(Gatineau) Dominique Anglade holds the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) responsible for a “setback for women” over the past four years due to the lack of places in daycare services. The Liberal leader is committed to enshrining in law the right for every child to have a place at $8.70 a day and promises to create more places than the CAQ.
Posted at 11:52
This right would be effective within five years, the time to achieve the 52,000 places needed and to convert the non-subsidized private daycare centres, according to his explanations. She accuses the CAQ of saying anything about the number of missing places and of underestimating the needs.
“It’s not up to the parents to look for a place in daycare, it’s up to us to provide it to them,” said Dominique Anglade at a press conference on Thursday. “What we want is for what happens in our schools, access for everyone because it’s a right to be in school, to be the same thing in our daycare services. »
She made her announcement in Gatineau, in the Outaouais region for which Family Minister Mathieu Lacombe is responsible. The CAQ won three of the five Outaouais ridings from the Liberals in 2018.
The Legault government has launched a project to “complete the network” and create 37,000 places by 2025.
For Dominique Anglade, “we must do more”. “We need to add 15,000 additional places to complete the whole thing,” she said. She reported that 52,000 children are on the waiting list. The Liberal leader answered in the affirmative when asked if the CAQ says anything about the number of missing places.
She also observed that the Ministry of the Family has just changed the number of children on the waiting list. “During the election, the list changes”, going from 52,000 to 34,000 children, “because we removed those who are less than nine months old”, she lamented, pointing out that a baby of seven months, like the one she met during the visit to the CPE, also needs a place.
There were 42,000 children on the waiting list in 2018. The Legault government failed to create all the new places it had promised at the start of its mandate. There are even fewer places in the network today than four years ago, according to the most recent data from the Ministère de la Famille. This is due in particular to the labor shortage, the delays in opening new places, the closure of home childcare services and the effects of the pandemic.
Over the past four years, “there has been a complete backsliding on the issue of child care. And more than that, I would also tell you a setback for women. Because there were a number of women who wanted to return to the labor market who were not able to do so” due to the lack of places, maintained Dominique Anglade.
To find educators, a Liberal government would raise wages and create a separate pay scale for those with a technical or university background.
She also holds François Legault responsible, more broadly, for “the labor shortage as we know it and which has worsened” because he “did nothing for four years”. “That the labor shortage has been there for some time, there is no doubt, that a prime minister is not able to recognize it and name it, that’s what makes us make the situation worse day by day. »
Dominique Anglade also wants to convert the 68,000 existing places in non-subsidized private daycares into places at $8.70 a day. There would be negotiations with these daycare services to carry out the operation.
The daily rate imposed on parents would be indexed, as is currently the case under a Liberal government.
Dominique Anglade quantifies his promise at 1.3 billion dollars per year-not counting construction costs of 420 million. It would use the transfer of six billion over five years from Ottawa, according to the agreement reached with Quebec last year.
As for 4-year-old kindergarten, Dominique Anglade will “not question what currently exists”, suggesting that the number of classes would remain the same as at the moment, around 1,600.
Dominique Anglade did not hold any militant rally during his visit to Gatineau on Thursday and Friday. The Liberal Party has a tradition of organizing one in the Outaouais region – as we saw in 2018 at the Moulin de Wakefield, for example, where there were a hundred people. Asked about this, the Liberal leader explained that she made the choice to have a “team dinner” on Thursday evening and that she will return to the Outaouais during the campaign. Militant gatherings have been very modest so far.
If we only held rallies and didn’t meet other people, we wouldn’t be doing our job.
Dominique Anglade, leader of the PLQ
For outgoing MP and candidate in Hull, Maryse Gaudreault, “activism has changed over the years. There was a time when gathering 250 people, we could do it like that, and there was not even social networks, we did it by phone. Today, people give us “likes”, people send us messages by Facebook, support us and everything, and are not necessarily ready to come and show it off”.
The incumbent and candidate in Pontiac, André Fortin, believes that the party must “broaden (its) base”. “If we just talk to liberal activists, we have a problem,” he said. “We want to attract more people to our political formation” and concentrate efforts to this end. He says he is “certain” that there will be a militant rally during Dominique Anglade’s next visit to the Outaouais.