While 32,000 people are waiting for a place in the CPE, allowing asylum seekers to have access would exert undue pressure and cause irreparable harm, the Quebec government argued before the Court of Appeal THURSDAY. He was thus pleading with the aim of suspending a recent decision, which found it discriminatory to exclude asylum seekers from $9 daycares, while waiting for the Supreme Court to agree or not to hear the case.
According to Quebec lawyers, the Ministry of Families calculates that 8,345 children of asylum seekers would potentially be added to the waiting list of 32,000. This pool would bring greater pressure on the government, which will have to implement asylum services. additional custody which will involve tenders and third-party investments. “It adds pressure to a network already under pressure,” said Manuel Klein, for the Attorney General of Quebec. According to him, we must consider the public interest and wait for the Supreme Court to rule, because if it overturns the decision of the Court of Appeal, “we cannot go back”.
The respondent’s lawyers in this case, for their part, argued that this “pressure” on the system does not exist, at least in Montreal, where most asylum seekers live, since there are “1175 vacant places” according to data from coordinating offices. “They are not coming to take away places from people in Montreal,” argued Sibel Ataogul, of the Melançon Marceau Grenier Cohen firm. Some asylum-seeking children have even already joined a CPE since the decision of the Court of Appeal on February 7.
For Me Ataogul, who represents Bijou Cibuabua Kanyinda in the case, the damage raised by the government is rather based on the inaction of the latter and previous administrations “to create a network that truly meets the needs of Quebec families”. “It’s as if we were saying that we have created a health system incapable of caring for sick people but that if we added more sick people, it would put additional pressure. Yes, but is it the fault of the patients that you add or is it the fault of the government which does not have an adequate network? » she argued.
Me Ataogul and his team put forward four testimonies from women who sent their children to a CPE the day after the judgment of the Court of Appeal on February 7 which gave them back this right. “The impact is enormous on the most vulnerable people,” said Maryse Poisson, of the Daycare Access Committee. In an affidavit, she recounted the radical change observed in an asylum seeker who lived in an unsanitary apartment with her daughter who showed significant developmental delays. “The lady got a place in daycare and within two weeks she was able to move into a suitable apartment. Now she works and is no longer on welfare. »
Louis-Philippe Jannard, coordinator of the protection component at the Consultation Table of Organizations Serving Refugees and Immigrants (TCRI), said for his part that he did not understand why a reversal of the decision in the Supreme Court would be a problem. “To have created more daycare spaces… how would the public interest be served by that? It just forces the government to invest more resources. »
The judge has taken the case under advisement, but her decision is expected to be rendered quickly.