Asylum seekers are trying everything to regain access to subsidized child care, which they lost exactly four years ago. In an unprecedented trial to be held on Thursday and Friday, lawyers in constitutional law and from the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse challenge before the Superior Court the interpretation, erroneous and discriminatory, according to them, made by the government of a regulation on daycare services.
For asylum seekers, everything changed in April 2018. Until then, the criteria of article 3 of the Regulation on the reduced contribution gave access to subsidized daycare centers to a person holding a “work permit and [qui] resides in Quebec mainly to work there”. It was a reinterpretation of this same article by Luc Fortin, the Liberal Minister of Families at the time, who excluded asylum seekers from this definition. From one day to the next, it was no longer considered that they were here “mainly” to work.
Vladymir, who prefers to conceal his surname for fear of reprisals, suffered the brunt of the repercussions of this volte-face. Arrived as an asylum seeker at the beginning of 2017, this Haitian of origin was able to send his daughter to daycare at $8.50 a day without a problem. But when her son, born here, was ready to attend subsidized childcare in the spring of 2018, it became impossible. “We were told he was ineligible. Our daughter, who was born abroad, had access to it, but not my son, who is Canadian. It was completely absurd,” he says.
Vladymir and his wife both needed to work, so they were forced to send their son to high-cost private daycare. “It was the most difficult moment of our life”, drops the father of the family. “I worked at a Tim Hortons for minimum wage, and we paid $40 a day for daycare. When I think about it, we were heroes to have been able to do that, ”he adds, seeming not to believe it yet.
heavy with consequences
Director of social initiatives for the Welcome Collective, Maryse Poisson says she had to announce the bad news to hundreds of asylum seekers in the past four years. “In concrete terms, these are parents, many of them single mothers, who are taken at home without being able to work and who will receive social assistance,” she says. “Some will end up putting their child in front of the TV at the neighbor’s for $20 a day. »
In addition to complicating access to employment and francization, this exclusion has deleterious effects for children, believes the social worker, who is part of the Daycare Access Committee, created in 2018 to champion the cause. . “We see a lot of children who are lagging behind in learning French and who have trouble integrating. I have seen children with autism disorders being isolated at home with their parents when they need services. »
Arrived from Haiti at the beginning of 2021, Flavie, who keeps her real first name silent so as not to harm her asylum application, is a beneficiary attendant trained here who cannot work, despite several job offers. This single mother has a daughter of school age, but above all a two-year-old baby, whom she cannot send to daycare for lack of money. “I’m stuck,” she said, discouraged. The jobs near her don’t go over $17-18 an hour. “How do you expect me to pay for $800 a month day care? That’s almost the cost of my rent! »
Flavie would like her son to go to daycare so that he can make friends, play in the snow, integrate into his living environment. “You can’t spend your whole life locked up in a house. I need to socialize, and the child needs to develop,” she says, her throat tight. “In Haiti, I lived well, I had a job and a car. But here, I find myself alone with two children, without support. However, I am not asking for futile things. »
A long battle
The Daycare Access Committee does not understand the about-face made by the government in the spring of 2018. “We think that the reinterpretation is linked to the massive arrival of asylum seekers at that time”, maintains Maryse Poisson.
Since then, the Committee has never stopped fighting. He launched a petition that garnered 13,000 signatures, published open letters with the support of hundreds of health professionals, joined forces with organizations such as Amnesty International and multiplied his pleas to the three levels of government.
He even met the Caquiste Minister of the Family, Mathieu Lacombe, in February 2019. was done afterwards,” laments Érika Massoud, coordinator of the file at the round table of organizations serving refugees and immigrants.
A month ago, during the detailed study of Bill no.oh 1 on educational childcare services, Québec solidaire presented an amendment requiring that subsidized childcare services be accessible to all children, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. All the opposition parties — including the Liberals — supported it, but the members of the Coalition avenir Québec rejected it outright.
The Committee is now focusing on litigation before the courts. Mand Sibel Ataogul, one of the lawyers in charge of the case, will try to argue that such an interpretation of Article 3 of the Rules is impossible and that the law to which the latter refers does not allow the distinction between persons who have various statuses. “And finally, we say that it is contrary to the Quebec and Canadian charters for discriminatory reasons based on citizenship and sex, because we know that it is most of the time women who have custody of the children. »
Asked to explain his position, the Minister of the Family, Mathieu Lacombe, indicated that he would not make any comment since “the legal process is in progress”.