MapleCub Data Lab · One-option communities · 2026

Quebec's one-option communities: where child care means one door

In Quebec, 297 of 547 communities with licensed child care — 54.3% — hold exactly one licensed programme. Every one of them is named and linked below.

  • Computed 2026-08-10
  • 297 named and linked
  • National figure 49.4%
  • CC BY 4.0

297

one-option communities in Quebec

54.3%

of the province’s 547 communities with licensed care

49.4%

national figure, for comparison (1,074 of 2,175)

Data CSVAll Quebec dataMethodologyThe list

No province has more one-option communities than Quebec: 297 of 547, 54.3%, the largest count in Canada. Almost every one is a single CPE or garderie serving a municipality of a few hundred people, and the pattern reaches its purest form in Nunavik, where Akulivik, Aupaluk, Ivujivik, Kangirsuk, Quaqtaq, Tasiujaq and Umiujaq each have one licensed centre and no road to the next one.

Quebec is the only large province whose list needed no exclusions at all. Its registry writes municipality names consistently, accents and all, which is not true everywhere and is worth saying out loud: the quality of a province’s open data decides how much of this analysis is possible.

Quebec’s communities with licensed care, one square each
Quebec: 547 squares, one per community with licensed child care. 297 are red — those hold exactly one licensed programme. 250 are grey — those hold two or more.

297 with exactly one licensed programme|250 with two or more. One square = one community.

Source: MapleCub Canadian Childcare Dataset — Aug 2026 · computed 2026-08-10 · N = 297 · CSV · Quebec; community = normalized city name (lower-cased, trimmed, non-empty)

Every Quebec community with one licensed programme

Each name links to that community’s page on MapleCub, where the single licensed programme is listed with whatever the province publishes about it — provider type, age groups, hours, subsidy status. The names are printed exactly as the provincial registry writes them.

Source: MapleCub Canadian Childcare Dataset — Aug 2026 · computed 2026-08-10 · N = 297 · CSV · Quebec communities published; 0 records under review (below)

No records were excluded from Quebec. Every one of the 297 rows grouped as a distinct community that the registry writes consistently, so the published list and the computed count are the same number.

What one option actually means

In a community on this list there is no comparing. No second waitlist to hedge with, no choice between a centre and a home, no switching after a bad month. One licence serves the whole place, and if it is full, or closes, or does not take infants, the answer is a drive. Nationally 1,074 of 2,175 communities with any licensed care at all — 49.4% — are in that position.

Two limits are worth stating plainly. A community here means a normalized registry city name, not a municipal boundary: a small place whose only programme is licensed under a neighbouring town’s name will not appear, and a settlement inside a larger municipality may appear under its own name. And a programme count is not a space count — five of the eight provinces publish no licensed capacity in open data, so “one programme” describes how many doors a parent can knock on, not how many children fit behind them.

This page is a snapshot of 2026-08-10. Licences open and close weekly, and a community that gains a second programme drops off the next edition without ceremony.

Keep reading

Quebec’s full statistical picture — provider mix, published capacity, what families pay — sits on the province data page. The one-option count is one of five findings in the national report.

Quebec child-care dataThe State of Child Care 2026Child care in Quebec

Other provinces: British Columbia · Ontario · Alberta · Saskatchewan · Manitoba · New Brunswick · Nova Scotia

Cite as: MapleCub, “Quebec’s one-option communities,” 2026-08-10, https://www.maplecub.ca/research/one-option-communities/quebec. Released under CC BY 4.0. Journalists: we will pull a custom cut on request — hello@maplecub.ca.