Start a home daycare in Quebec: recognition by a bureau coordonnateur, the 6- and 9-child limits, 45 hours of training, and how subsidized spaces work.
Applies in: Quebec
Quebec runs home child care on a model no other province uses. There is no provincial licence for a home daycare and no agency contract of the Ontario type. Instead, one self-employed person is recognized by a local office — the bureau coordonnateur — and that office then supervises her, supports her, and decides whether her spaces carry the subsidy Quebec parents plan their budgets around. Get the structure right in your head first, because every form, visit, and payment in this guide flows from it. Nationally, the scale is large: an estimated 14,435 licensed and 14,022 unlicensed child care homes were caring for children aged 0 to 5 in Canada in April 2022, according to Statistics Canada.
Official Quebec sources are written in French first, and the English versions keep the French terms in brackets. The four you will meet constantly:
The law is the Educational Childcare Act (Loi sur les services de garde éducatifs à l'enfance), administered by the Ministère de la Famille. The detail lives in the Educational Childcare Regulation.
Section 6 of the Act is short and blunt: no one may provide childcare to a child in return for a parental contribution unless they hold a childcare centre or day care centre permit, or are a home provider recognized by an accredited coordinating office.
The change that matters for anyone planning in 2026: the old unrecognized category, which once let a home provider care for up to six children under a list of conditions without recognition, is gone as of September 1, 2026. What remains outside recognition is tiny — an own-account worker caring for up to two children, or only for children who ordinarily live together, plus occasional-care exceptions for camps and similar settings. If your plan involves three or more paying children in your home, recognition is not one option among several. It is the only legal shape the business can take.
You do not apply to the Ministère de la Famille for recognition. You apply to the bureau coordonnateur accredited for the territory where your home sits. Its statutory jobs, from section 42 of the Act, tell you what the relationship will look like for as long as you operate:
Call the office before you spend money on training. It can tell you whether it is recognizing new providers in your area, what its current intake looks like, and which training courses providers near you have used.
Recognition is personal. Section 52 describes the provider as a natural person, an own-account self-employed worker, contracting with parents to provide childcare in a private residence. Three consequences follow:
The business registration side is light: as a sole proprietor operating under your own first and last name, registration with the Registraire des entreprises is voluntary; operate under any other name and you must file a declaration of registration ($41 for a sole proprietorship) and get your NEQ. Our guide to registering a business in Quebec covers the filing and the French name rules.
The regulation's training rule (section 57) is specific enough to plan a calendar around:
Your assistant, if you plan to take 7 to 9 children, needs 12 hours of training on child development (section 58 of the regulation). The regulation states the 12 hours as a condition the provider must ensure, with no completion window stated for the assistant — do not confuse it with the six-month window, which the regulation gives to an occasional replacement, not the assistant (section 82.1).
On top of the 45 hours, hold a valid early-childhood first aid certificate: a course of at least 8 hours including management of severe allergic reactions, renewed every three years. Budget for this to recur for as long as you operate.
Before recognition, the coordinating office must interview you, every person over 14 who lives in the residence, and your assistant if you have one. It must also visit the residence, and a report on the interviews and the visit goes into your file.
Alongside that, the office checks for impediments. The attestation of no impediment (attestation d'absence d'empêchement) is the document that establishes that you — and the adults around the children — have no impediment to being in this role. The office can refuse recognition where the applicant, an adult resident, an assistant, or a regular replacement has one.
You also need civil liability insurance coverage for the service, and recognition carries a standing duty: proof of insurance goes to the coordinating office once a year. Treat the home visit as a licensing inspection in everything but name — the office is assessing the actual rooms, yard, and household the children will live in.
Recognition lets you sign contracts with parents and start. What it does not do is set your income. That depends on the second decision: whether the coordinating office allocates subsidized spaces to your service.
Ask your office, in writing if you can, how subsidized spaces are allocated in your territory and where new providers sit in that queue. Two recognized homes on the same street can have very different economics for a year or two based on this one allocation.
Recognition is maintained, not owned. The ongoing duties in the regulation:
| Reduced contribution in a subsidized space (2026) | $9.65 per day, indexed every January 1 |
|---|---|
| Children, working alone | Up to 6, with no more than 2 under 18 months |
| Children, with an adult assistant | Up to 9, with no more than 4 under 18 months |
| Training before recognition | 45 hours (at least 30 hours on child development and the educational program) |
| Assistant training | 12 hours on child development |
| Annual refresher training | 6 hours a year, including at least 3 hours on child development and the educational program |
| First aid certificate | At least 8 hours, including severe allergy management; renewed every 3 years |
Reduced contribution rate from quebec.ca (educational childcare rates, 2026). Capacity, training, and recognition rules from the Educational Childcare Act and the Educational Childcare Regulation.
You need recognition, which is Quebec's version of licensing for home care, and since September 1, 2026 there is effectively no paid unrecognized route left for a real daycare. Section 6 of the Educational Childcare Act says no one may provide childcare in return for a parental contribution unless they hold a childcare centre or day care centre permit, or are a home educational childcare provider recognized by an accredited coordinating office. The exceptions that remain are narrow: an own-account worker caring for up to two children, or only for children who ordinarily live together. Anything bigger must be recognized by the bureau coordonnateur for your territory.
