Child-care plan falls way short

The Manitoba government can point to a lot of ink spilled — and a lot of money committed — on child care over the past few years. Fees have come down to $10 a day. New spaces have been promised. Workforce strategies have been rolled out.

On paper, it all sounds like progress.

But a scathing new report from Manitoba’s auditor general makes one thing painfully clear: when it comes to actually delivering child-care spaces where and when families need them, the province has badly dropped the ball.

And both the former Progressive Conservative government and the current NDP one are equally to blame.

Under the 2021 Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care agreement, Manitoba committed to creating 23,000 new not-for-profit child-care spaces for kids under the age of seven by March 31.

That’s Tuesday.

The auditor general’s conclusion? Manitoba is “unlikely” to meet that target. That’s a polite way of saying the province hasn’t even come close.

As of late last year, the province had opened 5,419 spaces since the agreement was signed, and committed to another 6,127. That still left more than 11,000 spaces unaccounted for, with only months to go before the deadline.

Even more damning, the auditor general’s own forecasting suggests the province won’t hit the 23,000 mark until 2031. And those spaces may not actually be operational until sometime between 2032 and 2035.

In other words, what was sold as a five-year plan is shaping up to be, at best, a decade-long slog.

That’s not a small miss. That’s a complete failure to deliver on a core commitment.

But the real problem isn’t just that the province is behind. It’s why.

According to the audit, Manitoba doesn’t even have the basic data needed to properly plan a child-care system.

Government does not have a provincial waitlist and does not track how many families are waiting for child-care spaces. It doesn’t know where demand is highest. It doesn’t know how long parents are waiting. And it doesn’t even consistently track when existing spaces close.

Instead, it relies on a patchwork system where individual centres may or may not keep their own waitlists — information that never makes its way into a centralized database.

That’s like trying to run a hospital system without knowing how many patients are waiting for surgery.

It gets worse.

The auditor general found the Education and Early Childhood Learning Department’s own demand model is so limited it can’t identify how many spaces are needed in specific communities, doesn’t set targets and doesn’t forecast future demand.

So not only does the government lack real-time data, it also isn’t looking ahead.

The result? Decisions are driven by “immediate pressures” rather than any kind of long-term strategy, the audit found.

In other words, government is making it up as it goes along.

That might work for a short-term political announcement. It doesn’t work for building a provincewide child-care system.

You’d assume that a $1.2-billion, multi-year agreement with the federal government — one that aims to fundamentally reshape child care — would come with a detailed road map.

Timelines. Benchmarks. Accountability measures.

Nope.

The auditor general found Manitoba does not have a comprehensive, implementation-focused action plan to meet its targets.

The existing plans don’t include clear timelines. They don’t include execution strategies. They don’t include performance measures to track whether anything is actually working.

That helps explain why the system feels so broken for parents on the ground.

Yes, child care is cheaper. That’s the one area where governments across the country — including Manitoba — have delivered.

But lower-cost child care without enough spaces is like offering cheap gas in a city with a severe shortage of gas stations.

It just creates longer lineups.

And that’s exactly what’s happened. Demand has surged since $10-a-day care was introduced, with the number of families seeking child care jumping significantly in just a few years, according to Statistics Canada.

Meanwhile, supply hasn’t come close to keeping up.

The audit paints a picture of a system under constant strain, where new spaces fill up immediately and shortages persist across most of the province.

And it’s not just about physical spaces. Even when new centres are built, they need staff.

Here again, the province is flying partially blind.

While it has estimated how many workers would be needed, it doesn’t track key data such as employee retention or why people are leaving the sector.

So it’s entirely possible — even likely — that some new spaces won’t be fully usable because there aren’t enough trained staff to meet required ratios.

To be fair, the government isn’t doing nothing. There are wage increases, training incentives and recruitment efforts underway.

But without proper data and planning, it’s impossible to know whether those efforts are enough, or even targeted in the right places.

Child care isn’t just a social program. It’s economic infrastructure. It allows parents to work — particularly women — supports child development and strengthens communities.

Right now, Manitoba is falling well short on all of the above.

And unless the province gets a grip on the basics — data, planning and accountability — families will keep paying the price, not in higher fees, but in something more costly: the inability to find a space at all.

» Tom Brodbeck is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist.