The facts on Saskatchewan childcare

With lots of misinformation circulating about child care in Saskatchewan, the World-Spectator went straight to the source to give readers the facts

May 11, 2026, 9:47 am
Kara Kinna

Daycare Kids

On April 23, the provincial government made a number of announcements around the child care system, including standardizing a 10-hour child-care day.

Other key announcements included giving operators the option of charging an hourly fee for children who are in care for more than 10 hours a day, and being strategic on where the province adds an additional 2,000 childcare spots in the province, focusing on the development of new child-care spaces on areas with the greatest need. Saskatchewan has come within 92 per cent of the target of 28,000 spaces set by Ottawa at the onset of the first $10 a day childcare agreement.

From April, 2021 to December, 2025, there was a 146 per cent increase in the number of early learning and child care spaces in Saskatchewan.

The previous childcare agreement with Ottawa ended on March 31, 2026. The new agreement came into effect on April 1, also allowing for children up to the age of seven, or children who turn six after April 1, up to the end of the school year or when they turn seven, to receive $10 a day childcare.

The changes have prompted lots of questions from local daycares in Southeast Saskatchewan. On Thursday last week, the World-Spectator spoke with Sameema Haque, Assistant Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Education, about exactly how the entire childcare system works, including changes under the new federal-provincial agreement, and changes that were announced on April 23.

Following is the information she provided:

How did things work before $10 a day childcare?
There were lots of legacy programs in Saskatchewan that provided some funding for the child care sector prior to the Canada-wide program coming into place, and those funding streams still continue on, because the requirement of the federal provincial agreement is that provincial investments will not be displaced with the federal investment.

There are certain grants. Childcare wasn’t funded to the amount that it’s funded now, because there was no $10 a day childcare, but there were streams of funding. It’s not that the child care sector had zero funding at that time. To use an example, let’s say, for example, $190,000 was being paid to a regulated operator that qualified for those legacy grants that existed. The funding for them from the government now exceeds $500,000.

What happened when $10 a day day care came in?
In 2021, Saskatchewan signed the federal provincial agreement, the Canada-wide agreement. That was our first agreement and it just ended in March of 2026. Under that agreement, $10 a day childcare came in. That was the commitment in the agreement. Also in the agreement was that we had to build 28,000 new child care spaces. That was the commitment in the agreement. There are several other stipulations within the agreement, it’s a very lengthy agreement, it’s a complex agreement, and then each agreement has an associated action plan.

The annual Action Plan, which specifies this year’s funding, is going to be allocated in a way that has to be negotiated with the federal government. So you can’t take all the money and give it to the child care operators, some has to be invested in initiatives that are related to training, some has to be invested in initiatives that are related to inclusion. Those things are part of the negotiation with the federal government. You don’t just get the pot of money for the year, you get the pot of the money for the year, and then on top of that, you have to negotiate how it’s going to be split into different streams on an annual basis with the federal government.

So legacy programs that the provincial government funded continued on, funding for those increased through the provincial budget process, and then there is the Canada-wide agreement, which brought in $10 a day.

Saskatchewan is one of the jurisdictions that brought in $10 a day very, very quickly, which created a huge difference from an affordability perspective.

At that point, we had fewer spaces, many spaces were being developed, being allocated, we continued to build more spaces, and every year we make adjustments into the funding as the sector grows, the needs change, as different needs are identified, different areas require more investment, less investment, and we continue to adjust this. You’re building a big system, right? So as you build the big system, things change and evolve, and you have to adjust accordingly.

So how exactly does $10 a day work?
So with child care under the Canada-wide agreement that just ended, children under six years old were qualified for the $10 a day.

As of April 1, we’ve negotiated one more year of $10 a day for children, but it’s the children that turn six after April 1 when the new agreement comes into place. Our previous agreement ended on March 31. That agreement required only coverage for under six. This agreement comes in effect on April 1, that’s when children up to the age of seven, or children who turn six after April 1, up to the end of the school year or when they turn seven, get child care.

