Excerpted

There is little doubt that the private initiatives Canada relies on to create child care services fail to meet the need. As a result, there are too few child care services to meet families’ needs in all regions in Canada. This paper focuses on one of the roles played by local level governments in child care in many countries and to a smaller extent in several Canadian provinces: delivering public child care services. It offers an exploration of how public delivery of child care by local government entities can be a significant tool for increasing service availability and equity.