Canada’s most and least expensive cities for childcare revealed in study

Marian Schluter and her husband Danny O'Connell with students at the West Island Daycare in the Pointe-Claire area of Montreal. Quebec's childcare spending has kept costs low for parents. Photo: (John Kenney / MONTREAL GAZETTE

Toronto parents will probably be unsurprised to hear the city has the highest child care fees in country, according to a new study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Parents of infants can expect to pay $1,676 per month in fees and $1,324 for toddlers. It’s a considerable cost, especially compared to cities in provinces with greater spending on child care, such as in Quebec where fees are capped at $7 per day, or $152 per month.

Fees were also relatively high in Vancouver and surrounding areas, where median monthly fees for toddlers exceed $1,200. The same was true of the municipalities surrounding Toronto, including Brampton, which the study deemed the least affordable city for child care where median fees account for 36 per cent of the median income of women aged 25 to 34. Gatineau was the most affordable, with fees taking only 4 per cent of pay cheques.

“This is the probably the biggest study of fees that’s ever been done, and of course it is the first to actually look at cities,” said Martha Friendly, one of the authors of The Parent Trap, which compared fees across Canada’s 22 biggest cities.

Click the cities on the map to compare median childcare costs across the country.

If you can’t see the interactive, click here to open it in a new tab.

Friendly said there are a number of factors that influence fees, such as the ratio of children to staff and the cost of wages. But, she said, there was a clear relationship between affordability and provinces that cap user fees, like Quebec, Manitoba and Price Edward Island.

“Those would all be the less expensive places. It’s completely common sense if you think about it,” said Friendly.

Although other provinces do offer subsidies to low-income families, Friendly said it’s an imperfect system that can leave parents still paying more than they can afford or left on long waiting lists. Middle-income families who don’t qualify for subsidies may find themselves priced out altogether.

“If you have two children in that general age category, there are a limited number of people who can pay those kinds of fees,” she said.

The study argues that affordable child care costs aren’t just good for struggling parents, but for the economy. In his research on Quebec’s subsidized child care program, economist Pierre Fortin estimated that in 2008, nearly 70,000 more women entered the workforce in Quebec as a result of affordable child care. In addition to a boost to Quebec’s GDP, his research found the tax benefit from having more women working meant the child care spending paid for itself.

The CBC reports Fortin is expected to lend his voice to the NDP as they push their plan of $15 per day national child care model.