Canadian Childcare Movement Policies Remain Patchy, National Survey of 1,340 Facilities Finds

A sweeping national survey of Canadian childcare facilities has revealed a deeply inconsistent patchwork of written policies governing how young children move, sit, stare at screens, and sleep, with the strongest predictor of whether a facility adopts formal rules being the province or territory it calls home. The study, published in the Journal of Activity, Sedentary and Sleep Behaviors, surveyed directors and owners of 1,340 childcare facilities across Canada and found that while written policies on physical activity and outdoor play are increasingly common, formal guidance on sedentary behaviour, screen time, sleep, and educator training lags far behind—and in some cases is nearly absent. The findings arrive at a pivotal moment, as Canada rolls out its ambitious Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program, and they raise pointed questions about whether the country’s youngest citizens are receiving equitable opportunities for healthy development regardless of where they live or which type of childcare their families can secure.

The research team, led by Brianne A. Bruijns of Western University’s School of Occupational Therapy, contacted 10,768 childcare facilities and recruited 1,340 directors and owners, yielding a response rate of 12.4 percent. The vast majority of respondents, 84 percent, represented centre-based facilities such as daycare centres, preschools, nursery schools, Montessori schools, and Indigenous early learning programs, while 13.4 percent came from family- or home-based childcare settings. Participants completed a 129-item online survey between September and November 2025 that included a comprehensive movement behaviour policy audit covering 28 topics across physical activity, sedentary behaviour and screen time, and sleep domains. The instrument was modelled on earlier national work and the validated PLAYCE Policy Environment Audit, with additional items developed to capture sedentary and sleep content that existing tools had overlooked.

The headline numbers tell a story of uneven progress. Nearly all directors and owners, 96.6 percent, reported having at least one written movement behaviour policy, and 87.7 percent reported at least one written physical activity policy. Half of facilities, 50.0 percent, had a written policy specifying the amount of time provided for overall physical activity, while 68.7 percent had a written policy on daily outdoor physical activity. But the picture deteriorates sharply when the lens shifts to other behaviours. Only 17.0 percent of facilities reported written policies limiting prolonged seated time, and just 46.6 percent reported policies ensuring age-appropriate nap durations. Policies providing education to families about children’s physical activity were reported by a mere 11.7 percent of facilities, and educator professional development policies on physical activity reached only 19.7 percent. For sedentary behaviour and screen time, family education policies dropped to 6.3 percent and educator training to 10.2 percent.

Perhaps the most striking statistical finding concerns the shadow cast by regional legislation. The researchers classified each of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories according to whether their childcare legislation explicitly mentioned physical activity, sedentary behaviour, or sleep, building on an earlier review led by Leigh Vanderloo. Only one jurisdiction, British Columbia, references the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines in its regulations; four mention physical activity explicitly, three reference sedentary behaviour, and seven provide guidance on sleep. When the team ran binary logistic regression models controlling for facility characteristics, facilities in jurisdictions without behaviour-specific legislation had significantly lower odds of reporting written policies. Facilities in provinces or territories without explicit physical activity legislation had 57 percent lower odds of having a written overall physical activity policy than those where it was legislated, an odds ratio of 0.43. The same pattern held for limiting prolonged seated time, with an odds ratio of 0.503, and for age-appropriate nap durations, with an odds ratio of 0.64. All three associations were statistically significant.

This legislative echo effect is not merely theoretical. British Columbia introduced mandatory Active Play Standards in licensed childcare settings in 2017, and subsequent research, including a natural policy experiment published in 2022, documented higher prevalence of written movement behaviour policies following implementation. In the present survey, 72.8 percent of British Columbia directors reported written overall physical activity policies, among the highest rates in the country, and the province also led on limiting seated time at 28.0 percent. Nova Scotia, another jurisdiction with explicit physical activity references, posted the highest rate of written no-screen-time policies at 81.1 percent, while Ontario, which legislates sleep, showed the strongest nap duration policy prevalence at 85.5 percent. The authors suggest that embedding movement behaviour guidance within legislation may reduce inequities by establishing minimum licensing expectations that providers must meet, an approach consistent with the World Health Organization’s 2021 Standards for Healthy Eating, Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour and Sleep in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings.

