Data availability: Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services, 2022

The Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services is a survey on the provision of child care services at the national, provincial and territorial levels for children aged 12 years and younger. The survey sample was selected from Statistics Canada's Business Register and from publicly available provincial and territorial lists of regulated home child care. This leaves a potential gap for child care services located within schools that provide before and after school care, which may not be classified as separate child care businesses and therefore not included in our target sample. As such, child care centres that serve school-aged children may be underrepresented. The degree of this gap may vary across the provinces and territories depending on how school-based child care services are regulated and managed.

At the time of data collection, child care businesses had generally resumed operations after being mandated to close temporarily during the earlier months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the survey was collected before the full implementation of the Canada-wide system of early learning and child care.

Nominal categories to estimate the number of children in child care

The number of children using child care services was reported by the business owner or director and were captured in four nominal categories: infants, toddlers, preschool-aged and school-aged children. Respondents were asked to report in accordance with how each of these categories was defined within their provincial or territorial jurisdiction. At the time of the survey, the toddler category was not defined in legislation for Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon. "Toddler" was therefore not a valid response for these provinces and territories, and any values provided were included in the preschool-aged category. Totals for the toddler category therefore exclude these provinces and territories.

Child Care options

Information collected on the types of care options offered included full-time, part-time, before or after school, during evenings, weekends, or overnight, and on a drop-in or flexible basis. Full-time child care refers to six or more hours a day, five days per week, and part-time child care refers to six or more hours per day for part of the week, or less than six hours per day for up to five days per week.

Geographical characteristics

Due to small sample sizes in the territories, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon were combined.