Intended to give Canadians a general overview of the country's day care services, the study was undertaken by the Social Service Programs Branch, Health and Welfare, Canada. Begun in 1971 and updated yearly since 1973, the national survey provides an inventory of day care spaces which can be used to measure future growth in day care and to evaluate the impact of any new initiative of the federal government in the day care field. In addition to examining the annual rate of growth of day care spaces, each Status of Day Care report compares the number of full-time day care spaces to the number of children of mothers in the labor force to determine if the rate of growth is keeping pace with the entry of mothers with preschool children into the labor force. Areas of study include the following: age groups served by day care programs in both day care centers and family day care homes; public, non-profit, and commercial sponsorship of day care centers; comparison of number of spaces available with sponsorship of center; interprovincial comparison of day care spaces; number of children in day care within various age groups (including 0-17 months, 18-36 months, 3-6 years, and 6-13 years). Tables provide a comparison across various years of the study and reveal increases in services. Changes in age criteria used in the study and estimations of ages by some provinces create some problems in the reliability of findings from the study. (DST)