Unable to offer its educators the same salaries as in a CPE without excessively increasing its rates for parents, a private daycare in Laval will close its doors in a few months.
Joëlle Saint-Laurent, owner of the Garderie de la Gare, in the Auteuil district, had to make this difficult decision after a project to merge with a childcare center (CPE) in the area was refused by the Ministry of family. This project would have resulted in transforming the 44 non-subsidized places in his daycare into subsidized places, at $ 8.70 per day since 1er January (this amount was $ 8.35 previously).
Currently, parents whose toddlers attend the Garderie de la Gare pay $ 44 per day. They receive a tax credit from Quebec which helps them pay this rate.
A few weeks ago, the staff of the childcare centers reached an agreement with the government which provides for salary increases of 18% for qualified educators.
To avoid losing her employees, who will be tempted to get a job in a childcare center to get a better income, Joëlle Saint-Laurent wants to offer them the same salary. Already, qualified educators are scarce and the daycare is understaffed.
However, she would have to increase her rates to parents by almost $ 20 a day to do so.
I can’t tell parents I’m going to charge them $ 60 a day, that’s unreasonable. The extra bill would be passed directly to the parents, and they would have no help making up the difference.
Joëlle Saint-Laurent, owner of the Garderie de la Gare
Rather than come to this, it prefers to end its activities after 12 years of existence.
“It is impossible for us to compete with the cost of a childcare center,” she explains.
This means that families of 44 children will find themselves without child care in April.
Lauriane Lefebvre, whose 3-year-old son attends the Garderie de la Gare, has been in shock since learning the news on Monday evening. “We knew they had been fighting for a long time to become a subsidized daycare, but we didn’t see it coming,” says Mme Lefebvre.
“The educators are pearls, they are like members of our family. We felt confident. ”
Find a new daycare
Like many other parents, Lauriane Lefebvre has already started looking for a new place and has registered her child on waiting lists. “But with forty children in the same sector looking for a place, it will not be easy,” she observes, discouraged.
According to the president of the Association of non-subsidized day-care centers in installation, David Haddaoui, the Garderie de la Gare is not the only one in an untenable situation.
“The reality is that there is a huge divide between the subsidized sector and the unsubsidized sector,” he said, adding that there will be more such closures if the government takes no action.
There are 70,000 children in the network of non-subsidized day care centers, the government cannot ignore us.
David Haddaoui, president of the Association of non-subsidized daycare centers
In October 2020, the Minister of Families, Mathieu Lacombe, announced that 3,500 places in non-subsidized daycare centers would be converted into subsidized places.
Mr. Lacombe specified that the launch of the call for projects to convert places would take place in two phases: the first in 2020-2021, the second in 2021-2022.
Only non-subsidized daycare centers with a permit for more than five years are eligible for the call for projects.
For example, last August, it was announced that 25 projects had been selected, in 5 regions, under this program.
“Thus, 1,767 places will be converted. The purpose of these places is to allow a greater number of families in Quebec to have access to a subsidized place in educational childcare services ”, explained the Ministry’s press release.
Four projects were selected in Laval, but not that of the Garderie de la Gare.
“To our great surprise, we learned, a few days before Christmas, that the project had not been selected, in large part because it did not create new places in the sector. We were extremely disappointed, ”says Joëlle Saint-Laurent.