Surrey, Burnaby kids living in ‘daycare deserts,’ report finds

Most of Surrey and Burnaby and some neighbourhoods in Vancouver are examples of what a new report is calling “child care deserts” that exist across the country.

Nationally, as many as 776,000 children who are not of school age live in neighbourhoods with a shortage of child-care spaces, according to a report released Wednesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Among 116,000 children in Metro Vancouver, 62,000 live in these “daycare deserts,” according to the report.

It defines a child-care desert as postal codes where there are three or more children per available licensed daycare space.

Iglika Ivanova, a CCPA senior economist, said in an interview that the report is the first of its kind to compare all the country’s licensed daycare spaces with the number of children in each postal code.

Many studies have looked at the high cost of child care, but not at the availability of spaces across the country, she said.

“The report says that it’s really important to pay attention to the availability of child-care spaces as well as the price,” Ivanova said during a phone interview in Vancouver.

According to the report, the area in Metro Vancouver with the highest proportion of children living in a child-care desert is Surrey, at 94 per cent.

(The worst in the country is Saskatoon, with 100 per cent of children living in a child-care desert.)

“(Surrey ’s) 29,080 children have access to only 7,325 licensed child care spaces,” the report says. “Almost all of the city is a child care desert, with only the southern sections nearest to White Rock having slightly higher coverage rates of 42 per cent.”

Elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, 71 per cent of children in Burnaby live in a child-care desert. Within Vancouver, neighbourhoods such as Kitsilano, Kensington and Riley Park are considered “largely child care deserts.”

Neighbourhoods doing better are the University of B.C., north Richmond, and southern areas of West Vancouver and North Vancouver.

The report explains that the idea of a “child care desert” is similar to that of a “food desert,” which is described as a community without adequate access to healthy and affordable foods.

Ivanova said one of the big trends the report found is that provinces that are more involved in fee setting or in planning and funding have better coverage rates and better access to child care than provinces that leave it entirely up to the free market.

Ivanova said the report doesn’t explain why child-care deserts exist or why a city such as Victoria is doing so well at matching demand for child care with access to available spaces. Victoria, as well as cities such as Laval and Charlottetown, have no child-care deserts, according to the report.

She said the CCPA wanted to compile data, create an interactive map, and make it publicly available as communities and governments look to improve access across the country.

“We expected to see big regional variations,” she said. “It’s interesting to see how big the variations are within cities.”

Data was collected in March and April from publicly accessible provincial websites that provide licensing information and help parents find daycare.

The report doesn’t include data on unlicensed home daycares because no comprehensive lists exist of those providers. As well, it doesn’t include the use of nannies.

Data is only for children who are not of school age. After-school care or spaces for children in kindergarten or older grades aren’t included.

“Canadians should have access to affordable child care near where they live, no matter where they live,” the report says. “Our research into child care deserts shows that is not the case in far too much of the country.”

The report found that the lowest coverage rates are often rural areas within cities and suburbs.

“This supports the pattern of parents commuting to work with young children, but it cannot tell us if they are choosing to do this for convenience or if it is a result of a lack of care spaces closer to home,” the report says.

“It also cannot help us determine whether suburban parents are putting their children in unlicensed home care, as no comprehensive list of unlicensed spaces exists.”

Data for the report was compiled from 13,798 daycare centres, 2,622 homes, and 368 home-care agencies that provide 716,850 licensed spaces. The report was written by David Macdonald, a senior economist at CCPA.