Toronto Child Care by the Numbers: Spaces, Waitlists, and Why CWELCC Expansion Is Falling Short

Toronto Children's Services publishes monthly data on two of the most consequential metrics in the city's child care system: the number of licensed centre-based spaces, and the number of children waiting for a fee subsidy. The data is available through the City of Toronto's open data dashboard at toronto.ca.

Taken together with national research from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, these numbers tell a story that is more complicated than the official narrative about CWELCC progress - and raise a question that operators, policymakers, and sector advocates are increasingly asking out loud.

Space Growth Has Slowed Dramatically Since CWELCC Launched

When Ontario signed the CWELCC agreement in 2022, Toronto had approximately 80,480 licensed centre-based spaces. As of April 2026, that number stands at 85,279 according to Toronto Children's Services data.

That is a net increase of approximately 4,800 spaces over four years - an average of roughly 1,200 net new spaces per year.

Compare that to the pre-CWELCC period. From January 2013 to December 2019, Toronto added approximately 22,000 licensed spaces over six years - roughly 3,700 per year, driven by market growth across both for-profit and non-profit operators. The program that was supposed to accelerate licensed space creation has coincided with a rate of growth less than a third of what the pre-CWELCC market was delivering.

The Toronto data also reveals a consistent seasonal pattern with direct implications for operators calculating their allocation. Spaces reliably drop by approximately 3,000 to 5,000 in July and August - reflecting summer closures - and jump sharply in September. This pattern has been consistent every year from 2013 through 2026. For CWELCC operators, the summer dip in operating capacity directly reduces your A1 staffing benchmark and A4 operations variable benchmark for those months. Maximizing service days through the summer period is one of the most effective ways to protect your annual allocation.

The Fee Subsidy Waitlist Surged After CWELCC Launched

The second data series from Toronto Children's Services is equally striking. When CWELCC launched in 2022, the fee subsidy waitlist in Toronto stood at approximately 16,314 children. By February 2025, it had climbed to 21,235 - a 30 per cent increase in just over two years, bringing the waitlist to near the COVID-era peak of 26,665 recorded in November 2020.

The waitlist has since eased. By April 2026, it stood at 16,184 - essentially back to where it was when CWELCC launched four years ago.

The explanation for the 2022 to 2025 surge is structural. CWELCC reduced parent fees to a maximum of $22 per day. Families who had previously found licensed child care unaffordable at market rates entered the system - including families who did not need a subsidy but who now found CWELCC-enrolled centres accessible at the new fee cap. This pulled demand significantly above what the existing supply of subsidized spaces could meet.

Ontario's Auditor General documented the equity consequence: enrolment from lower-income families in licensed child care dropped by 31 per cent compared to 2019 levels, even as the program was explicitly designed to improve their access. The families who needed the program most were pushed further down the waitlist by the families who could now afford to participate without it.

The CCPA Found Provinces Created Less Than 70 Per Cent of Committed Spaces Nationally

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published a comprehensive analysis of provincial space creation progress in January 2026. Their findings place Toronto's data in a national context.

Provinces committed to creating over 284,000 new spaces - primarily in the non-profit and public sector - by March 31, 2026. As of the third quarter of 2025, they had created only 194,000 spaces. That is 68 per cent of the commitment, with six months remaining in the original timeline.

Two findings from the CCPA analysis are particularly relevant for Ontario operators.

First, only two provinces - Prince Edward Island and Quebec - had achieved the federal target of 5.9 licensed child care spaces per ten non-school aged children as of Q3 2025. Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta were all well below that target despite being the largest provinces by population and funding allocation.

Second, the CCPA found that the expansion that did occur nationally was dominated by for-profit centres - directly counter to the CWELCC agreements, which stipulated that growth should happen primarily in the non-profit and public sector. In Ontario specifically, a significant portion of new licensed spaces are not enrolled in CWELCC at all - centres that opened, chose not to participate, and charge market rates without fee caps.

Why the Growth Rate Has Slowed: The Structural Explanation

Before CWELCC, an operator who identified unmet demand in a neighbourhood could open a centre, obtain a licence, and serve families. The market mechanism, imperfect as it was, responded to demand signals relatively quickly.

Under CWELCC, new spaces require SSM approval through a directed growth plan. Operators must apply within a specific window, meet auspice eligibility criteria, fit within geographic priorities, and receive allocation approval from their CMSM or DSSAB. The market mechanism has been replaced by a centrally planned allocation system.

