Child Care Website Rules in Canada: What You Can Say

By Cody Wise, founder of Wise Media, Calgary. Last updated 10 November 2026. This article explains how published licensing, funding and consumer rules apply to marketing copy. It is not legal advice. Child care licensing and funding rules are provincial and they change. Confirm every point against your own licence, your funding agreement and your regulator before you publish.

Summary

• Three rule sets apply to a child care website at the same time: your provincial licensing regulation, your funding agreement if you are enrolled in a fee reduction program, and general consumer and privacy law. Most centres only think about the first one.
• The two claims that get centres into trouble fastest are fee claims and photos. A fee you have not had approved in writing and a photo you do not have signed consent for are both live exposure, and both sit on the page that converts best.
• Ontario’s child care centre licensing manual states that licensees may not charge a fee or deposit to place a child’s name on a waiting list, and that the waiting list policy must be in the parent handbook.
• In British Columbia, providers receiving CCOF Base Funding may no longer charge waitlist fees, a change the province dates to 1 April 2024.
• Under Ontario’s CWELCC rules, base fees for eligible children are capped, mandatory charges count toward the base fee, and the administrative penalty for charging above the cap starts at $750 CAD per child.
• Write the website so a parent can verify every claim on it in under a minute. That is the same thing that makes it convert.

Table of contents

• What rules actually apply to a child care website in Canada?
• How should you describe your licence?
• What can you say about fees?
• Can you charge for a waitlist, or advertise one?
• Can you put photos of children on your website?
• What about claims like “best daycare in the city” or “Montessori”?
• The page by page build
• How to review an existing child care website in one sitting
• Common mistakes
• FAQ

What rules actually apply to a child care website in Canada?

Three layers, and they do not overlap neatly. Your provincial licensing regulation governs what you are, what you must disclose to parents, and what you may charge. Your funding agreement governs what you may say about fees if you have opted into a fee reduction program. Federal consumer law and privacy law govern every other claim and every photo. A centre can be perfectly licensed and still be running a non compliant website, because nothing in the licence review looks at marketing copy.

Layer one: the licensing regulation

This is the layer that defines your vocabulary. In Ontario, licensed centres operate under the Child Care and Early Years Act and its general regulation, and the Ministry of Education publishes a licensing manual that interprets it program by program. In Alberta, programs are licensed under the Early Learning and Child Care Act and its regulation, with separate standards for home based care. In British Columbia, community care facility licensing sits with regional health authorities under the Child Care Licensing Regulation.

What this layer gives you is a set of words that mean something specific. “Licensed”, “approved”, “family day home”, “preschool”, “out of school care” are not marketing adjectives in these statutes. They are categories with conditions attached. Using the wrong one on a website is the single most common error we see, and it is also the easiest to fix.

Layer two: the funding agreement

If you are enrolled in the Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care system in Ontario, or approved for the Child Care Fee Reduction Initiative in British Columbia, or receiving Alberta’s affordability funding, your fee page is governed by a contract, not just by good taste. These agreements say what you may charge, when you may change it, and what you must tell families in writing. They are the layer most website projects never see, because the person writing the copy and the person who signed the agreement are rarely in the same meeting.

Layer three: consumer and privacy law

The Competition Bureau applies a general impression test to advertising. It assesses not only the literal meaning of a representation but the general impression it conveys, and a representation is material if it could influence a parent’s decision to enrol. The Bureau’s guidance is explicit that performance claims must be based on adequate and proper testing, and that testimonials usually do not count as adequate proof. Separately, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s guidance for businesses states that for children under 13, consent must generally be obtained from a parent or guardian.

This is the layer that catches “best daycare in Calgary”, the testimonial wall, and the photo gallery. It applies to every business in Canada, which is exactly why child care operators forget it applies to them too. If you are scoping a build, this is the part worth getting right before a single page is designed, and it is where our website development work starts on any regulated vertical.

How should you describe your licence?

State the category exactly as your licence states it, name the regulator, and say where the licence can be verified. Do not use “licensed” as a mood. In Alberta, for example, government material distinguishes licensed programs, approved family day home educators who operate under contract with a licensed agency rather than being licensed directly, and unlicensed providers who are not monitored by government and are not eligible for funding supports. Those are three different things, and a website that blurs them is making a material representation about oversight.

