Access 

• In this analysis we use the term "access" in its narrow sense as a synonym for the more technical term of "coverage", referring to the existence of licensed child care spaces (not to e.g. inclusion considerations, which impact "access" in the broader sense of the term). 
• The reported access is to spaces in licensed, publicly-funded facilities receiving either Child Care Operating Funding (CCOF) or $10aDay operating funding, which account for the vast majority of all licensed spaces and are the bedrock of a universal child care system because they are associated with a range of operator, educator, and family supports. In this analysis, "publicly-funded spaces" therefore refers only to spaces in facilities receiving CCOF or $10aDay operating funding, not to the small minority of licensed spaces that are only subsidized with the Affordable Child Care Benefit. 
• The analysis seeks to answer the basic question: how many children have access to a licensed, publicly-funded child care space? However, the number of children who might need care at any given time (specifically 3-Kindergarten care) fluctuates significantly with the rhythm of the school year. To account for this fluctuation, we assume that the planning goal for a universal system is to ensure that maximum potential point-in-time demand is met. To this end, we select the time of year when the number of cohorts of children who might need 0-Kindergarten care is mathematically at its highest (the end of August, immediately before a new cohort enters Kindergarten). In this way, the analytical question more technically becomes: for what percentage of children at this point of maximum potential demand does BC — and each individual school district — currently have a licensed, publicly funded child care space?
• Further to the above, when calculating access, we use the following population cohorts: Ages 0,1 and 2 for Infant/Toddler; Ages 3, 4 and 2/3rd of the Age 5 cohort for 3-K; 1/3rd of the Age 5 cohort, 2/3rd of the Age 13 cohort and everything in between for School-Age (we include 2/3rd of Age 13 because this is the number of 13 year-olds who will not yet have entered Grade 8 at the end of August). 

Population

• Population data is from BC Stats, and are projections for Jul 1, 2026 (accessed Sep. 10, 2026). These projections are used as a proxy for the population on Aug 31, 2026 (the point-in-time used in the analysis).

Spaces 

• Space data is from Child Care Facilities and Spaces Over Time (from the BC Data Catalogue), as of June 2026 (accessed Sep. 10, 2026).  
• Data on funded but not yet operational spaces are from BC Child Care Data and Reports (the "Accelerated Space Creation" tab), as of July 2026, except for the Kootenay-Boundary region which is as of March 2026 (accessed Sep. 10, 2026). 
• Part-time “Preschool” programs are included in the calculations. However, as noted in the "Full Details" version of the tables above, the higher the percentage of 3-K spaces provided by part-time Preschool, the more the statistics might (1) overestimate current child care access, because some families in part-time care might actually be in need of full-time care; and therefore (2) underestimate the gap to universal access. 
• Data on average number of children of different ages in home-based programs is from Statistics Canada Table 42-10-0051-05. This is used as a best-available proxy for the breakdown of ages in group multi-age programs. 
• Space data is not available for SD 92 (Nisga'a), and this analysis is not applicable to SD 93 (Conseil scolaire francophone) because it is a province-wide district; these two districts are therefore excluded from the analysis. 

Universal access

• Universal access for children under 3 is assumed to align with the 2030 Barcelona Targets (45% average coverage for children under 3). It is expected that demand for child care will vary significantly from year to year within this range (much lower for newborns and young infants, higher for 1 and 2 year-olds). However, it is the overall 3-year average that is used in the calculations.  
• Universal access for children ages 3 to Kindergarten is also assumed to align with the 2030 Barcelona Target of 96% coverage for children between the age of 3 and the starting age for compulsory primary education. 
• To provide a single aggregated benchmark for universal access across the full 0-to-Kindergarten age range, the component 2030 Barcelona Targets (45% and 96%) are combined using an age-cohort-weighted average, with each single-year age cohort given equal weight rather than weighting according to the actual population size of each cohort (for simplicity and to avoid year-to-year distortions, especially in less populated districts). The 0–2 age group represents three annual cohorts. The 3-to-Kindergarten group represents approximately 2.67 annual cohorts at the August 31 reference point used in this analysis: children aged three and four, plus approximately two-thirds of the age-five cohort who have not yet entered Kindergarten. The resulting aggregate universal-access benchmark is therefore: [(45% × 3) + (96% × 2.67)] ÷ 5.67 ≈ 69%.  
• Universal access for school-age children is assumed to align with the results of BC's 2024 school-age demand survey. These rates vary from region to region (each school district is assigned its region's reported overall demand level), which is why the overall universal coverage percentage, as well as the school-age universal coverage percentage, varies from region to region in the tables above. We include the reported demand through the end of Grade 7; we do not include the survey's reported demand amongst 11% of families for children older than this. This latter group of children deserves special consideration in future analyses.  
• The universal coverage line in the graph is set at 63% across all age groups (0-Grade 7 inclusive). This is a BC-wide figure, and is calculated using a "simple average" of the component universal access assumptions (i.e. it is not adjusted for actual population of the different age cohorts).
• Arguably the best way to determine BC-specific targets for universal access/coverage would be through the kind of calendar-based "Child Care Management System" described in the 2025 report "Child Care When Families Need It". This would allow for real-time, geographically customized estimates of total demand for child care services of different types. Importantly, this would also allow for a transition away from coarse analysis of "spaces" towards a fine-grained analysis of the number of care hours needed (and their nature), and would also allow for fine-grained analysis of current supply.

Gap to universal access

• The "years to build universal access at current pace" calculations are based on the average annual rate of growth in publicly-funded child care spaces (CCOF and $10aDay) in each district from April 2018 to June 2026 (an ~8-year average). This growth will have resulted from either (a) existing spaces opting into public funding, or (b) the creation of brand new child care spaces. Recent years have seen more rapid BC-wide growth than this longer-term average; for example the BC-wide growth rate from Mar 2024 to Mar 2025 was 30% higher than the next most rapid, prior year, and the Mar 2023 to Mar 2025 two-year rolling average growth rate was 42% higher than the next highest, prior 2-year average. With the 2026 pause of capital funding for new spaces, it is unlikely that these more recent growth rates will be sustained, especially after the current backlog of funded-but-not-yet-operational spaces is cleared; as such we use the full 8-year average in the calculations. 
• The rate of growth, derived as described above, is then applied to BC's 2026 population projections (i.e. we avoid using more complex approaches that would incorporate projected population changes in each district). Because BC's population of children is expected to decline towards ~2030, and then stabilize and grow thereafter, our approach can be interpreted as overestimating years to build universal access through 2030, and underestimating it thereafter. 

For a spreadsheet describing how the above data and assumptions were used to construct the coverage calculations, click here. 

Analysis by Eric Swanson, Third Space Planning.