Centrally planned systems can achieve equity and inclusion goals that markets miss. They can direct growth to underserved communities and ensure non-profit operators have access to capital they could not attract on their own. But they also move more slowly, and when the funding envelope is exhausted, growth stops regardless of demand.

That is precisely what has happened. Expansion application windows have closed across most major Ontario CMSMs. In Hamilton, the City has posted that no new CWELCC spaces have been committed beyond 2026. In Renfrew, the 2025-2026 expansion window closed in July 2025. In Halton, applications closed in January 2025. In the DNSSAB service area in Northern Ontario, the board has posted that it cannot approve further expansions due to limited available growth spaces.

Toronto Children's Services has gone further - explicitly pausing applications from commercial operators based on the City's auspice goals. Eligible applicants for expansion funding are limited to not-for-profit agencies, Francophone agencies, Indigenous-led agencies, and Black-led, Black-mandated, and Black-serving organizations.

The For-Profit Exclusion and the Supply Question

The exclusion of commercial operators from Toronto's expansion funding raises a direct question about the relationship between eligibility rules and supply outcomes.

For-profit operators built most of the pre-CWELCC growth in Toronto's licensed space count. From 2013 to 2019, as spaces grew by 22,000, for-profit centres responded to market signals and opened where demand existed. Under CWELCC, those same operators are excluded from the capital support - start-up grants, infrastructure fund, leasehold improvement funding - that non-profit competitors can access.

The Association of Canadian Early Learning Programs, which represents both non-profit and private providers, has called publicly for removing limits on for-profit operators from expanding under CWELCC. Their position is that licensed for-profit centres provide equivalent quality care and that excluding them from expansion capital is directly constraining supply.

The counter-position, held by advocacy organizations including the OCBCC, is that non-profit expansion produces better long-term equity outcomes and that additional public funding is the correct response to the supply shortfall - not removing restrictions on for-profit growth.

What both positions share is an acknowledgment of the same underlying fact: space creation is falling short of what was committed, and the rules governing who can create spaces are part of the explanation.

What This Means for Your Centre in 2026

If you currently operate a CWELCC-enrolled licensed child care centre in Toronto or across Ontario, the supply constraint environment has direct implications for your position.

Your waitlist is a reflection of a structural gap. A fee subsidy waitlist of over 16,000 children in Toronto as of April 2026 means demand for subsidized spaces far exceeds supply. Families on that waitlist represent genuine enrolment demand. Maintaining full operating capacity is both financially important and practically achievable in this environment.

Your existing spaces are in a protected competitive position. Closed expansion windows and paused commercial applications mean new licensed CWELCC competition in your immediate market is significantly constrained for the remainder of 2026. A competitor cannot simply open a new CWELCC-enrolled centre next door without going through a directed growth process that is currently closed.

If you are a for-profit operator, your growth options within CWELCC are constrained by design. The capital support available to non-profit operators is not available to you. Growth requires private capital without infrastructure support.

Your allocation optimization is the financial lever you control. If growth capital is not available, the path to improving your financial position is maximizing the allocation from your existing licensed capacity. Service day optimization, alternate capacity arrangements, rolling top-up accuracy, and eligible cost tracking are all mechanisms that operate within your current footprint, without requiring new spaces.

The Numbers in Context

Toronto's licensed space count has grown from 80,480 in January 2022 to 85,279 in April 2026. The fee subsidy waitlist peaked at 21,235 in February 2025 and has since returned to approximately 16,184. Nationally, provinces have created 194,000 of 284,000 committed spaces as of Q3 2025.

The program has made real gains on affordability. Parent fees in Toronto are capped at $22 per day - a significant reduction from pre-CWELCC market rates of $60 to $100 per day in many neighbourhoods.

But the access side of the equation - the promise that more families in more communities would have a space available to them - has not been delivered at the pace the commitments required. Whether the cause is insufficient funding, restrictive eligibility rules, a RECE workforce shortage, or some combination of all three is a question the next multi-year agreement negotiation will have to answer.

Source: Toronto Children's Services monthly open data, available at toronto.ca/city-government/data-research-maps/toronto-dashboard. National space creation data from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, "The Last Mile: Provincial Child Care Expansion at the Five-Year Deadline," January 2026.