The Alberta categories, as published

The licence has to be posted, and that is a content opportunity

Ontario’s licensing manual requires a regular licence to be printed by the licensee and posted in a conspicuous place accessible to parents, with all pages posted if the licence runs to more than one, and any conditions on the licence posted too. The licensed child care decal goes on a smooth glass surface at the main entrance most parents use.

Most centres treat that as a hallway chore. Treat it as a conversion asset instead. Parents comparing three centres are looking for a reason to trust one. A page that names your licence number, names the regulator, links to the province’s public lookup, and states the date of your most recent inspection does more for enrolment than any stock photo of building blocks. It is also the kind of specific, verifiable page that gets quoted back by AI answer engines when a parent asks how to check whether a daycare is licensed.

One caution on inspection results. Ontario’s administrative guidance does not impose a requirement to post inspection results on your own property, and it notes only that non compliance may be noted on the centre’s licence inspection summary. If you choose to publish your inspection history, publish it completely. Selectively publishing the clean years while omitting a year with findings is the sort of thing the general impression test exists for.

What can you say about fees?

Publish the fee you actually charge, broken into what is mandatory and what is optional, and do not advertise a reduced fee before the province has approved it in writing. In British Columbia, the province states that providers do not have to reduce fees until they receive written ministry approval, and that any reduction made before approval is at the provider’s own discretion and responsibility. Advertising the reduced number before that approval lands is a promise you cannot keep.

Ontario: the base fee is a calculation, not a line item

The Ministry’s licensing manual is specific about this. For enrolled licensees, base fees for eligible children are capped, and the manual states that base fees “must now be $22 per day or less”. Crucially, the base fee is not just the daily rate. Base fees include mandatory charges such as registration fees, deposits and administration fees, and licensees must consider all mandatory fees charged to parents when calculating their overall base fee. Optional items such as transportation and late pick up fees are non base fees.

This is where fee pages break. A centre lists a compliant daily rate, then adds a mandatory annual registration fee in a separate box further down the page, and the combination exceeds the cap. The manual addresses one time fees directly, stating that the combined cost should average $22 or less per day over a year. If a charge is mandatory, it belongs in your base fee arithmetic and it belongs on the same part of the page as the rate.

The manual also sets out an administrative penalty for charging above the cap: $750 multiplied by the number of children for whom an above cap fee was charged, rising for repeat or multi day contraventions, to a stated maximum of $100,000. Those are published figures in Ontario’s own guidance. They are the reason a fee page is worth a lawyer’s hour, not a copywriter’s guess.

British Columbia: notify in writing, and report increases

Under the Child Care Fee Reduction Initiative funding guidelines reviewed for this article, the 2024-25 term, an approved provider must tell families in writing that the facility participates, state the reduction amount for their child, and state any approved fee increase. Reductions apply up to a monthly cap per care category, and the guidelines give $900 per month for group infant and toddler care as an example of such a cap. Full time fees cannot drop below $10 per day, up to $200 per month, unless the ministry approves an exception.

Two provisions matter for your website specifically. First, any new mandatory fee, or a fee for hours or services previously included in the parent fee, counts as a fee increase and must be reported. Adding a mandatory “supplies fee” to your enrolment page is a funding event, not a copy edit. Second, new and new to CCFRI facilities cannot charge recurring administrative fees on top of the parent fee, and all recurring mandatory charges must be included in the parent fee. Newer funding terms are published, so confirm the current year’s guidelines before you publish any number.

The “$10 a day” claim

This is the single most tempting headline in Canadian child care marketing and the one most likely to be wrong on your site. The figure is a policy target, the programs that deliver it differ by province, eligibility differs by child, and in British Columbia the guidelines treat $10 per day as a floor below which full time fees cannot be set without an exception rather than as a universal price. If your enrolled fee for a specific care category genuinely lands there, say so with the category, the age band and the program named. If it does not, do not use the number as a banner and then qualify it in a footnote. The general impression test looks at the banner.

A fee page that holds up

1. State whether you are enrolled in the relevant provincial program, by name. Ontario’s manual requires the parent handbook to state whether the licensee is enrolled in CWELCC, so your site should not contradict the handbook.
2. List every mandatory charge in one table with the rate, including registration, deposits and administration.
3. List optional charges separately and label them optional.
4. Give the effective date of the fee schedule, in CAD, and state when it is next reviewed.
5. Link to the provincial subsidy or fee reduction page rather than explaining eligibility yourself. Eligibility rules change faster than your website does.
6. Say what a parent gets back if they leave. Ontario’s guidance addresses refunds and credits, including a refund of remaining credit within 60 days after a child ceases to receive care.

