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Alberta’s auditor general has found that parents may have overpaid for child care due to a lack of oversight of the province’s subsidy program, and that a pandemic assistance program for small businesses may have distributed as much as $158 million to ineligible applicants.
Auditor general Doug Wylie separately released on Thursday a performance audit of the Child Care Subsidy and Grants Program, and an assessment of how the province had implemented its Small and Medium Enterprise Relaunch Grant Program.
The child care audit reported on how $1.1 billion in public funding was managed within the program during 2023-2024.
The audit found that the department didn’t consistently ensure claims from operators were supported or that funding from subsidies and grants were used to reduce fees for parents and pay educators.
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Fourteen of 25 operators sampled in a single month had at least one discrepancy, and three had more significant issues, including one instance where an overstated claim led to an overpayment by the department of more than $26,000 for that month.
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The office of Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides responded to the report in a statement accepting Wylie’s recommendations and citing “extensive changes” made since the audit review period.
“I will be working with my department officials to implement a more streamlined and accountable claims system, among other tools to make sure our monitoring and performance measurement are based on accurate information,” it states.
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