ABC promised 5,000 new daycare spaces in four years. Childcare facilities get built with capital money — here's the yearly capital budget for childcare.
On track
Capital spending on childcare has gone up — $32M planned for 2025 versus $27M in 2021.
1The story
What we're trackingAn ABC Majority will deliver 5,000 daycare spaces in the first four years of an ABC-led City Hall.— ABC Vancouver's 2022 campaign platform
In plain terms: This is big-ticket money for building and fitting out childcare facilities — not the operating subsidy for childcare fee relief. More money here means more physical daycare rooms getting built.
Green bars are the years after Mayor Sim took office (late 2022).
Sim took office Nov 2022 — compare green years to blue ones.
3The fine print
How we calculated this
We pulled every line item from the City of Vancouver's multi-year capital budget tagged 'Childcare' and summed the planned expenditures by budget year. This is the city's own forward-looking plan, not actual spend. The dataset covers 2023–2026; big projects land in single years, so the series is lumpy. Source: City of Vancouver open data.
City of Vancouver open data — Capital Budget (Childcare) · as of 2026-10-21 · Vancouver Promise Tracker — an independent look at whether local leaders deliver on their word.