(Quebec) Faced with an overheated construction market and faced with early childhood centers (CPEs) that are no longer managing to develop new places with the allocated budgets, Quebec is increasing the scales of the Infrastructure Funding Program by 76% of the Ministry of the Family.
Posted at 7:22 p.m.
The news will be confirmed on Friday by Minister Mathieu Lacombe. For the Legault government, this is a major improvement to its “major project for families”, which provides for the addition of more than 37,000 new subsidized places in daycare centers by 2025 to ensure a place for each child. . On December 31, 51,761 parents were still on the waiting list to obtain a place for their child in the network.
According to Quebec, the labor shortage partly explains why construction costs are rising particularly these days, which upsets budget forecasts. Other factors are also putting pressure on the costs and timelines for building new CPE infrastructures, such as the scarcity of materials, land and the effervescence of the markets.
For example, by increasing the scales of the Infrastructure Funding Program by 76%, the Ministère de la Famille estimates that the budget for an 80-place project in the Chaudière-Appalaches region will increase from $1.7 million to 2.9 million. “We asked the CPE to develop new places quickly, in a context made difficult due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the overheating of the construction sector, today we are giving them the means to match. of this challenge,” said the Minister of Families, Mathieu Lacombe.
At the beginning of May, the Quebec Association of CPEs (AQCPE) urged Quebec to review its financing program in the face of the overheated construction market. According to the director general of the organization, Geneviève Bélisle, “there is no longer a project that fits into all the boxes of the government”, reported Radio-Canada at the time.
Time is running out for the government to develop the new places promised and keep its promise to complete the network of child care centers by 2025. Since the presentation of the “big project”, Quebec has missed its target in terms of creating places in CPE and in subsidized private daycares for the year 2021-2022. The Minister has since promised that he would catch up on the backlog and create 10,000 new places as planned this year alone.