Supporting Canada's families, building Canada's childcare system

Excerpts from the brief: In Manitoba early childhood care and education is severely compromised on four fronts: the availability of spaces to meet the needs of children and their families, the affordability of care, inadequate public funding, and its corresponding negative effects on the quality of service. A recent survey of childcare centres in Winnipeg showed an astonishing under-supply of services: the City has about 14,041 centre-based childcare spaces but 14, 758 children's names on waiting lists (Child Care Coalition of Manitoba, 2005). Further, in a province with close to 200,000 children under the age of twelve years, there are only approximately 25,000 licensed spaces (Friendly and Beach, 2004). Most of these spaces are for children aged 2 - 5 years; there is little provision of infant or school-age care.