Provincial government counts pre-existing spaces as “new”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

24 September, 2025

Saskatchewan has fallen well short of its child care space creation targets, according to a Cardus analysis of provincial data. While Saskatchewan had set a two-year goal of 12,100 new spaces by 2022-23, it only managed to create slightly more than 5,200 operational or in-development new spaces in that time. Then, within 12 months, Saskatchewan reported a jump to more than 11,000 new full-time spaces by the end of 2023-24. But that dramatic increase came because the province counted more than 6,700 pre-existing spaces in pre-K and other programs as “new” after they adopted the provincial curriculum.

“It’s bad enough that Saskatchewan spent $112 million to create far fewer spaces that it had targeted,” says Peter Jon Mitchell, family program director at Cardus. “But counting pre-existing spaces as ‘new’ grossly overstates the actual increase in child care capacity.”

Meanwhile, the number of non-standard-hour child care spaces in Saskatchewan dropped by more than half between 2022–23 and 2023–24. So, parents who do shift work or whose kids need care outside of the typical eight-hour workday had less access to care. Saskatchewan had just 235 extended care spaces in March 2024, down from 519 spaces the previous March.

“Saskatchewan is following the same pattern as every other province or territory that has accepted federal funding to create a $10-a-day child care system—missed targets and longer waiting lists,” says Mitchell. “The province would be better off funding parents directly so that they could afford the care that works best for their families.”

Child Care Funding Update: Saskatchewan—Years Two and Three (2022–23 and 2023–24) is freely available on the Cardus website.

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MEDIA INQUIRIES
Daniel Proussalidis
Cardus – Director of Media & Public Relations
media@cardus.ca
613-241-4500 x508

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Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.