Now you as a parent go to one those child care operators, and you want to put your child into a spot, and your child is, let’s just say three years old, and they qualify for $10 a day. The only revenue that the operators used to have prior to the Canada-wide agreement coming in was fees. They got the fees, and they got some of those grants that I’m talking about, our legacy provincial grants.

Nothing’s changed on those legacy provincial grants, they still exist, they’re part of the stream, whoever got them before is still getting them. So let’s keep that aside, that’s a constant.

Beyond that, the revenue was the fees. The operators set their fees as per their market conditions, based on where they were, what their cost structures were. So all across the province, we had different fees, and when we brought in $10 a day we allowed for some adjustments, but overall, those operators had set their fees based on their operation, as the revenue stream for their operation. So we froze them there, and now we’re going to implement $10 a day. What’s going to happen is the parent pays $217.50 which is $10 a day, but whatever is the remaining portion of your fees, that is covered by the government.

For example, if a spot is $800, that was their fee. And now if the parent pays $217.50 and the government pays the rest, which for that spot would be $582.50, and that would make the total $800.

So then, the operators are thinking, ‘okay, well, now you’ve frozen our fees.’ Prior to this Canada-wide agreement coming in, the only source of revenue was those fees, and the trend for increasing those fees across the province was less than 2% a year. We have all that data and it was 0.5% or 1.2%—it was always less than 2%. That was an operator discussion, they set their fees and they increase their fees as they so chose.

Since then what we’ve done is we’ve continued to increase fees. So over the tenure of the last agreement, we’ve increased the fees by 11%.

So, what does that mean? That means the parent still pays only $217.50, nothing’s changed for the parent, but you know that $582 that I used for my example that way pay to the operator? That continues to increase. So when you hear from the operators that we have seen no increase in fees, that’s not the case, because fees have increased by 11%, the operators have been allowed to increase their fees by that percentage, and as they increase that, our funding on the backside, the government portion of the grant, continues to increase.

2021 is when the first agreement came in to March 31, 2026 when the agreement ended, and in that time period, 11% was the allowable increase.

So operators were told, you are allowed to increase the fees. They made that decision because, we aren’t the employer, we aren’t the operator. We told them you are allowed to increase your fees, the allowable fee increase information was issued out to the operators, the operators made a decision as to when they wanted to increase, and as soon as they increased the fees, they notified us. That’s been the allowable fee increase over that period of time.

So just to be clear, operators were allowed to increase their fees up to 11 per cent over that period?
Yes, different percentage increases were allowed over different time periods in those years—1.25 in one year, 2.7% in the other, over the time period. But in that four years, 11% is how much the fees increased, which is significantly more than the trend was before $10 a day childcare.

At the same time, that is no longer the only source of revenue for those operators, because we also have nearly 17 other grants. There are different grants, some are annual grants, where we assess on an annual basis, based on where the needs are, and we make adjustments, and we provide one time grants. And some are ongoing grants.

Wage Enhancement is one grant which is how we top up the wages for the workers, based on their certification level. On average, the wages for the certified ECEs have increased by 43% in the same time period. That is government funding the top up for the wage. That is a grant that goes to the operator.

Now, certain people are not qualified for that. The owner of any business is not considered a wage employee, they don’t get that, but their workers that are certified do get that, and so we provide that wage top up, and that’s happened annually, and those increases have been implied. There’s been an average rate increase of 43% for ECE workers. From the government’s perspective, that is a significant increase, no other sector has seen that.

Then we have also have inclusion grants, and inclusion grants have increased significantly. We have new space startup grants that have nearly doubled. We have several one-time and several ongoing grants, and nearly all of them have increased either significantly or at least to some degree over this period from 2021. So we’ve continued to make those adjustments, those are additional revenue sources that are now flowing to the sector.

I would also like to say that this jurisdiction, Saskatchewan, has been so diligent that we have by far across the nation spent the least on administrative costs. The government officials have continued to do all this work with the same capacities, in the same structure. Our spend on the administrative side, which is allowed up to 10% of the agreement funding, is really at around 2.1%. The rest is all going to the sector, in a very efficient manner, because we continue to be diligent. So, back to our original example, you could have a 45-space operator receiving less than $200,000 prior to this Canada-wide agreement coming in, and the funding for them from the government is now exceeding $500,000.

