(Quebec) Despite a “historic” year in terms of the creation of daycare places in 2023, educational childcare services do not believe that Quebec will achieve its targets set for the “Great project for families” within the allotted time frame . According to the network, the cumulative addition of 37,000 new subsidized places by 2025 could take longer, especially since the arrival of thousands of classroom assistants in schools raises fears of the departure of a certain number of educators towards the school environment.
What there is to know
In its “Major project for families”, Quebec aims to create, by March 31, 2025, more than 37,000 new subsidized daycare places.
However, several issues are still slowing down the projects currently underway. Associations in the early childhood network fear that these delays will delay reaching the target.
At the same time, the addition of thousands of classroom assistants in schools raises fears of the departure of a certain number of educators to the school environment.
As of November 30, according to the most up-to-date data, 14,025 new places in facilities had been created since the start of the Major Project for Families, an action plan whose objective is to ensure a place for each child so that all parents who wish can enter the job market. To this number, we must add 5,601 new places in family settings, for a total of 19,626 places created in all daycares since 2021-2022.
By March 31, Quebec aimed to have added 30,000 new places as part of its action plan (out of a total objective of 37,000). According to Geneviève Blanchard, strategic advisor to the general management of the Quebec Association of Early Childhood Centers (AQCPE), it is practically “impossible” to achieve this objective on time.
We will not achieve all these places by March 31. Several are in progress [de réalisation, certes], but we are far from finished. There will be other openings [de places]but not up to the 30,000 new places created that had been planned.
Geneviève Blanchard, strategic advisor to the general management of the AQCPE
Samir Alahmad, president of the Association of Private Daycares of Quebec (AGPQ), is of the same opinion. According to him, the government’s ultimate objective, to have created 37,000 new subsidized places by March 31, 2025, is just as “ambitious” and could require more time.
“Are we going to succeed in developing as announced in the Great Project? I have doubts about that,” he says.
Projects that are progressing more slowly than expected
As for early childhood centers (CPE), several issues are slowing down the construction of new facilities. Mme Blanchard cites rising costs and soaring prices for construction materials as projects must comply with the Infrastructure Financing Program.
Even if the program has been improved, the difference that remains between the real cost of the projects and the envelopes allocated slows down their progress. In many cases, plans must be revised along the way by architects, who are then tasked with rationalizing spaces in order to respect a budgetary framework which does not always reflect reality.
In spring 2021, the former Minister of Families, Mathieu Lacombe, estimated that reducing the number of steps in the process of developing places in CPE – which had gone from 17 to 9 – would make it possible to reduce the average time by 36 at 24 months.
Despite everything, estimates the AQCPE, it currently takes an average of four years to carry out a CPE project (three years if all goes well and five years if there are a lot of pitfalls).
Mr. Alahmad, of the AGPQ, also points the finger at certain municipalities which are not relaxing their rules, he says, in order to help developers get projects underway. He wants Quebec to monitor projects that do not come to fruition more closely in order to allocate funding to other teams who have projects in the pipeline that can quickly be launched.
Minister Roy stays the course
Despite everything, the Minister of Families, Suzanne Roy, is staying the course. It maintains the final objective of having created 37,000 new subsidized places by March 31, 2025 and is counting, among other things, on “nice positive surprises” to achieve this as part of its “prefabricated” daycare project, which would reduce significantly the average time to create new installations. An announcement on this subject is expected in the coming weeks.
Concerning the labor shortage in early childhood, which led the minister last fall to extend until 2027 a reduced ratio of one qualified educator in two (rather than two qualified educators in three) in services on call, in order to avoid service interruptions, Mme Roy intends to increase initiatives to enhance the attractiveness of the profession.
Geneviève Blanchard, of the AQCPE, fears, however, that the addition of 4,000 classroom assistants throughout the school network, a measure desired by Quebec in its recent negotiations with the unions, will attract early childhood educators to schools. childhood. To avoid too pronounced an exodus, she believes that remuneration in daycare centers must once again be reviewed.
There was a salary catch-up [avec la plus récente convention collective]but it remains the lowest paid college diploma of all DECs.
Geneviève Blanchard, strategic advisor to the general management of the AQCPE
In Quebec, Minister Roy shares the concern of daycare centers about the attraction of classroom help positions. “It’s a concern we have. We want to create places, but it is important to have educators within our daycare services. We are putting other initiatives in place to promote and enhance their work,” she says. When the Great Project for Families was launched, the government estimated that 17,800 more educators were needed in the network in order to offer the projected 37,000 new places.
Regarding salary, Mme Roy recalls that “we will soon enter into negotiations at the level of the collective agreement”.
“During the last collective agreement, there was a catch-up [de la rémunération] educators [pouvant atteindre] 18%. We will let the negotiations take place, they have good union representatives who will be able to defend their point of view well. Faced with the labor shortage, we must be competitive,” said the minister.