If you are parents of toddlers, then you probably already know it: our childcare network is no longer resisting, it is cracking.
More than 37,000 children do not have a place at the moment, whereas our network can now offer nearly 70,000 places at the single price. Parents are at the end of their rope and strain. Mothers and fathers are forced to give up their jobs to stay home until a miracle happens and, by magic, an affordable place becomes available. Children are forced to move from one environment to another, undergoing change after change, due to successive closures in family settings and in non-subsidized private daycare facilities over which we nevertheless have the power to act.
While Quebec continues to promise the creation of new places in childcare centers, we repeat one thing: it is one minute to midnight to save Quebec’s childcare network. Families don’t need brand-new buildings four years from now, but single-price places for their children, today and now, in our private daycare facilities. Although the Minister of Families has been talking about conversion for over a year, there is no plan to carry out this project and we are once again talking about complete conversion after the next provincial elections. The paradox is shocking, because we are prioritizing the creation of new places in four years without seizing the opportunity to stabilize the network and offer places at the single price as of today.
If the government’s primary objective is to provide accessible spaces for parents, then Quebec’s non-subsidized private daycare centers are an undeniable force in achieving this. Speeding up the conversion of our places to the subsidized network to ensure that the network is fair for all is more than a priority: it is a national emergency, otherwise tens of thousands of places for children we risk losing permanently even though they are invaluable to many parents.
The government absolutely must realize the entire problem and hear us before it is too late. Merely improving the tax credit for child care expenses is not and never will be sufficient.
Both daycare owners, parents and educators are calling for the standardization of a single network. This is all the more important now that the government has announced the increase of up to 20% in the salaries of early childhood educators. Non-subsidized private daycare centers will not be able to compete and participate in the higher wages. How can we ask parents who already pay five times more than the price charged in CPEs to pay even more to compensate for the new salaries of educators? It is inconceivable to penalize them so unfairly. It is inconceivable to make them foot the bill for a social injustice.
The Ministry of the Family asks us to follow the same laws and regulations as other daycare settings. We are subject to the same inspections regarding health, safety and educational quality. We go out of our way to provide the best for our children, but if nothing changes, unfortunately we won’t be able to do so for very long.
Rather than deepening the inequity in a system that is already running at two speeds, we are asking the government to quickly find the means to accelerate the creation of spaces in non-subsidized daycare centers and to help retain educators. Today, more than ever, families need a living child care system.
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