Alberta child-care fees set to decrease — again — as federal-provincial program expands in January

Peyton Davis has been paying about $800 per month for her son's daycare — and that's after the government grants and subsidies.

But come January, the Edmonton mom's fees are set to come down to about $600, which she says will make "a huge difference" for her family.

"My husband and I both work pretty good jobs, but right now we are living paycheque to paycheque," she said.

"We are struggling to be able to save and invest for our futures. We don't have an emergency savings fund right now because we can't afford it … so being able to save $200 a month would be fantastic."

More than 80 per cent of Albertans with kids in child care will see "significant declines" in their monthly fees in 2024, said Children and Family Services Minister Searle Turton.

That's because per-space grants to eligible daycare operators are set to increase on Jan. 1.

Daycare operators that receive the grants have agreed to limits on fee increases, Turton said, so the vast majority of those grants should translate into lower fees for parents in the new year.

"Some families will be experiencing up to $200-per-month savings," he said. "So it's pretty significant."

Daycare fees were cut roughly in half when the joint federal-provincial child-care agreement took effect in 2022, and the province says fees were reduced even further in 2023, reaching an average of $20 per day in March.

With the increased grants in 2024, Turton said the average fee should fall to $15 per day, en route to the goal of $10 per day in 2026.

Fees will still range from facility to facility, he noted, but that range will continue to narrow as the program expands.

More like $30 a day, for many

Even with the reduction next year, Davis noted her own daycare fees will still be nearly $30 per day.

She said the program has made a big difference for her family but also said there was a perception among many parents when it first launched under the "$10-a-day" banner that fees would reach that level a lot quicker and a lot more universally.

In reality, though, she said it's not like that for many parents.

She said she and her husband shopped around for a daycare in their area — looking at roughly 20 facilities — and found little variation in fees.

Turton said the fees parents pay can vary from facility to facility because there was a wide range of different fees prior to the program's launch.

"When we started this process a couple of years ago, I don't want to say it was the Wild West, but rates were all over the map, depending upon if you were in Edmonton or Calgary, rural, day homes," he said.

"So every time we make another step toward the $10 a day [average], we're tightening up that range in which those daycare rates can be."

The province says it calculates that figure as a weighted average of program fees across all eligible spaces in daycare facilities and family day homes in Alberta.

Additional fees charged by some operators for "enhanced services" such as transportation, field trips, special programming or other non-core childcare functions are not included.

Fees can also vary from family to family due to the income-based subsidy component of the program.

In addition to the per-space grants that eligible child-care operators receive, parents can also receive a subsidy of their own, but the amount varies depending on their household income.

'Absolute game changer'

Overall, Turton said the program has already been "an absolute game changer" in many Albertans' lives, as it has resulted in thousands of dollars of savings per year compared to what child care used to cost.

He said that has given parents more flexibility in terms of deciding when — or if — to return to work after having a child.

"You don't have to go very far to talk with a lot of families who say it wasn't worth it for one parent to go to work by the time they paid for child-care fees," he said.

"The moves that our government has made, alongside with the federal government in the agreement, really allows parents and families right across the province to have the legitimate choice if they want to be able to go back to work or not."

He said increased labour-force participation is also important to the province's economy more broadly because there are "so many shortages in different sectors" at the moment and some employers are scrambling to fill vacant positions.

"All of a sudden, it opens up an additional pool of workers that they didn't have access to," Turton said.