

With help from the federal government, the province has been reducing fees in the other 90 per cent of licensed spaces, which numbered about 140,500 in 2024-25. But even with billions of dollars in additional funding, these heavily subsidized spaces still don’t charge parents $10 a day. Fees vary widely, but the provincial budget says the average child-care fee for children aged 12 and under is about $20 a day.

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The program’s second challenge is that B.C. is in financial trouble. The government plans to borrow $9.6 billion this fiscal year. That’s on top of the $154 billion taxpayers already owe. And although the province is predicting economic growth will slow, it’s raising taxes in response.

Child care is labour-intensive and therefore expensive. And because technology offers few efficiencies, the cost of care will only rise. “Ten dollars a day” was a slogan that became a policy. Although it is a nice round number, $10 does not reflect the increasing cost of care. British Columbia is stuck with a slogan that makes delivery more expensive with every passing year.

It’s also difficult to justify what is now two-tiered child care. The $10-a-day program costs the province more money per space and delivers fewer spots. Getting a space in the program may seem like pure luck, but there is evidence that lower-income lone parents, for example, have less luck than others in getting spaces.

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Tiered child care is unfair, with only a small minority of families benefiting from the $10-a-day program. But there is also inequity between tax-paying families who use any form of subsidized licensed care and those who don’t. Statistics Canada data from 2025 suggests about 32 per cent of children under six are in centre-based care and five per cent in home-based child care (though not all home-based child cares are licensed and eligible for fee subsidies). That means more than half of B.C. families see little benefit from a sector that in 2024-25 spent $865 million on operating costs.

B.C. is not the only province facing challenges with $10-a-day daycare. Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia all confirm they won’t meet the target of charging that amount on average by the end of March. New Brunswick recently noted that it has underspent federal/provincial child-care allocations while seeking “flexibility” from Ottawa regarding the $10-a-day average fee target. Despite billions of dollars in federal funding over the next five years, achieving and maintaining $10-a-day will be increasingly difficult for provinces and territories.

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B.C.’s $10-a-day program has never lived up to its hype. In January operators said a new funding formula for the program would mean pay and benefit cuts for Early Childhood Educators. Some providers warned they would consider leaving the program altogether. Advocates are relieved that, with program expansion on hold, the province is reconsidering the funding formula. But the freeze may simply delay the inevitable.

A two-tiered child-care system makes no sense. As families face higher and higher living costs, B.C. should move toward a fairer policy that considers the care needs of all families — not just the lucky few who choose and can access licensed care.

Peter Jon Mitchell is family program director at Cardus, a non-partisan think-tank.

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