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Childcare 'deserts' identified in Surrey and Burnaby in national report

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Most of Surrey and Burnaby and some neighbourhoods in Vancouver are examples of what a new report is calling “childcare deserts” that exist across the country.
Author: 
Griffin, Kevin
Format: 
Article
Publication Date: 
26 Jun 2018
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Nationally, as many as 776,000 children who are not of school age live in neighbourhoods with a shortage of childcare 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 childcare desert as postal codes where there are three or more children per licensed daycare.


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.


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