Alberta AG reports cite child care overpayments, millions in ineligible pandemic payments
Alberta's auditor general has found that parents may have overpaid for child care due to a lack of provincial oversight of its subsidy program, and, that a pandemic assistance program for small businesses may have distributed more than $155 million to ineligible applicants.
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Auditor General Doug Wylie separately released on Thursday a performance audit of the Child Care Subsidy and Grants Program, and an assessment of how the province had implemented its Small and Medium Enterprise Relaunch Grant Program.
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The child care audit reported on how $1.1 billion in public funding was managed within the program during 2023-2024.
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The audit found that the department didn't consistently ensure claims from operators were supported or that funding from subsidies and grants were used to reduce parents fees and pay educators.
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'There is a risk of overpayment by the department and a risk that parents are overpaying for child care and educators are being under compensated,' Wylie stated in a news release.
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'Albertans should have confidence that these funds are achieving the program's purpose — to reduce child care costs for families and support educators.'
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Fourteen of 25 operators sampled in a single month had at least one discrepancy, and three had more significant issues including one instance where an overstated claim led to an overpayment by the department of more than $26,000 for that month.
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Wylie also noted the program had been administered by three different ministries in as many years, leading to 'significant delays' in completing his report.
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Postmedia has sought comment from the office of Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides.
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In a statement, Opposition children and family services critic Diana Batten accused the government of short-changing parents and also noted the province's April cancellation of its income-tested subsidy that some parents say has sent child care costs skyrocketing.
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'Smith and her uncaring government have delivered a double hit to parents struggling to afford child care, making it even more expensive. It's a failure to live up to their responsibility, improper management of public funds, and it's just cruel.'
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Why Canada's civil service needs more 'plumbers' and fewer 'poets'
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'No country in the western world has concentrated as many (government) employees in the national capital region as has Canada,' says Donald Savoie. Photo by Alan Cochrane/Postmedia/File Donald J. Savoie has spent decades studying the inner workings of Canada's federal bureaucracy. He's watched Ottawa grow more centralized and more crowded with what he calls 'poets,' policy thinkers and advisers, while the 'plumbers,' the front-line workers delivering services to Canadians, have not been prioritized. In an interview with National Post about the concept, as discussed in his recent book Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service, Savoie explains why that imbalance matters. Savoie is Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at Université de Moncton. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Calgary Herald ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Calgary Herald ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Your weekday lunchtime roundup of curated links, news highlights, analysis and features. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again Thank you for the question, that's a good one. A lot of times I've been interviewed about the book, and not many have caught on to the poets and the plumbers, and I think it's key. Poets are people mostly in Ottawa, that are part of the government who work on policy issues, who work on liaison, on coordination or dealing with media or dealing with ministers so they define policy. Plumbers are the ones delivering services to Canadians. Plumbers are the ones you applied to for a passport, plumbers are the ones you applied to for old age pension or whatever program that you want to access; they're the ones that deliver programs and services to Canadians. So the differences between poets to plumbers is fairly pronounced. It's grown by leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. In 2014 it was 340,000, in 2025 we're up to 445,000, so you can see the difference there. It's over 100,000 more. The growth has clearly favoured the poets. And the reason I say that is just the sheer numbers of public servants in Ottawa — the number has grown. And it has not grown anywhere near the same amount in local and regional offices. What's the right number? What's the right percentage? Frankly, it's difficult to answer that. I would remind you that 40 years ago about 25 per cent of federal public servants were in Ottawa, and 75 per cent out in the regions, and that sounded like a proper number. So my view is that we should strive towards that. I can tell you that in France, England, and the United States, the number of public servants in the national capital, whether in London, or Washington, or Paris, is nowhere near the percentage we have in Canada. In the U.K. for example, I'm taking a stab here, but like 75 per cent of public servants are outside of London, and the government over the past several years has made a deliberate attempt to move more and more public servants outside of London. This advertisement has not loaded yet. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. No country in the western world has concentrated as many employees in the national capital region as has Canada. There's no shortage of people in Ottawa trying to think big thoughts. I think if there's a problem it's at the service delivery. It's people trying to call Revenue Canada to get answers about income tax, and it's having issues with supplying passports. So, big thoughts, there's thousands of them in Ottawa paid to have big thoughts. I don't think there's a lack of big thoughts, there's a lack of people delivering services to Canadians. You don't need an army of people to come up with big thoughts. I think the private sector has no choice (but) to get it right, has no choice to strike a proper balance, because if a large private-sector firm doesn't strike a proper balance, the market will tell it to strike the proper balance. The competition will tell it to strike the proper balance. There is a natural equilibrium in the private sector that happens just because there's competition, there's market forces, there's all kinds of forces that dictate how important it is to run an efficient operation; those forces are not present in the public sector. What I can say is that I wish them well. I think a better solution would be, we have nearly 300 federal organizations, we have 100 federal government programs, I think a better solution would be for the federal government to take a strong look at all its organizations and all its programs and see which ones have long passed their best-by date. See which programs no longer resonate like they did when they were first established. I think there's a lot of pruning of organizations and programs that could take place. The 15 per cent cuts sends a message that every program, every organization holds the same priority, just squeeze 15 per cent. I would've thought a better solution was to see that we have programs that don't fit our agenda. We have organizations that don't serve the purpose that they were initially set up for so why don't we look at that once we've cleaned that up then maybe we can look at the 15 per cent. There are some, not many, I'll give you an example. If you hire an auditor at Revenue Canada, every auditor you hire can generate X amount of revenue. So you hire an auditor and you can expect a return. But for most cases, at least for poets, how do you assess the performance of a poet? That's in the eye of the beholder. The poet can have 101 reasons why things don't work. Fault the politicians, it's the media, not enough resources, there's all kinds of reasons you can grab. You can find markers that work on the delivery side, you don't find markers that work on the poet side. This is the latest in a National Post series on How Canada Wins. Read earlier instalments here. 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