The Legault government may build prefabricated CPEs, it will lack educators to welcome children there, underline the opposition parties.
• Read also: Creation of 3,200 daycare spaces: Quebec is injecting $116 million for 43 new prefabricated CPEs
• Read also: Lack of educators in daycare services
After the modular classes; manufactured daycares. In collaboration with the Association québécoise des CPE, Quebec will extend $116 million to build 43 new prefabricated facilities spread over thirteen regions.
The new buildings must each accommodate between 52 and 99 children. In total, this new wave of CPE construction will create 3,214 new places.
While the opposition sees this initiative favorably, it will not solve the problem of the labor shortage in the network of educational childcare services.
“It’s a good solution, but the problem we have is that we are building a lot of daycare centers and CPEs very quickly, while we are not training educators as quickly as that” , indicates the united deputy Christine Labrie.
The elected official from Sherbrooke adds that the number of registrations for the college training program for educators – the Childhood Education Technique – is “starving”. She fears that we will find ourselves in the coming months with brand new buildings, but empty, for lack of qualified personnel to provide services there.
“It’s over 15,000 educators that it takes us in the next few years to fill the places that the government is creating. And these people are not in our CEGEPs at the moment, ”insists Ms. Labrie.
Same story with the Liberals. The interim leader of the PLQ, Marc Tanguay, believes that the CAQ is not yet doing enough to attract workers to the daycare network. “At the 10th level, an educator earns $50,000 a year,” he argues.
Opting for prefabricated CPEs is an “original” solution, agrees PQ MP Joël Arseneau. But the CAQ government must also work on attracting early childhood educators, adds the elected representative of the Magdalen Islands.
“In my riding (…), since last fall, we have something like 90 places that are ready, (but) no educators to offer the service to families in our area!”.