October 2025
The cold, hard truth is that there is no such thing as $10 a day daycare. It simply doesn’t exist. Daycare costs what it costs the provider, plus a profit margin, something that is necessary for the continued operation of any business, including a daycare.
The only way that providers can charge parents only $10 a day is if the government pays the remainder of the costs. In other words, the taxpayers of Canada have to pay for your children to attend daycare. Of course, we have many services that taxpayers collectively pay for, like schools, hospitals, police and emergency services, roads and national defence. There are many things for which it makes sense to be paid for, or at least subsidized, by governments, but the more we rely on governments for pay for the services we regularly require, the higher our level of taxation will be, the higher our level of government debt will be, and the less control control and choice we will have as consumers of these services.
As it turns out, the idea of a $10 a day daycare is a great campaign promise, but it can become very expensive to provide in reality.