Just look at the growth of government funding. So it’s not insignificant. The government has significantly increased the funding to the sector.

Yes, the demand has increased and yes, and we’ve built those spaces. Right now we’re at 92% of those space allocations.

The government is also recognizing the economic realities across the nation. We did ask federal government for more funding. We fought hard for it, but the economic conditions across the country didn’t allow for that, so that didn’t happen, but we still got one more year of coverage for our families. So when you look at that in that context, then really what we have is one more year for affordable child care for our Saskatchewan families, because now children are covered up until seven at the end of the school year and we are managing that with the same funding pot. And so we’re looking at some efficiencies, we’re looking to make some decisions where there’s duplication of funding, we’re adjusting those, we’re looking at what is the core service menu that’s covered within the $10 a day, and what is extra that there could be fee charges for, and all of those are the kinds of decisions that are that we’ve announced, and those are to protect those investments. We can’t just continue to grow and grow and grow, we have to also continue work towards sustainability of what we’ve built, and that’s what was announced on April 23 by the Minister.

What has happened since those announcements on April 23.
I think there’s different perspectives that people have on those kinds of decisions. We have done a lot of information sharing, we’ve fielded questions, we’ve answered emails, we have lots of correspondence we’re answering. We’re also doing open forum Q and A’s with child care operators as well as home operators, with the centre operators during the day and home operators in the evening, so that they have the ability to attend.

And I am in those meetings, we have hundreds of operators attending, we’re answering their questions live on those sessions, we’re making every effort to clarify, as sometimes the narrative in the social media domain gets somewhat off of the facts.

Can you be specific about the decisions that were made on April 23.
One of the decisions was about redirecting some funding from tuition free ECE training to corroborating costs. So what that means is we’ve invested a lot of money over the last agreement into thousands and thousands of tuition-free training for seats for in our post-secondary sector, for ECE 1, ECE 2 and ECE 3. We were supposed to increase the certified workforce by 15%. We’ve done that by 52%, so we have far exceeded the target. So what we are doing now is we’re pivoting. Rather than all ECE certification, we know that the spaces are growing, and that’s why we need to have and entry level workforce still available.

So what are we pivoting to? The government will continue to fund the ECE 1 level training, but the ECE 2 and ECE 3 is not going to be covered in the post-secondary tuition-free seats, because those people have now entered the workforce and they can work, and they can determine when they want to get the next level of certification, or if they even need that.

We’re focusing on the entry level workforce, but we are still doing tuition reimbursement, which is for people that are working in the sector that are seeking a higher level of certification, because that’s needed for a centre, a mix of ECE 1, ECE 2 and ECE 3, so that’s still there. There are tuition support options by the federal government that are still there, and there is leadership training that is still going to be funded by the government.

So rather than thousands of free training seats in our post secondary, what we are doing is we are covering for ECE 1 to provide entry level workforce. And we’re covering for ECE 1, ECE 2 and ECE 3 for those that are in the sector and require that training to remain and to meet the requirements of the regulation reimbursement, and for those that are in leadership positions, we continue to support their capacity building through the leadership training. And money that was being spent on thousands of ECE tuition free seats for ECE 2 and ECE 3 is going into the operating cost of the sector, because we have still about 7,000 spaces that are going to become operational.

So we have to provide all this funding that we give to every other operator that exists right now to those spaces as well, and we have to also cover for the children for one more year of $10 a day affordability, so that’s where we are redirecting that funding.

What else was decided on April 23?
The second decision is strategically prioritizing new child care spaces, because we are at the 92% target, we could easily have met the target, but we want to be strategic on the remaining 2,000 spaces that we have to allocate. We want to allocate them in areas that don’t have a $10 a day spot, because we know our target remains the same. We’re close to the target, have nearly met our commitment to the agreement, and we know we can meet the remaining agreements. We want to make sure that we cover the province in affordability and coverage for the parents. So rural, remote space, and spaces where we don’t have $10 they spot, those are the areas that we are going to prioritize in allocating further spaces.

