PQ plans to vote against new daycare legislation, Bill 1

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QUEBEC CITY — A major reconfiguration of how daycare spaces are allocated will soon become a reality with the expected adoption of Bill 1 in the National Assembly — despite the fact that lawmakers are hardly unanimous about it.

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The Parti Québécois opposition, adamantly opposed to the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s approach, will vote against the law.

According to PQ spokesperson Véronique Hivon, MNA for Joliette, the bill is “a wasted opportunity” and Mathieu Lacombe, Minister for the Family, has not taken advantage of the change in the law to provide Quebec with a truly comprehensive network of subsidized educational child -care services based on the model set up in 1997 by the PQ government of Lucien Bouchard and Pauline Marois but never fully implemented.

Hivon said the daycare network is in a major crisis, with more than 50,000 names on its waiting list for subsidized spots and a shortage of thousands of daycare educators.

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In October, the government of Quebec Premier François Legault committed to create 37,000 new daycare spots by 2025 and the minister intended to facilitate and accelerate the allocation of these places.

Hivon said she fears a chaotic development of the network over the coming years. As she told La Presse Canadienne in an interview: “The problem is this: What kind of places will be offered to parents?”

She said she has the impression that the government wants to proceed “in a great hurry,” with it “going off in all directions” instead of creating only Center de la petite enfance, early childhood centers known for their quality.

She said she reproaches Lacombe for refusing to exclude from the calculation of the number of available daycare spots the 70,000 places in private, non-subsidized daycare centres. Quebec is putting into place a system with “multiple speeds” in terms of accessibility, Hivon said, with wide variation in the daily rate.

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She said she also reproaches the minister for “putting the brakes” on a project to convert non-subsidized spots to subsidized spots costing $8.70 per day.

“We are at a critical moment for the network,” she said, one in which it is important not to develop “no matter what, no matter how.” The three pillars of the 1997 program were accessibility, universality and quality of service, Hivon said.

She said Lacombe has said publicly that he wants a network that is entirely subsidized, while continuing to “fully recognize private non-subsidized child care,” or for-profit centers. Paradoxically, she said, spots in some of these centers remain vacant because parents don’t have the means to pay to fill them.

The confidence parents have in the government when it comes to the early childhood file is at rock bottom, according to Hivon, who maintains that Legault was supporting only pre-Ks and forgetting about daycare centres. She called it “an obsession.”

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Until very recently, “the government had no plan” to develop daycare services, Hivon said. She said Quebec allowed the crisis to take hold and worsen over three years — a crisis that culminated with a strike last fall of daycare workers.

She said that, to address the serious shortage of these educators, the minister lowered qualification criteria, dropping from two in three to one in three the number of qualified workers who must be present in a facility.

However one feels about Bill 1, it will modify several rules of the game.

To accelerate the process, Quebec will favor an ongoing call for tenders and not targeted calls as in the past — calls that led to delays that could span several years.

The new law will give more powers to the minister, in particular to ensure better development of services at the regional level. In the event of a lack of interest in developing daycares in a given region, it will be able to create spaces in areas where regions are not being met.

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The mechanism of assessing need will be reviewed to allow the minister to better determine supply.

Bill 1 will create a one-stop shop that will replace the La Place 0-5 window, currently the only gateway to all of Quebec’s recognized child-care services and a source of frustration for parents. Once the new one-stop shop is functional, parents will have to go through it to get a place. It will be easier for parents to know their status on the waiting list—something that is now practically impossible.

The rules for registering for this new window for access to a spot in a daycare will be formulated in such a way as to give priority to children whose families have low incomes.

The maximum number of children to be accepted by each facility will increase to 100 from 80, with temporary spaces to be authorized if needed.

The government estimates the total cost of the project to be $3 billion — $1.8 billion of it for the planned creation of new spaces.