Facility characteristics mattered as well, and in ways that expose structural fault lines in the childcare system. Urban facilities had 57 percent higher odds of having a written overall physical activity policy than rural ones, and 63 percent higher odds of a no-screen-time policy. Enrolment size emerged as a subtle but significant predictor of sleep policies, with each additional enrolled child raising the odds by 0.2 percent, hinting that larger organizations may have more robust administrative systems for formalizing rules. Most dramatically, childcare type split the findings: family- and home-based facilities had 78 percent lower odds of reporting a no-screen-time policy than centre-based facilities, an odds ratio of 0.22, yet paradoxically had nearly twice the odds of reporting a policy limiting prolonged seated time, at 1.94. This counterintuitive combination reflects the lived realities of home-based educators described in the survey’s open-ended responses.

Those qualitative accounts, analyzed through inductive thematic analysis, add human texture to the statistics. Home-based providers described working ten-hour days with rarely a break, using tablets to occupy preschoolers quietly while infants were settled for naps. Others explained that infants cannot spend as long outdoors in winter months, that toddlers receive no screen time while older children get minimal television, and that nap arrangements differ by age, with babies in cribs requiring longer sleep periods than five-year-olds. More than 62 percent of directors said sleep-related policies differed by child age, and 35.5 percent said the same for physical activity policies, illustrating how developmentally responsive practice often operates informally, outside the bounds of written rules. These insights matter because home-based care is absorbing growing demand as families face long waitlists for centre-based spots, and international comparisons show several OECD countries rely heavily on home-based arrangements.

The screen time findings carry particular weight given the accumulated evidence on early childhood development. A systematic review previously found that home-based childcare programs provided more screen time for preschoolers, 1.8 to 2.4 hours daily, than centre-based programs, at 0.1 to 1.3 hours. Research following 2,441 Alberta mothers and children found that higher screen time at ages two and three predicted lower developmental screening scores at age three, and studies suggest children may accumulate upwards of 3.6 additional hours of screen time at home after childcare, making a screen-free childcare day all the more consequential. In the present survey, 61.1 percent of facilities reported written no-screen-time policies, a substantial figure, but only 31.4 percent regulated educators’ own screen use in children’s presence, and among the 33.7 percent of facilities permitting screen time, fewer than half had written limits on viewing duration. Not all sedentary time is harmful, the authors caution; meaningful seated activities such as reading, storytelling, and fine motor play support cognitive and social-emotional development, and compositional research on 405 Canadian preschoolers linked more sedentary time relative to physical activity with better psychosocial functioning.

The study’s implications extend beyond Canada’s borders. An international scoping review of 43 childcare movement behaviour policies found that most are enacted at subnational levels and broadly worded, producing wide variability in interpretation, and only about half specified a duration for sedentary bouts, ranging from 15 to 60 minutes. The authors argue that countries should develop national movement behaviour standards for childcare, designed to be legislated, monitored, and adapted by subnational governments, consistent with the WHO Standards. But given the slow pace of national coordination, they also call for interim supports: leveraging existing professional learning platforms, investing urgently in paid professional development time, and addressing chronic staffing shortages that consume educators’ available hours. Canadian early childhood educators have repeatedly reported lacking movement behaviour training and wanting more, and comparative research found Canadian facilities least compliant among Australia, Canada, and the United States in providing staff professional learning and family education on physical activity. The survey has limitations, notably its reliance on self-reported rather than audited policies, which the authors acknowledge may inflate prevalence through social desirability bias, and incomplete directory access in some provinces likely affected representativeness. Still, with nearly one million Canadian children under five attending licensed or regulated childcare, the message is unambiguous: written policy, backed by legislation and supported by a properly resourced workforce, remains one of the most powerful levers for ensuring that every child’s earliest years are filled with movement, rest, and developmentally rich engagement rather than left to the luck of geography and circumstance.

Subject of Research: Movement behaviour policies in Canadian childcare facilities and their association with regional legislation

Article Title: Movement behaviour policies in Canadian childcare facilities: Prevalence, content, and associations with facility characteristics and regional legislation

Article References: Bruijns, B. A., Coyle-Asbil, H. J., Phillips, S. M., Vanderloo, L. M., Wong, S., & Tucker, P. (2026). Movement behaviour policies in Canadian childcare facilities: Prevalence, content, and associations with facility characteristics and regional legislation. Journal of Activity, Sedentary and Sleep Behaviors, 5(1), Article 13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44167-026-00103-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44167-026-00103-4

Keywords: childcare, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, screen time, sleep, movement behaviours, early childhood education, policy, legislation, Canada, outdoor play, professional development