The third decision was establishing a standard 10-hour child care day.

So $10 a day gets you 10 hours of child care service. That’s how we are defining it. There are other jurisdictions that have done that. 10 hours a day still gives you an average eight hour work day for the majority of the workers. I know there are 12 hour shifts as well, but still, it gives you a good 10-hour a day at $10 a day, and if anybody needs child care beyond that, the operators can charge for that.

But we have put some guardrails on those charges, because we don’t want the charge to become so high that it actually undermines $10 a day. Because if it undermines the $10 a day, then we are essentially not complying with the federal-provincial agreement. And if we don’t comply with the agreement, then all of the funding doesn’t go through, which then flows through the sector.

So in order to protect those investments, protect the sector that’s been built, and protect affordability for families, and protect the workforce that is currently employed in the child care sector and all those operations that we’ve continued to fund, to protect all those things and sustain them into the future, we need to make sure that we have guardrails on these things too.

So we have provided options. We’ve provided guardrails for an hourly charge. If there’s one or two days that a parent needs additional child care for more than 10 hours per day, or in situations where that’s a regular case, then we’ve provided a monthly cap and we’ve set that at a low percentage of the total fees.

So if a person goes over the 10 hours of childcare, an operator can charge what they want for those additional hours, but it’s capped?
If they choose to, they can charge. They’re not required to, but they can charge only to that maximum and that is to protect affordability for the parents for the $10 a day.

What is the maximum that they could charge for those hours?
It’s set at 7% of the total fees.

There has been some talk about those overage fees being too low. Is that accurate?
They were not able to charge at all before. This is something we hadn’t defined, whether it was 10 hours, 11 hours, 12 hours, whatever it was, there was no charge beyond $10 a day. So this is additional revenue, there’s no loss of revenue, this revenue didn’t exist before. Now we’ve given a defined limit and are saying our funding for your full-time spot covers you for 10 hours.

Were fees on an hourly basis before, or were they just on a per full-time spot basis?
There are daily fees for children who come less than 10 days, and for children that are attending a child care spot for 10 days or more, we funded the full spot, and the parent paid $217.50, that’s it. But children who were less than 10 days had a daily rate, but there was no hourly limit. So drop ins are different, there’s no change in that aspect of it, there’s no loss of revenue here. This is additional revenue. This revenue didn’t exist.

What happens now, if I want to bring my kid just for five hours?
It’s only above 10 hours that they can charge, and below that is still funded fully. If you are bringing your child for five hours for 10 days or more, the spot is funded fully.

Has something changed with being able to share 10-hour a day spots?
Let’s go back to our $800 example, sand say there is an operator that’s determined their fees are $800 for the full-time spot. So the parent pays $217.50 and the government pays the $582.50, that makes the total fee for the spot.

So if two children were using one space for 10 days or more on different days, prior to the July 1 what happened is the operator got $1,600, because they collected the two parent fee grants—the $217.50 from two different parents, and they collected the full $582 for both children from the government.

So that is changing because we feel we are fully funding the spot, we have more spots coming online, we have 7,000 more families to cover, we have one more year to cover, we are fully funding that spot when we pay $800 already for that spot.

We are funding up to 90 spots, but you can have other children attend and maximize your revenue. You can collect the parent fee portion of it. So in the example that we were using, that particular operator can get the two parent fee portions of it—so they can get both parents to pay $217.50 because the other parent that’s using the spot still should pay $10 a day, so they’re paying $217.50. So, this particular operator would get two parent fee grants for that same spot, but they will get the one government funding grant, because they’re already getting extra funding for that one spot.

So if you have two parents sharing a full-time spot and paying their portion for that spot, the government will top it up to what’s left?
And because it’s a fully funded spot, say neither of those children show up, they can actually have another child use that as a drop in on a daily rate, they are able to do that if they have a drop in wait list and somebody wants to drop off their child, they can do that because it’s still fully funded, and we won’t change that. We will still fully fund it. If a child doesn’t show up at all because they’re sick or their parent took three days off, or whatever, we don’t change our grant. We still will recognize it, and we’ll fully fund that spot. But now you can have a drop in for that spot.