Can you charge for a waitlist, or advertise one?

You can run and advertise a waitlist. In Ontario and for funded providers in British Columbia you cannot charge for a place on it. Ontario’s licensing manual states that licensees may not charge fees or deposits to place a child’s name on a waiting list, and that the licensee must verbally confirm this. The British Columbia funding guidelines state that providers receiving CCOF Base Funding may no longer charge waitlist fees, dated to 1 April 2024.

Ontario’s guidance draws a line worth knowing. Waiting list fees are different from enrolment fees, which can only be charged once a secure spot is offered, and because the regulation does not address enrolment fees, licensees can choose whether to charge them. So “join the waitlist, $50 deposit” is out. “A registration fee applies once a space is offered and accepted” is a different thing, and if it is mandatory it goes into your base fee arithmetic as above.

What the waitlist page should contain

If you keep a waiting list in Ontario, the manual requires a written policy that explains the order in which children are offered admission and describes how the list is kept private for listed children while still informing parents of their child’s position. The policy must be in the parent handbook, which must be available to any parent considering enrolment, and the ministry publishes a standard policy a licensee can adopt and customise.

Put that policy on the website as its own page. Three reasons. It satisfies the requirement to make the handbook available to prospective parents without making them ask. It answers the question every parent on a waitlist asks you by phone, which is where your staff time goes. And it is a question with real search volume and almost no good answers written by operators, which means it earns links and citations rather than just sitting there.

What not to do: publish a live, numbered list of children’s names and positions. The requirement is to inform a parent of their child’s position while keeping the list private. A logged in portal or an emailed position update satisfies both. A public spreadsheet satisfies neither, and it hands you a privacy incident involving minors.

Can you put photos of children on your website?

Only with the parent’s or guardian’s consent, obtained for that use, and recorded. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s guidance for businesses states that for children under 13, consent must be obtained from their parents or guardians other than in exceptional cases, that organisations should be able to show a parent or guardian was actually involved, and that the process should be clear and consistent. The same guidance advises limiting collection as much as possible and says organisations should avoid knowingly tracking children.

Child care is the one sector where the marketing asset everyone wants is also the most sensitive personal information in the building. Treat the photo gallery as a data practice, not a design element.

What a usable photo consent actually asks

• Which uses. Website, social media, printed brochure, paid advertising, and third party listing sites are five different consents. A single “we may use photos” tick box does not distinguish them, and paid advertising is the one parents object to most.
• Whether the child is named. Keep this a separate question from the photo itself. A face with no name is a very different disclosure from a face with a first name and a room assignment.
• Whether the photo may appear with schedule or location detail. A photo captioned with the room, the day and the hours tells a stranger where a specific child is on a specific afternoon. Avoid the combination entirely.
• How to withdraw it, and what happens then. Give a named contact and a stated timeline. Say honestly that you can remove an image from your own site and your own social accounts, and that copies already downloaded or cached elsewhere are outside your control.
• Review date. Consent collected at enrolment for a two year old is being relied on for a five year old unless you re ask. Re ask annually at re registration.

Three technical steps most centres miss

1. Strip image metadata on upload. Photos taken on a phone can carry GPS coordinates and a timestamp. Those travel with the file onto your server and out to anyone who downloads it.
2. Keep a consent register that maps to filenames. When a parent withdraws consent you need to find every image of that child in minutes, not scroll a gallery. A spreadsheet with child, consent scope, date, and the image filenames is enough.
3. Audit your analytics and advertising tags. If you run remarketing pixels across a site whose visitors include children, review it against the OPC’s position on avoiding knowingly tracking children. A parent browsing is one thing. A child using a parent’s tablet on your “our classrooms” page is another.

If you cannot staff the consent process properly, the alternative is straightforward and it works: photograph the rooms, the materials, the outdoor space and the educators, with no children in frame, plus close ups of children’s work. Parents are evaluating the environment and the people. An empty, beautifully shot classroom at the right time of day converts better than a crowded snapshot, and it carries no consent obligation at all.

