Maybe it had something to do with the almost summery weather or maybe it had something to do with a discontent that can no longer be ignored. On Sunday, in Quebec City, about 8,000 people marched on Grande Allée before gathering in front of the National Assembly, on the occasion of the Bread and Forests March, co-organized by the Mothers at the Front and My Place movements. at work.
As we have already said, this demonstration, born of an alliance between mothers at the front for the climate and those fighting for childcare places, is a sign of the times. This movement affirms it clearly and unequivocally: the end of the world and the end of the month are two sides of the same fight – to use a well-known slogan.
So yesterday, in the nation’s capital, families, strollers and all supportive and angry citizens marched silently on a course of just over a kilometer in defense of the very possibility of a future fair and viable. The march was punctuated by a few stops, notably in front of the Department of Executive Council, where the crowd sang, to the tune of Brother Jacques, “François Legault, are you sleeping? “. Under the blazing sun of May, the procession without cry or slogan had something both fatal and serene – perhaps evoking the ambivalence that grips us about the future.
At the final assembly point of the demonstration, in front of the National Assembly, Françoise David spoke, at the invitation of the organizers, to underline, of course, the clear parallel between the march of Bread and forests and that of Bread and roses. In her speech, she lamented that, nearly thirty years after this historic march against women’s poverty, we still have to fight for economic autonomy. However, if the threats of retreat are numerous today, the vigor of this mobilization is gratifying: “The government cannot remain indefinitely closed to the word of so many people”, she concluded.
Innu activist Mélissa Mollen Dupuis, involved with the Mothers at the front since their beginnings in 2020, recalled for her part that historically, those who have been brought to power have never hesitated to “tamp down” what stood in the way land use policies; be it animals, plants or human bodies. From residential schools for Aboriginals to the enclosures of the last caribou, she pointed out, we can trace a clear thread, which reveals the same ambition of destruction. What leads us to believe that we will not also sacrifice the future of children? The table is already set to accomplish this sinister program.
Then, Myriam Lapointe-Gagnon, instigator of Ma place au travail, gave a speech full of emotion, in which she returned to “a year of setbacks, disappointment and setbacks” in the fight for access to child care spaces. From the filing of a largely ignored citizens’ petition to the passage of Bill 1, the Children’s Educational Services Amendment Act, in early April, there hasn’t been much progress for children. families. As the cost of living explodes and the housing crisis rages, parents of toddlers too often have to forego an income because they cannot find a place in daycare. And for single-parent families — which, in the overwhelming majority of cases, are headed by women — the situation is downright hopeless.
On this specific point, and setting aside for a moment the climate issue, we must seriously ask ourselves: while Quebec could, until recently, boast of its family policy and its public network of child care centers hailed Stranger, how did we get here?
The Minister of Families, Mathieu Lacombe, never ceases to congratulate himself for having done everything possible to reduce the wait and accelerate the completion of the network of subsidized daycare centres. However, at the end of April, during the study of budgetary appropriations, we learned that the government was missing its target of creating places in CPEs and in subsidized private daycare centers for 2021-2022. The waiting list at the one-stop seat allocation desk has grown. The conversion of non-subsidized childcare centers into CPEs is not progressing as quickly as desired and, in the urgency of creating new places, it is the private daycare projects, likely to generate profits, which carve out the share of the lion. Let’s say that we are not quite close to the ideal of a subsidized network capable of offering universal access to all families who want it.
Mères au front and Ma place au travail address two specific demands to the government: first, the adoption of a framework law that would oblige the government to submit all of its decisions to a rigorous environmental and social analysis. Then, the recognition of a universal right to access early childhood education services, modeled on the school network model. A few months before the start of the electoral campaign, the outgoing government will be faced with a choice: to hear the anger of the mothers or to answer publicly for its indifference.