MapleCub Data Lab · Province data · 2026
How many licensed daycares are in New Brunswick?
New Brunswick entered this dataset in August 2026 and went straight to the top of the supply table.
- Computed 2026-08-10
- N = 947 New Brunswick programs
- 20,516 across eight registries
- CC BY 4.0
947
licensed programs
27.7
per 1,000 children aged 0–4
166
communities with licensed care
44%
of them have exactly one option
The short answer, with everything behind it
As of 2026-08-10, MapleCub counts 947 licensed child-care programs in New Brunswick — 812 centres and 135 licensed family homes. That is 27.7 licensed programs for every 1,000 of the province’s 34,230 children aged 0–4, the highest rate of the eight provinces that publish a licensing registry. They sit in 166 communities; 73 of those (44%) have exactly one licensed program and no second choice, while 43.7% of the province’s licensed programs are in its five largest cities.
New Brunswick does not publish licensed capacity as open data, so how many children those programs can actually take cannot be worked out from public files. New Brunswick’s 2026 price position: $16–$19/day. Standardized provincial Parent Fee Grid at designated facilities since May 1, 2026: full-day $19/day infant (0–24 months) / $16/day preschool; the grid's part-day rate is $12 infant / $7 preschool; no applications, eligibility criteria or income testing. 641 of NB's 947 licensed facilities (68%) are designated; non-designated families with gross household income of $80,000 or less may use the Childcare Assistance Program. The registry does say which programs take part, which is unusual: 641 of 947 (67.7%) are designated under the provincial Parent Fee Grid.3,1,2
On inspections, New Brunswick publishes findings one facility at a time on its own site and not as a bulk dataset, which answers a question about one centre and no question about the province. New Brunswick has not been matched to Google presence data for this edition, so no website or rating coverage is published for it here — a zero would describe our matching queue rather than the province.3
Source: MapleCub Canadian Childcare Dataset — Aug 2026 · computed 2026-08-10 · N = 947 · CSV · New Brunswick; visible listings only
The numbers
| Measure | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Licensed programs | 947 | 4.6% of the 20,516 licensed programs across the eight provinces that publish registries. |
| Centres | 812 | 85.7% of the province’s licensed programs. |
| Licensed family homes | 135 | 14.3% of the province’s licensed programs. Whether homes appear at all is a licensing rule, not a measure of how much home care exists. |
| Children aged 0–4 | 34,230 | Statistics Canada, Table 17-10-0005-01 (July 1, 2025 estimates)4 |
| Programs per 1,000 children | 27.7 | Licensed points of access a parent can look up, not licensed spaces. Registries differ in what they record, so read it alongside the provider mix above. |
| Communities with licensed care | 166 | A community is a normalized city name — lower-cased and trimmed — so registry case variants do not count twice. |
| Communities with exactly one option | 73 (44%) | One licence serves the whole community: no comparing, no waitlist hedging, no second choice. |
| Share in the five largest cities | 43.7% | How concentrated the province’s licensed supply is in its biggest municipal markets. |
| Published licensed capacity | Not published as open data | The province publishes a program list without saying how many children each program may serve, so no space count can be derived from public files. |
| Inspection records | Per facility only | Published on each facility’s own page, never as a bulk dataset, so no province-wide question can be answered from them.3 |
| Programs with a website | Not matched | New Brunswick has not been through website and Google matching for this edition; reporting a zero would describe the matching queue, not the province. |
| Matched by MapleCub to a Google place | Not matched | Excluded from every presence figure in this edition, here and in the national report. |
| Rated among the matched | Not matched | Excluded from every presence figure in this edition, here and in the national report. |
Source: MapleCub Canadian Childcare Dataset — Aug 2026 · computed 2026-08-10 · N = 947 · CSV · child population: Statistics Canada, Table 17-10-0005-01 (July 1, 2025 estimates)
How New Brunswick compares on supply
New Brunswick sets the national high at 27.7; Ontario sits at the far end with 6.1. Licensed programs per 1,000 children aged 0–4 is the cleanest cross-province supply signal this dataset supports, and it has to be read with the registry differences in mind: some provinces license each family home individually, others license home care through agencies that never appear as separate records.
Source: MapleCub Canadian Childcare Dataset — Aug 2026 · computed 2026-08-10 · N = 20,516 · CSV · child population: Statistics Canada, Table 17-10-0005-01 (July 1, 2025 estimates)4
What makes New Brunswick’s registry different
27.7 licensed programs per 1,000 children aged 0–4, ahead of British Columbia’s 26.3 and well clear of everyone else. It is small-province arithmetic done honestly: 947 facilities for 34,230 young children, 135 of them family homes licensed and counted one by one. The rate measures licensed points of access a parent can look up, not spaces — New Brunswick publishes no capacity — so read it as a wide net rather than a surplus.
It is also one of three provinces whose registry says something real about price. 641 of 947 facilities (67.7%) are designated under the provincial Parent Fee Grid introduced in May 2026, published per facility rather than inferred. The rest set their own rates, and families there fall back on the income-tested Childcare Assistance Program. A third of the province sitting outside the grid is exactly the kind of thing a headline rate hides.
Two absences belong on the record. Its Childcare Finder carries past and recent inspection reports behind each facility’s own page (the province publishes no retention window), which serves a parent checking one centre and answers nothing about the province; and New Brunswick has not yet been through Google matching, so this page reports no website or rating coverage instead of reporting a zero that would be about our queue rather than about New Brunswick.
Source: MapleCub Canadian Childcare Dataset — Aug 2026 · computed 2026-08-10 · N = 947 · CSV · registry structure and published fields as documented by each province
Where to go from here
New Brunswick beyond the arithmetic: the programs themselves, and the rules behind them.
- Licensed daycares in New Brunswick — browse the 947 programs themselves, with age, hours and subsidy filters.
- New Brunswick’s one-option communities — the 73 places with a single licensed program, named.
- $10-a-day: claimed vs. measured — what the registries can and cannot confirm about the price each province advertises.
- The State of Licensed Child Care in Canada, 2026 — the national report these figures were computed for.
Cite as: MapleCub, “New Brunswick child care by the numbers, 2026,” 2026-08-10, https://www.maplecub.ca/research/new-brunswick-child-care-data. Released under CC BY 4.0. More open data: MapleCub Data Lab.
Sources
Every external claim in this report — every dollar figure, every inspection count, every rule — is cited to the government page it came from. Each entry records the publisher, the document, and the date we last fetched it. Sources were audited 2026-08-11.
- 1. Government of New Brunswick — Education and Early Childhood Development · Information for families — Parent fee grid (reduced parent fees) · fetched 2026-08-11 · https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/corporate/promo/investing-in-early-learning-and-child-care/information-for-families.html
- 2. Government of New Brunswick — Education and Early Childhood Development · Information for families — Childcare financial assistance · fetched 2026-08-11 · https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/corporate/promo/investing-in-early-learning-and-child-care/information-for-families.html
- 3. Government of New Brunswick — Education and Early Childhood Development · Early Learning and Childcare Facility Inspection Reports · fetched 2026-08-11 · https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/education/elcc/content/inspection_reports.html
- 4. Statistics Canada · Table 17-10-0005-01 Population estimates on July 1, by age and gender · fetched 2026-08-11 · https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000501