View or download Interim Space Statistics 2024 [2]

View or download the French translation of the analysis section, “The state of Canadian early childhood education and care in 2024”: L’état des services d’apprentissage et de garde de jeunes enfants au Canada en 2024 [3]

Interim Space Statistics 2024: Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada is the latest report in the ECEC in Canada series that the Childcare Resource and Research Unit has regularly developed for more than 30 years. The interim report provides timely space statistics in response to Canada’s rapidly evolving child care landscape.

This shorter version of ECEC in Canada includes numerical data about regulated child care spaces in each province and territory in 2024, six comparative tables, and an analysis of the state of Canadian early childhood education and care from 2019 through 2024, during the period in which the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care plan [4] (known as CWELCC or $10 a day child care) had begun to make a significant impact.

Interim Space Statistics 2024 explores the drop in licensed child care spaces from 2019 – 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent expansion beginning in 2021 as CWELCC began to be implemented. Since 2019, licensed centre spaces for 0 – 5 year olds increased by 113,072 centre spaces, not including family child care or before- and after-school child care (BASC), for which age breakdowns are not consistently available. Total licensed spaces for all types of regulated child care (centres, family child care, and BASC) for children 0 – 12 years increased by 191,771 spaces.

Published approximately every two years since 1992, the ECEC in Canada reports [5] serve as Canada's sole source of consistently and reliably collected and presented early childhood education and care data. These reports provide cross-jurisdictional longitudinal data and information about regulated child care, kindergarten, and parental leave.

The next regular report in the series, the 15th version of ECEC in Canada, will be published in December 2025. It will feature both 2024 and 2025 data and include information about policies, programs, funding, the ECEC workforce, and more Canada-wide and longitudinal comparisons.

Download Interim Space Statistics 2024