Excerpt
Parents and guardians may not always be receiving the daycare subsidies they are entitled to, according to a review by Alberta's auditor general.
Likewise, child-care workers who are entitled to wage top-ups through the Canada-Alberta child-care agreement may not be receiving the full amount they are due, Auditor General Doug Wylie has found.
Wylie said the Alberta government did not consistently ensure child-care operators that collected provincial subsidies and federal grants to reduce the cost of child care passed that fund on to parents and employees.
"The goals of this program are affordable, quality child care in the province, and we believe that Albertans should have confidence that these funds are achieving the program's purpose," Wylie said in a Thursday interview, after releasing a series of reports.
The province spent $1.1 billion of provincial and federal funding in 2023-24 on programs designed to make child care more affordable for families and retain child-care workers.
Alberta is in its final year of a five-year agreement with the federal government, which is supposed to expand the number of child-care spaces and reduce the average cost of pre-school age child care to $10 a day.
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