Last fall, François Legault said he wanted to create childcare spaces “at the most sacred”.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. Despite all the good will of the Minister of Families, Mathieu Lacombe, Quebec has just missed its target for the year 2021-2022. He created “only” 3,201 places, when he had promised between 5,000 and 7,000.
This leads to two obvious thoughts.
First, we must redouble our efforts to create the damn missing places.
Then, we must help the parents who, in the meantime, have lost the lotto-CPE and are unable to fit their foams into the subsidized network.
Aid, to use the words of the Prime Minister, which must arrive “to the most sacred”.
As we know, inflation hurts, particularly the most disadvantaged. But it doesn’t just affect food, gas and rent.
Inflation is also hitting child care services, and those who are not lucky enough to pay $8.70 a day know this all too well.
The Legault government has just raised the salary of CPE educators, an excellent decision. But in order not to lose their own educators, private daycare centers have no choice but to follow the parade.
Adding in the rise in rents and the price of food, it is easy to understand that a private day care center that required $40 two years ago is now asking for $50 or more.
This poses a problem.
Quebec has an instrument to help parents who fall into the holes of the system: a tax credit, which has just been improved. Combined with the federal deduction, it is designed so that a place at $40 per day in the non-subsidized network comes to the same price as a place in the subsidized network, ie $8.70.
The problem is that in many regions, these $40 places no longer exist, or are only offered by daycare centers that cut corners on quality.
(Think that a CPE receives about $70 per child per day. One wonders how a private daycare could care for the same child, with the same quality, for $40.)
Today, a family in which each parent earns $35,000 and who must pay $50 for a place finds itself, with provincial and federal assistance, paying $15.26 instead of the price of $8.70 to which the other relatives. A place at $60 costs him $25 a day. That’s $6,500 a year…per child.
This creates inequities. And shows that both the provincial and the federal must adapt their tax assistance to the new reality on the ground. Why, for example, not adjust them automatically according to the evolution of the median price?
Of course, tax credits should be seen as a temporary measure. Because the real solution is a place for each child in the subsidized network.
It’s hard to say that Minister Lacombe isn’t working on it. To speed up the creation of places, it slashed the paperwork, launched continuous calls for projects and allowed the state to build CPEs itself.
But on the ground, obstacles and bureaucracy remain.
The opposition is also pushing Quebec to accelerate the conversion of non-subsidized places into subsidized places, with good reason. But here, the CAQ must unravel everything the Liberals have done by promoting the explosion of the unsubsidized network.
In any case, the creation and conversion of places is not done by snapping your fingers. This is why, while waiting to plug the holes, we must reach out to the parents who fall into them.
Mothers (mostly) and fathers (increasingly) deciding to stay home because of a lack of affordable child care spaces, it’s always troubling. In Quebec, we made the choice a long time ago that we don’t want that.
In the context of a labor shortage, this is even more unacceptable and counterproductive.