Bureau coordonnateur de la garde éducative en milieu familial translates as home educational childcare coordinating office. It is an accredited, non-profit office assigned to a territory, and it does for home providers what a licensing office does elsewhere: it grants, renews, suspends, or revokes recognition, checks that recognized providers follow the Act and the regulation, distributes subsidized childcare spaces among them, decides whether parents qualify for the reduced contribution, administers the subsidies, supports providers with technical and pedagogical help on request, and handles complaints about them. You do not choose your office — your address puts you in one office's territory.
A responsable d'un service de garde éducatif en milieu familial (RSGE) is the person in charge of an educational childcare service in a family setting — in plain terms, the recognized home childcare provider. Garderie en milieu familial is the service itself: daycare in a home setting. Two words to keep separate: a garderie on its own usually means a centre-based daycare operating under a permit, while a centre de la petite enfance (CPE) is a non-profit childcare centre, also permit-based. Home care is the only one of the three that runs on recognition instead of a permit, and the only one run by a single self-employed person in a private residence.
Six if you work alone, nine if another adult assists you. The infant caps are the binding part: working alone, no more than 2 of the children may be under 18 months; with an assistant, the total can rise to 9 but no more than 4 may be under 18 months. Sections 52 and 53 of the Educational Childcare Act set these numbers, and the count includes your own young children in the circumstances described in the next answer — so a provider with two toddlers of her own has far fewer paid spaces than the headline number suggests.
Yes, in most real-life situations. Section 53.1 of the Act says the provider must count, when they are present while care is provided, her own children under nine years of age, the assistant's children under nine, and any other children under nine who ordinarily live in the home. There is a school-hours carve-out: during the school calendar, a child who attends preschool education or elementary school and is only present before school, at lunch, and after school is not counted. On a day outside the school calendar that same child counts again, unless the child is away at an all-day activity and present only at those same edge times.
A 45-hour training program completed in the three years before you apply for recognition, unless you already hold the qualification the regulation recognizes in section 22. The 45 hours must cover four topics: the role of a home educational childcare provider, child development, safety health and diet, and the educational program provided for in the Act — and at least 30 of the 45 hours must be on child development and the educational program. An assistant needs 12 hours of training on child development. After recognition you owe 6 hours of refresher training every year, including at least 3 hours on child development and the educational program, and first aid training does not count toward those 6 hours. Separately, you must hold a first aid certificate from a course of at least 8 hours adapted to early childhood, including a component on managing severe allergic reactions, renewed every three years.
People first, then the house. Under the Educational Childcare Regulation, the office must interview you, every person over 14 years old who lives in the residence, and your adult assistant if you have one, and it must visit the residence where the care will be provided. A report on the interviews and the visit is drawn up. The office can refuse recognition if you, an adult resident, your assistant, or a regular replacement has an impediment — the attestation of no impediment is the background-check document in this system. You must also show liability insurance coverage, and after recognition you send proof of that insurance to the office once a year.
Almost everything except the children. A centre de la petite enfance (CPE) is a non-profit childcare centre: it holds a permit for a facility, employs staff, and is governed by a board. A garderie is a centre-based daycare under a permit as well, and garderies are usually for-profit; some hold subsidized spaces and some do not. A home service is one self-employed person — the RSGE — providing care in her own private residence under recognition from a coordinating office. There are no employees in the CPE sense, no facility permit, and no board. A CPE can also wear a second hat: some childcare centres are accredited as coordinating offices themselves, which is why your coordinating office may share a name and a building with a CPE.
Not automatically — recognition and subsidy are two separate decisions. The coordinating office distributes subsidized spaces among the recognized providers in its territory, following the Minister's instructions and local childcare needs. If your spaces are subsidized, parents pay the reduced contribution (contribution réduite): $9.65 per day for 2026, indexed every January 1, for an eligible parent who lives in Quebec. If your spaces are not subsidized, you charge your own fee and parents claim Quebec's refundable tax credit for childcare expenses instead, which is why non-subsidized care in Quebec still nets out far cheaper for families than the sticker price. Ask your coordinating office, before you open, how subsidized spaces are allocated in your territory — it is the single biggest variable in your income.
No. Recognition is reserved to a natural person who is an own-account self-employed worker contracting with parents in a private residence (section 52 of the Act). A corporation cannot be recognized as a home provider, and neither can a partnership. You register as a self-employed person instead: if you operate under a name that is not simply your first and last name, you file a declaration of registration with the Registraire des entreprises ($41 for a sole proprietorship) and receive a 10-digit NEQ, your Quebec enterprise number. Our Quebec business registration guide walks through that filing and the French name rules that apply to it.
Rules are current as of November 2026, including the September 1, 2026 end of unrecognized paid home childcare beyond the narrow exceptions. Quebec publishes first in French — confirm the details of your file with your bureau coordonnateur, and read the French text of the Act and regulation where an English summary and the law could differ.