The other thing you can do is, you can have a school-age kid in that spot, if you wanted to on those days that neither of those children are there, and get a school-age fee, and for that fee the operator can charge whatever they want for children that are outside of the agreement, because we have no authority or jurisdiction over that.

So for anyone over the age of six, they can set their fees as they see fit?
Exactly. We haven’t seen much increase in those fees comparatively. So, really, if you use drop in, if you have two children using the spot, you’re already getting more than full time funding. So we are trying to extend affordability to as many families as we can. We will fully fund that spot, you have that as a subsidized, fully funded government spot, but you can collect a second parent fee portion, you can collect a drop in fee, you can collect a school fee if you want, if the child isn’t there. Some of the feedback we’ve gotten is ‘well, now I have two children to feed, but the two children are never going to be there at the same time.’ There’s only one child that you’re feeding, and we are still covering the full funding for that spot.

One child can only use one $10 a day spot—that has never been our policy because there are so many families that need a $10 a day spot. So in order to extend the benefit of affordability to as many parents as we possibly can, we want to have one child access only one $10 a day spot, not two $10 a day spots. Only in very extenuating circumstances—and there are only 12 such cases across the province where we have given permission for one child to use two spots—because we have to prove it to the auditor in our public accounting. If you have the same child using multiple spots, how do you prove that there isn’t something else happening here?

So, there are extenuating circumstances of disability or special needs where we’ve allowed a child to use more than one spot because that child cannot go to another operator that they’re unfamiliar with, and they are in a circumstance where they need to go to two spots, but that’s only 12 cases.

We want one child to access one $10 day spot so some other family can have that same affordability option.
Some of our operators are saying, ‘well, now we’re going to charge on a monthly basis.’ And what we’ve cautioned is that if authorized fees is not appropriately used, as we’ve described in the framework, and there’s non compliance with the agreement, that jeopardizes the entire agreement and affordability for thousands of families.

Where there any other changes made?
Yes, some of the operators had really low fees at the start, and they set them based on their market conditions, but we’re bringing the entire sector up to the average. We’re increasing the bottom 20% of fees across the province and bringing them up closer to the average. So we’re making adjustments so there is less disparity between legacy operators and new operators.

What were these changes based on?
Many of these initiatives are based on sector feedback. We get letters with ideas, letters with suggestions. We do get feedback from all sides and these are seen as sustainability measures and protection measures, so we’ve gotten lots of positive feedback.

Of course, we have operators that are not happy with this decision too and we’re clarifying that, but there’s rationale and logic to these decisions, and the government remains committed to and invested in $10 a day. That’s why an extension agreement was signed, we remain committed to that, and we’re looking at sustainability.

We have to consider that we have to fund all those spaces that are developing and as they become operational. We also have to consider that we have one more year of $10 a day for our children now.

For federal funding, we didn’t get an increase—yes, there’s wording in the agreement of a 3% escalator. First of all, it’s not for this year and secondly, there is an adjustment in the agreement that speaks to census based adjustment in the funding that we get every year.

Our rate of population growth for young children is slower than some of the other jurisdictions, so what we’ve seen is a decline in funding and not an increase in funding.

When you look at all of these circumstances, I think the government is making decisions that protect the investment and are not causing pain points for parents and for operators. There might be a dislike from some people for some of those decisions, and there might be some level of confusion about those decisions. We are addressing the confusion aspect of it as much as we can. We’ve scheduled open forum virtual sessions with centre operators—two sessions with centre operators and two sessions with the home operators, and have had around 200-plus attendees for the centre operators and had 300-plus attendees for the home operators, and we’re answering those questions, putting out correspondence, updating the website to clarify information, doing one-on-one discussions with operators where they’ve reached out—we’re open to all of that.

What’s your advice for an operator who wants some questions answered, and what steps should they take?
We have an email address, we have phone numbers that we provide. They can reach out to us in writing. Each of them have consultants, so they can talk to their consultants. The consultants, I would reiterate again, they can answer questions about implementation. But they cannot answer your questions about your views on the decision.