How common are findings?

Inspectors dated 2,146 inspections in the quarter. 426 of them (19.9%) found at least one non-compliance, and together they cited 696 findings. Most inspections that found something found only one (62.2%).

At the program level, 358 programs were cited at least once. That is 12.3% of all programs listed, or 27.0% of the 1,326 programs inspected this quarter. Many programs aren't inspected in any given quarter, so the second figure is the fairer one.

How the province responded

Of the quarter's findings, 642 (92.2%) were orders to remedy, which set out what to fix and a deadline. Only 48 were the lighter notices of non-compliance, and 27 of those were about records, reporting or posting. Suspensions and conditions on a license are rare. 12 programs received one at some point in the roughly 18 months of records we hold, and none came from this quarter's inspections.

What inspectors cited

The 87 regulation sections cited this quarter fall into six themes (our grouping, not the province's). No theme is rare. Supervision and staffing is the largest, but paperwork and program-plan findings are close behind.

Zoom in and the list is more concentrated than the themes suggest: 9 of the 87 sections account for half of all findings.

The leader, section 28(1)(d), requires that children are supervised at all times. It is a different rule from the minimum staff-to-child ratio, which drew only 18 findings. That rule is separate from the ratio: it requires children to be supervised at all times, whatever the staffing numbers say.

What triggered the inspection goes with what it found

Inspections that followed an incident found something about half the time. Routine inspections, the closest thing to a typical visit, found something in 22.6% of 945 inspections.

How much time programs get

Orders to remedy carry a deadline. The median is 14 days, and 79.6% of orders allowed 21 days or less. Notices are different: 87.5% had a remedy date within a day of the visit.

Time allowed varies by theme. Health, medication and safety findings get a median of 12 days, supervision 13, and program-plan and child-guidance findings 18. Zoning, health and safety requirements have a median of 28 days, the longest of any group here. One possible reason is that some fixes depend on someone outside the program, such as a city or health authority. The data can't confirm that.

Findings cluster, and they repeat

Of the 358 programs cited this quarter, 55.0% were cited once. The 74 programs cited three or more times were only 20.7% of cited programs but accounted for 46.7% of findings.

History matters too. Looking only at routine inspections of programs we had seen inspected before July, programs that had been cited earlier were cited again 29.8% of the time, against 16.9% for programs with no earlier citation.

Across everything in our archive, 202 of about 1,260 programs ever cited (16.0%) were cited for the same section at two or more separate inspections. Supervision stands out.

Calgary and the rest of Alberta

Calgary's rate was 21.3% against 19.3% for the rest of the province. With this many inspections the two ranges overlap heavily, and a statistical test says a gap this size would appear by chance about one time in three (p = 0.32). We treat them as the same.

The mix of findings differs a little. Calgary had proportionally more records and facilities findings and fewer program-plan findings, though across all six themes the difference isn't statistically reliable. Calgary inspections that found something cited slightly fewer issues on average (1.46 against 1.71). That is a tentative signal we'll test again next quarter.

One Calgary-specific pattern

All 15 of the quarter's findings under section 6.1 (zoning, health and safety requirements, including municipal bylaws) were in Calgary, 7.9% of Calgary's findings. Over the whole archive, 60 of 67 such findings are in Calgary, which has 29.2% of Alberta's programs. We don't know why. It may reflect how bylaw issues get cited in Calgary. If you operate there, it's worth confirming your zoning, health and safety paperwork is current.

Other communities

Among communities with at least 40 inspections, none differs reliably from the provincial rate. Grande Prairie is highest and Airdrie lowest, but the intervals are wide and both include the provincial average. We don't rank small cities on numbers like these.

Program types

Daycares were cited most often, out-of-school care less, and preschools least. Be careful with that last one: preschools had only 56 inspections for 340 programs, or 0.16 per program, against 0.85 for daycares. Fewer visits means fewer chances to be cited.

The trend: flat

Across 16 full months, the share of inspections finding something averaged 19.5% and never strayed far. July 2025 was the high (25.4%), October 2025 the low (16.5%). September 2026, the last month of this quarter, ran at 22.5%.

What to do with this

The data tells us what inspectors cited, not what went wrong inside each room. These are our reading of it, not findings.

1. Look for supervision gaps at the edges of the day. The most-cited rule drew 106 findings. Transitions, washrooms, outdoor time and coverage when someone calls off are the places we'd check first.
2. Match your practice to your approved program plan. Plan findings are the second most common and take the longest to fix of the major themes. Changes to the plan need the statutory director's approval first (section 6(2)), so adjust the plan before the practice.
3. Tighten records. Portable records and daily attendance (arrival and departure) together drew 38 and 24 findings. Records are also where most of the lightest actions fell.
4. Check the three medication rules. Given as labeled (26 findings), kept in the original labeled container (15) and stored locked (9).
5. Keep criminal record checks current. Checks are required every three years, and the rule drew 16 findings.
6. If you've been cited before, treat the fix as unfinished until it has held through your next routine inspection. Prior citation was the strongest repeat signal we found.

How we counted

Source and window. Records come from public program profiles on Alberta Childcare Search, which shows about 18 months of inspections. The earliest inspection on record is May 6, 2025. Each issue covers one calendar quarter, counted by inspection date (July 1 to September 30 for Q3). Records are kept as they are posted, so late postings can shift a quarter's counts slightly when we rebuild. Figures may differ a little between issues for this reason.

What counts as a finding. A finding is one requirement recorded as unmet at one inspection. The finding rate is inspections with at least one finding divided by all inspections dated in the quarter. Findings don't carry severity ratings, so counts aren't a measure of harm.

Enforcement. An order to remedy sets a correction and a deadline. A notice of non-compliance is a lighter action. "Days allowed" is the gap between the inspection date and the remedy date. It is the deadline an inspector set, not a confirmed fix date.

Themes. We group regulation sections into six themes ourselves, not by the province's categories. The grouping stays the same across issues so quarters can be compared, and the labels are ours. Three of the quarter's 696 findings fall outside all six themes and aren't shown in the theme charts.

Statistics. Rates carry 95% Wilson intervals. Group comparisons use chi-square tests, and community comparisons use binomial tests against the provincial rate. Communities with fewer than 40 inspections aren't ranked. We call a difference real only when the intervals clearly separate it, and with this many comparisons, treat any single borderline result with caution.

Repeat and prior-citation comparisons. These use routine inspections of programs we had also seen inspected before the quarter. Repeat rates use the full archive up to the end of the quarter. Citations from before May 2025 aren't visible to us, so these comparisons show association, not cause.

Trend. Monthly lines use full months only. The current month is left out until it closes.

Data checks. Before each issue, we check for inspection dates after the quarter ends and remedy dates earlier than their inspection, and review any hits before using the data. None affected Q3.

Programs. We report aggregates and never name individual programs.

Not yet covered. Openings and closures start with the next run. We don't report severity, and the public record doesn't show what happened to children.