What about claims like “best daycare in the city” or “Montessori”?

Superlatives and curriculum labels are the two claim types most likely to be challenged, for different reasons. A superlative is a performance claim you probably cannot substantiate. A curriculum label is a representation about method, and sometimes about affiliation, that a parent can check.

Superlatives and the general impression test

The Competition Bureau’s guidance on false or misleading representations explains that an advertisement is judged by the general impression it conveys as well as its literal meaning, and that a representation is material if it could influence a consumer to buy or use the product or service. The civil track prohibits performance representations not based on adequate and proper tests, and the guidance advises not making a performance claim unless you can prove it, even if you believe it is accurate, noting that testimonials usually do not count as adequate proof. Published maximum administrative monetary penalties for a corporation are up to $10,000,000 CAD for a first occurrence and up to $15,000,000 CAD for subsequent occurrences.

Nobody is suggesting the Bureau is about to pursue a six room daycare for an enthusiastic headline. The point is simpler. Those claims are unprovable, they are identical to what every competitor writes, and they convert worse than the specifics they displace. “Best daycare in the city” is a worse sentence than “Licensed for 48 children, two licensed ECEs in every preschool room, outdoor time twice a day in all but extreme weather.”

Curriculum and credential labels

“Montessori” is not a protected licence category in Canadian child care regulation, but it carries a meaning parents will test against what they see on a tour, and various organisations hold trademarks and run accreditation programs around the name. If you are not affiliated or accredited, “Montessori inspired” plus a description of the actual materials and practice is both more honest and more useful. The same logic applies to Reggio Emilia and Waldorf.

Credential claims are stricter. Early childhood educator designations are regulated provincially, and describing staff with a designation they do not hold is a representation about qualifications. Write what is verifiable: how many staff hold which designation, in which rooms, and the ratio you are licensed to operate at. The same discipline is what carried the regulated verticals we have covered before, including private career college website rules, what a licensed trade can claim, and travel agency licensing and site copy. Every one of them comes down to the same move: replace the adjective with the fact.

The page by page build

A compliant child care site is small. Eight pages do the job, and each one has a defensible version and a risky version.

On that last row: the first contact form does not need the child’s birth date, allergies or immunisation status. It needs the parent’s name, how to reach them, the age band, and when they want to start. Everything else is collected at enrolment, with a purpose, in a system built for it. Over collecting at the top of the funnel is both a privacy exposure and a conversion leak, which is the same observation we made about quote requests that never close in a completely different industry.

How to review an existing child care website in one sitting

Budget 90 minutes, open your licence and your funding agreement, and work in this order. Fees first, because fees carry the published penalties.

1. Reconcile the fee page against the agreement. List every charge on the site. Mark each mandatory or optional. Add the mandatory ones into your base fee arithmetic the way your province defines it. If the total exceeds the cap, fix the page today and get advice on the period it has been live.
2. Check every advertised reduction for written approval. If you cannot produce the approval letter for a number on the site, remove the number, not the sentence around it.
3. Search the site for the word “licensed”. Every instance should be accurate to your category. Fix “approved”, “government approved” and “certified” the same way.
4. Audit the waitlist flow end to end. Fill in your own form. If any step asks for money to join the list, that step comes out. Confirm the written policy is published.
5. Match every photo of a child to a signed consent. No consent on file, no photo on the site. Strip metadata on everything you keep and build the filename register while you are in there.
6. Delete the unprovable claims. Superlatives, outcome promises, unnamed awards. Replace each with a verifiable fact from the licence or the daily schedule.
7. Re read the privacy page as a parent. If it does not mention children or photos, it was not written for a child care centre.

Common mistakes

• Treating the funding agreement as a finance document. It governs your fee page. The person writing copy needs to read it.
• Splitting mandatory fees across the page. A compliant daily rate plus a mandatory registration fee in a different section can still breach the cap.
• Advertising a reduction before approval. British Columbia’s own material says reductions made before written approval are at the provider’s risk.
• Charging to join a waitlist. Prohibited in Ontario, and prohibited for CCOF Base Funding recipients in British Columbia since April 2024.
• One blanket photo consent. Website, social, print and paid advertising are different uses and parents treat them differently.
• Naming children in captions. A name plus a face plus a room is more disclosure than any marketing benefit justifies.
• A privacy policy that never mentions children. The most common single failure, and the easiest to spot.
• Superlatives instead of specifics. Unprovable, identical to competitors, and a worse sentence.
• Letting the handbook and the website disagree. Ontario requires certain disclosures in the parent handbook. If the site contradicts it, one of them is wrong in writing.
• Never re checking. Funding terms are reissued annually. A fee page that was right in 2025 is not automatically right now.

