A new analysis from the C.D. Howe Institute, published August 10, 2026, puts the central problem of Canada’s childcare system in a single sentence. The CWELCC program has made care more affordable, write researchers Parisa Mahboubi and Tingting Zhang, but “less accessible.” For Ontario parents who have been living this contradiction for the past four years, the observation is not new. But the data behind it is worth understanding, because it explains exactly why the system is failing so many families and what a realistic alternative looks like right now.
Affordability and Access Are Two Different Problems
On price, the program has largely done what it set out to do. Eight provinces and territories now offer regulated childcare at or near $10 a day for children under six, and Ontario has cut its own fees by roughly half. Families who have managed to secure a licensed spot are saving thousands of dollars a year compared to what they would have paid before the program existed. That part of the plan has worked as intended.
The access picture tells a different story. In 2024, more than three quarters of licensed childcare centres across Canada reported having an active waitlist. By 2025, the share of parents using childcare who said they had trouble finding it had risen to nearly half, up from 36 percent in 2019. Lower fees pulled more families into the licensed system, including many who had previously relied on informal care. The supply of new licensed spaces has not caught up, and it remains below the federal target of 250,000 new spaces. Staffing shortages have limited how much centres can expand even in cases where funding is already available.
The Non-Standard Hours Problem Nobody Is Solving
One of the sharpest findings in the C.D. Howe analysis is the mismatch between when parents actually work and when licensed childcare is available. Fewer than 2 percent of licensed centres offer evening or weekend care. Yet nearly two in five parents work non-standard hours, and the report notes that this group skews heavily toward lower-income and single-parent households, precisely the families the program was designed to help most.
A subsidized spot that runs 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, does very little for a hospital worker on rotating shifts, a retail employee scheduled on weekends, or a parent whose hours shift from week to week. The policy design has not caught up with this reality. The licensed system, as it currently operates, has not adapted to how a large share of Ontario parents actually work.
What This Means for Parents Right Now
The C.D. Howe analysis points to policy changes at the federal and provincial level as the real fix for the access problem, including better-targeted subsidies and more flexibility for families who cannot get into the licensed system at all. Those changes, if they come, will take time. For the parent whose mat leave ends in September, whose employer is calling them back to a non-standard schedule, or whose child has been on a waitlist since before they were born, time is not something they have.
What is available right now is different from what the waitlist shows. Licensed Ontario childcare centres open up short-term and part-time spots every week, driven by vacancies, program transitions, schedule changes, and families moving on. The Auditor General of Ontario found that approximately 27 percent of licensed childcare spaces sit vacant on any given day. These openings exist across both CWELCC-enrolled and non-CWELCC licensed centres. They do not show up on government waitlists. They show up on ChildSpot.
How ChildSpot Addresses the Access Gap
ChildSpot is a real-time licensed childcare marketplace built for Ontario. Operators post openings directly through the app as they become available, and parents search by date, location, and age group to see only centres with actual current openings. CWELCC-enrolled centres offering the $22 a day maximum rate are clearly labelled, and non-CWELCC licensed centres are listed alongside them so families can compare every option in one place. Every listing on the platform holds an active licence with the Ontario Ministry of Education.
For parents working non-standard hours, ChildSpot surfaces the part-time and short-term openings that the full-time enrollment system was never built to capture. A spot available for three specific days a week, or for a defined short-term stretch, can be searched, found, and booked through the app in minutes, with no voicemails and no callbacks. Payment is processed securely through the platform.
The C.D. Howe Institute is right that Canada’s childcare plan has a fundamental design problem. Affordability and accessibility are not the same thing, and the program has delivered the first without solving the second. Policy reform will take years. The spots available right now at licensed Ontario centres will not wait for it. ChildSpot is how parents find them today.
Search available licensed childcare spots across Ontario at app.childspotapp.com or download on iOS. Free to search. Book in minutes.
Source: Mahboubi, Parisa and Zhang, Tingting. (August 10, 2026). “Fixing the broken dream of $10-a-day child care.” C.D. Howe Institute. https://cdhowe.org/publication/fixing-the-broken-dream-of-10-a-day-child-care/
Additional reference: Auditor General of Ontario. (October 2025). Performance Audit: Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Program. Office of the Auditor General of Ontario.