Among Canadian children aged 0–5 not currently in a child care arrangement, the share whose parent reports being on a waitlist rose from 19.1% in 2022 to 30.8% in 2025 — roughly twelve points over the rollout of the $10-a-day program (CWELCC). The pressure is sharpest for infants: more than half of under-1s not in care are now waitlisted.
The Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care system (CWELCC) was designed to cut fees toward an average of $10 a day. Lower fees have made spaces far more attractive to families — but the supply of licensed spaces has not kept pace. The clearest household-level read on that gap is the waitlist: among parents not currently using care, how many say they are queuing for a spot. This page tracks that rate by the child's age across the three survey waves available, and is deliberately careful about what the number can and cannot tell us.
Read this first. This metric is newer and narrower than it looks, and four things shape how to read it:
The red line is the overall 0–5 rate; the muted lines break it out by the child's age. The under-1 line (blue) is both the highest and the steepest, climbing from 37.8% to 56.5%. The x-axis is spaced to the true distance between survey years — note the wider gap from 2023 to 2025, with no reading in between.
One line moves against the others: 4–5, not in school dips from 12.0% (2023) to 10.0% (2025). The most plausible reading is compositional — children in this band aging into school rather than a real easing of demand — which is why it is flagged rather than treated as good news.
| Age group (not in care) | 2022 | 2023 | 2025 | 2022 → 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall (0–5) | 19.1 | 26.2 | 30.8 | +11.7 |
| Less than 1 year | 37.8 | 46.9 | 56.5 | +18.7 |
| 1 to 3 years | 16.7 | 24.6 | 26.3 | +9.6 |
| 4–5, not in school | 5.7 | 12.0 | 10.0 | +4.3 |
| 4–5, in school | 4.3 | 8.0 | 13.7 | +9.4 |
Among 0–5s not in care, the share on a waitlist climbed from 19.1% (2022) to 30.8% (2025). Because the question was first asked in 2022, this brackets the CWELCC rollout but has no pre-policy starting point — it shows the trend during the program, not a clean before-and-after.
The under-1 rate went from 37.8% to 56.5% — the highest of any band and the steepest climb (+18.7 points). By 2025, more than half of infants not in care had a parent reporting a waitlist, consistent with infant care being the scarcest and most expensive segment to staff and license.
All five age groups sit higher in 2025 than in 2022. The only mid-series fall is "4–5, not in school" (12.0% → 10.0%), most plausibly explained by children aging into school rather than demand easing — note that "4–5, in school" rose over the same window (8.0% → 13.7%).
Because the rate is measured among parents not currently using care, a rising waitlist is consistent with both a genuine shortage of spaces and more families queuing because fees fell. This survey cannot distinguish the two; reading it as pure supply failure, or dismissing it as mere induced demand, both overstate what the number proves.
The metric is the share of children aged 0–5 who are not currently in a child care arrangement and whose parent reports being on a waitlist for care. It is a parent-reported measure, not an administrative count of licensed-space waitlists.
Because the base is parents not using care, the rate rises when more families decide to seek a (now cheaper) space, independent of whether supply has worsened. A rising rate is therefore consistent with both supply shortfall and induced demand, and the survey cannot separate them. Treat the directional rise as well-established and any single-cause story as interpretation.
The waitlist question was first collected in 2022; CWELCC launched in 2021. No pre-CWELCC reading exists for this measure. Earlier survey items on difficulty finding care or reasons for not using care use different denominators and definitions and are not spliced into this series.
The 2022 collection excluded the three territories; 2023 and 2025 cover all of Canada — a minor effect on the national rate, annotated on the chart. There was no 2024 collection, so the series is unevenly spaced (2022 → 2023 → 2025); the chart uses a year-valued x-axis so the 2023→2025 gap is shown at its true width and no 2024 value is implied.
"4–5, not in school" falls from 12.0% (2023) to 10.0% (2025) while "4–5, in school" rises (8.0% → 13.7%), consistent with a compositional shift as children age into school rather than a real easing of demand.
A provincial/territorial breakdown requires the full Table 42-10-0106-01 CSV from Statistics Canada and is not yet included. The "less than 1 year" 2023 value (46.9%) is read from the release text (rounded to 47%) and is flagged for confirmation against the table's exact decimal.
The editable series live in Elevating_Child-Care-Waitlists_Data.xlsx. Only series the workbook actually contains are described here.