FAQ

Can an unlicensed home daycare have a website in Canada?

Yes. What it cannot do is describe itself as licensed, approved or government monitored. Alberta’s own material is clear that unlicensed providers are not monitored by government and are not eligible for funding supports, and that they may care for up to six children not counting their own. Say “private home child care”, state the number of children, and do not imply oversight you do not have.

Do I have to publish my fees on my website?

Licensing rules focus on disclosure to parents through the parent handbook and the service agreement rather than on your website specifically. Ontario’s manual requires the parent handbook to include base and non base fee information and whether the licensee is enrolled in CWELCC. Publishing on the site is a choice, and it is the right one: a parent who cannot find a fee calls to ask, and a parent who finds a vague fee assumes the worst.

Can I charge a registration fee at all?

In Ontario, the licensing manual distinguishes waiting list fees, which are prohibited, from enrolment fees, which can only be charged once a secure spot is offered, and notes the regulation does not address enrolment fees so licensees can choose whether to charge them. If you do charge one and it is mandatory, it counts toward your base fee calculation under the CWELCC rules. Check your own province and your own agreement.

A parent asked us to remove their child’s photo. What do we actually have to do?

Remove it from your website, your social accounts and any advertising you control, and confirm in writing what you removed and when. Be honest about the limit: you cannot recall copies already downloaded or cached by third parties. This is why the consent register mapped to filenames matters. Without it, a removal request becomes a day of scrolling.

Can we use stock photos of children instead?

You can, if the licence permits the use, but it is a weak choice. Parents recognise stock imagery and it undermines the trust the rest of the page is building. Photographing your actual rooms, materials, outdoor space and educators, with no children in frame, is both consent free and more persuasive. If you present stock imagery in a way that suggests it shows your centre or your staff, that is a misleading representation.

Does any of this apply to our Facebook page and Google Business Profile too?

Yes. The general impression test applies to the representation, not to the platform, and photo consent applies to whichever surface the photo appears on. In practice the profile and the social page are where compliance drifts first, because they get updated by whoever is on shift. Keep the licence wording and the fee language in one source document that every surface copies from.

What does a website like this cost to build in Canada?

It depends far less on page count than on whether the fee, waitlist and consent work has been done. Eight pages is a small build. The hours go into reconciling the fee table against the funding agreement, writing a photo consent that a parent can actually understand, and building the enquiry flow so it collects the minimum. Scope those three items explicitly in any quote you accept, and treat a quote that does not mention them as incomplete.

The short version

Every rule in this article pushes in the same direction. Name your licence category exactly. Put every mandatory fee in one place with a date on it. Never charge for a waitlist, and publish the waitlist policy instead. Get photo consent per use and keep a register you can search. Replace adjectives with facts a parent can verify in a minute.

That is a compliance checklist and a conversion checklist at the same time, which is not a coincidence. Parents choosing child care are doing a trust audit. The site that hands them verifiable specifics wins, and it happens to be the site that holds up when a regulator or a funding administrator reads it.

Build it once, properly

If you operate a licensed centre or an agency and your site predates your current funding agreement, it is almost certainly out of date in at least one place that matters. We build and rebuild sites for regulated Canadian operators, and the fee, waitlist and consent work is part of the scope rather than an afterthought. Tell us about your centre through our intake form and we will come back with what needs fixing first and what it takes to fix it.

Sources

• Ontario Ministry of Education, Child Care Centre Licensing Manual, Part 11: Administrative Matters
• Ontario Ministry of Education, Child Care Centre Licensing Manual, Part 2: Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care
• Government of Alberta, Understand Alberta’s childcare system, for programs and providers
• Government of British Columbia, Child Care Fee Reduction Initiative, provider opt in status
• Government of British Columbia, CCFRI Funding Guidelines 2024-25 (PDF)
• Competition Bureau Canada, False or Misleading Representations and Deceptive Marketing Practices
• Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, guidance for businesses on children’s personal information