Langley City Highest Ratio of Childcare Space in South of Fraser. More Needed.

Metro Vancouver recently published its latest data on childcare space in our region, aptly titled "2023 Survey of Licensed Child Care Spaces and Policies in Metro Vancouver. "

I wanted to share some information from this Metro Vancouver report about the number of children under 12 and the number of childcare spaces for them.

The yellow bar is Langley City.

Member	Estimated Number of Children	Estimated Number of Childcare Spaces	Spaces per 100 Children
UBC	1951	996	51.1
Tsawwassen First Nation	334	164	49.1
Pitt Meadows	2858	1260	44.1
Richmond	24507	8521	34.8
New Westminster	9206	3164	34.4
Anmore	266	91	34.2
Port Coquitlam	8207	2794	34
North Vancouver District	12267	4156	33.9
West Vancouver	5114	1732	33.9
Langley City	4301	1280	29.8
Port Moody	4519	1277	28.3
North Vancouver City	6832	1930	28.2
Coquitlam	19118	5299	27.7
White Rock	1707	437	25.6
Langley Township	21108	5303	25.1
Lions Bay	165	40	24.2
Vancouver	63300	15203	24
Maple Ridge	13954	3316	23.8
Delta	13573	3041	22.4
Burnaby	29056	6433	22.1
Surrey	81034	14795	18.3
UEL	394	32	8.1
Belcarra	25	0	0

While Langley City has the highest ratio of childcare spaces for children under 12 in the South of Fraser, we are not a leader in Metro Vancouver, and there is room for improvement. Langley City is expanding childcare spaces in our publicly owned facilities. We are also updating our zoning to incentivize childcare facilities in apartment buildings and allow childcare facilities in more locations in our community. You can read more about this in a previous post that I wrote.

At the same time, the province will continue to need to invest in training for people and daycare space funding to ensure we get to a place where every parent who needs childcare has easy access to a space.