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Advocates say a promised expansion of Manitoba’s child-care system is lagging far behind demand thanks to an over-reliance on parents to spearhead new spaces and a lack of publicly owned and operated facilities.
The Child Care Coalition of Manitoba and the Manitoba Child Care Association held a news conference at the Manitoba legislature on Wednesday, which marked the Manitoba Day of Action on Child Care.
Advocates used the occasion to call on the province to speed up the creation of new child-care spaces and facilities.
“Parents are still on wait lists for many years, myself included,” coalition chair Molly McCracken told CTV News.
The coalition cited data from a 2025 annual report which found Manitoba has child-care spaces for just 32.3 per cent of preschoolers – a far cry from the national target of 59 per cent.
Additionally, the numbers show fewer than 4,200 spaces have opened of the 23,000 that Manitoba promised to create by 2026 using dollars from the federal Early Learning and Child Care agreement.
The coalition also pointed to findings from a Probe Research poll it commissioned last April that found Manitoba parents wait 17 months on average to find a space.
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